Sony Ericsson will begin selling its first Vodafone-only handset next month.

The F500i is tied into Vodafone's Live! multimedia service, so naturally it features an integrated digicam with 4x digital zoom and a dedicated activation button on the side of the handset. Snaps can be edited and have special effects applied directly on the handset and displayed on the handset's 128 x 160, 1.9in 16-bit colour screen.

The phone has also been set up to make sending picture messages, downloading 40-voice polyphonic ringtones, grabbing wallpapers and screensavers, and running Live!-supplied games easy.

It contains 10MB of memory on which to store all this stuff. Well, the press release says 10MB; Sony Ericsson's web site says 12MB.

User can create their own ringtones using Sony Ericsson's bundled MusicDJ software.

The F500i is a GSM/GPRS device with WAP 2.0 support. Neither Sony Ericsson nor Vodafone provided pricing for the phone, which will ship mid-July across all territories in which Vodafone Live! is offered. ®

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