Review Ultra-slim phones are a gimmick, right? Yes, they're mere millimetres from front to back, but in shaving off around half the thickness of a standard candybar, the phone makers must have compromised on the skinny handset's feature set, surely? Sony Ericsson's Walkman-branded W880 is now readily available - we look at how well it measures up.

Sony Ericsson's W880: Nano-esque

First impression: the W880 is a thing of beauty. Edge-on it's just 9mm thick. That doesn't just make it look sexy, it also makes it really comfortable to hold. The face measures 10.1 x 4.5cm so it's wide and tall enough for an eminently thumbable keypad, a decent sized display and the 0.3-megapixel videocall camera. Neither dimension is particularly small, but that slender waist makes the W880i feel incredibly compact.

The handset's no less rugged for its svelte good looks. There's a surprising solidity to the W880, though it's no heavyweight - a mere 71g, in fact. Just picking it up and holding it in your hand gives the impression that the insides are tucked away tightly and securely. That's largely due to the stainless steel black faceplate - this isn't a phone that seems like it'll snap in two if you push too hard. The back of the phone is kitted out in rubberised plastic, coloured in the Walkman series' signature orange. It gives the W880 a tactile, quality feel.

Unusually, the W880's microphone is on the front of the phone, not its base. You won't find the standard Sony Ericsson connector down there either - it's been rotated through 90° and placed on the left side adjacent to the tiny rubber cover that protects the Memory Stick Micro - aka M2 - memory card slot.

My W880 came with a 1GB card pre-installed - the biggest size the card can take, alas - and the phone has 16MB built in. We took the M2 card out for a peek, but wished we hadn't - it proved a real pain to get back in. We had to use a pencil to push it far enough in for the locking mechanism to click into place. This is not an expansion system for folk with fat fingers or very short nails.

The necessity for nails also applies to the camera's zoom key, a tiny slider placed at the top of the phone's right side that doubles up as the volume control when your either mid-call or running the Walkman music application. The camera's shutter button is three-quarters of the way down. Between them sit the sides of the battery hatch, which you just pull off - each side has a recess to make help you grip it. Again, fingernails are essential.

Sony Ericsson's W880: finger nails necessary

At the top of the left side, opposite the zoom control, is the usual Walkman button that flips the phone between its phone screen and the on-board music player app. None of the side-mounted keys sit flush with the casing, but they aren't raised so far that they're easy to push by accident.

The numeric pad comprises 12 very slim raised metallic orange keys - the numbers and letters are printed above them. At first we thought these would be too tiny to use comfortably, but we actually found them easy to locate and press because they're well spaced apart. They're about 1 x 5mm face-on and raised a millimetre above the face of phone, and there's 3.5mm between the buttons in a given column. The height and the spacing made texting quick and accurate.

Above the keypad is the usual Walkman control array: central five-way navigator surrounded by Menu, Home, Clear, Back and soft-menu buttons all arranged in a three-adjacent-circles motif. The absence of call make and break keys was noticeable, but we quickly grew accustomed to using the soft-menus instead.

The W880's 240 x 320 display is simply gorgeous, using its range of 262,144 colours to present smooth icons and menus, all of which appear and animate smoothly and responsively. The screen doesn't half pick up fingerprints, but at least it's easy to wipe clear.

The handset contains the usual array of personal information apps, a couple of games and media playback tools. Pride of place goes to the Walkman app, which provides all the usual playback and music management features. To enhance the sound, it offers MegaBass for real thump, but there are an array of other EQ pre-sets for customising the sound - you can adjust it manually too. As phone music player apps go, the W880's isn't half bad as an iPod substitute, and it's well complemented with the bundled in-the-ear 'phones. There's one downside with these: the big plug that connects to the W880's connector on the side of the handset - it's bulky, it gets in the way, and it spoils the phone's clean lines in a way that wouldn't happen even if the same plug was fitted to the base of the phone.

Sony Ericsson's W880: skinny

And while the earphones are separate from the microphone pod so you can replace them with any 3.5mm jack-equipped pair, you've still the problem of that huge black blob jutting out of the side of the W880.

Or maybe not. The handset supports Bluetooth stereo - sometimes written on spec sheets as A2DP - and it works a treat. If your Bluetooth headphones have music controls of their own, pressing them has the desired effect.

Sony Ericsson's W880: two-megapixel snapper

But - again - there's a catch: the Walkman app's sound settings - EQ and the stereo widening effect - don't affect Bluetooth-relayed songs. Bluetooth also provides a link to connect, say, a laptop to the internet via the phone, to zap files back and forth - at a respectable 55Kbps. The W880 is a tri-band (900/1800/1900MHz) GSM/GPRS handset with 2100MHz UMTS 3G, so it offers good coverage around the world and, where present, up to 384Kbps 3G download speeds. There's no HSDPA, but it's quick enough for connection beyond the range of Wi-Fi.

It's a good job Bluetooth data transfer is quick: Mac and Linux users are limited to that to get Songs over, unless they have a USB-connected Memory Stick Micro adaptor. iSync, with a little tweaking to add support for the W880, works just fine. Windows users get song rip-and-transfer code and data sync software in the box. The W880 also supports the Bluetooth remote control protocol, allowing you to use it as a media player remote or for switching slides in a presentation. Cute.

The W880's camera is a two-megapixel job. It has 2.5x digital zoom, but only if you're willing to take snaps that have a 0.30-megapixel resolution. Nighttime shots and indoors snaps show a fair amount of noise, though this can be reduced with the camera's night mode. Outside you can take a better pic with the W880, but viewing the images at full size reveals the detail lost to image compression and the camera's unimpressive optics:

Cropped 2Mp image at 100% - click for full pic

The camera has two quality settings, fine and normal, but there's not much to choose between them. This is a camera for quick spur-of-the-moment shots destined to be viewed on-screen, emailed or picture messaged.

Sony Ericsson claims a talk-time of six-and-a-half hours for GSM. We charged the W880 up on a Thursday morning and didn't need to recharge until Saturday evening, and that's with Bluetooth enabled, a number of calls made, some GPRS modem usage and with the screen backlight on rather more than it would be in everyday usage. The W880's battery is compact, but little more so than those in other, standard-thickness phones.

The call quality's not all bad either - coming through loud and clear. The signal strength bar oscillated up and down a bit, but it didn't seem to affect the handset's ability to make and take calls.

Verdict

So the camera's not much cop, but the rest of the W880 is very good. Combine that with the ultra-slim, iPod Nano-esque casing, and the Sony Ericsson truly becomes an object of desire. Want the best looking phone around? Look no further.