Nokia E66 smartphone

The home screen displays half a dozen icons leading to your most popular applications – messages, web, music player, gallery, clock/alarm and a mode switch that allows you to toggle between a serious business theme and a more laid-back display for weekends. It also displays your push email inbox and email set-up so you can quickly take advantage of any Wi-Fi hotspots you happen to find yourself in.

Beneath the screen are two soft keys, call start and stop, a back space key and a square D-pad surrounded by four shortcut keys – home, calendar, contacts and messages. The D-pad doubles as a message alert, flashing when you have mail waiting.

The 3.2 megapixel camera has a dedicated shutter button

Slide the upper part of the phone (it would be wrong to call it the upper half, since it's only about a third of the depth of the lower slide) open and the numeric keypad clearly favours practicality over invention. It's got standard looking angled oblong keys which are well spaced and made of a tactile plastic – the bottom line is it's very easy to use.

Connectivity-wise it's got everything you need, including Wi-Fi, stereo Bluetooth (with fast data transfer), USB and even infrared (all too rare even on business phones nowadays). It's also quad-band and there's a fast 3.6Mb/s HSDPA 3G connection that will keep you going when you can't get proper broadband.

The Symbian S60 web browser may lack some of the cool stuff on the better touch screen phones, but it's a good, robust browser that allows you to zoom in and out, display a full page overview and search for key words on pages. There's also a full screen mode for viewing pictures or streaming video and the phone's built-in accelerometer allows you to flip between portrait and landscape modes without any fuss or delay.