I am pleased to say that the ergonomics of use are much improved over some other Sony Ericsson models. I found the tiny number pad keys of the W880i simply too small for comfort and even the slightly larger keys of the K550i were sometimes a challenge.

Here we have a number pad whose round and very well-spaced keys are easy to find and hit while still managing to look distinctive, sitting as they do like silver gems in their black surround.

Sony Ericsson has made the shortcut keys that sit above the number pad somewhat small in size but they are raised from their surroundings which is an aid to use. My least favourite navigation system - a miniature joystick which you push and pull about and press to make selections - has been chosen. It works well enough; I just wish it were a flat pad instead.

On the right is the Activity Menu key. Press it and the Activity Menu pops up. This offers you four tabbed windows that you scroll through using the mini joystick. The first of these lists ‘new events' such as missed calls and messages. The second is the running applications list and you can use this to either close running apps or switch to them quickly.

The third tab is the My Shortcuts list. You can configure this to include whatever applications, settings or other features you like, and can set the order in which they appear.

Above the screen and sitting either side of the small video calling camera are two more keys of the long, thin variety rather than the rounded variety. These are both camera related.

The other button opens images in full screen view and with the camera running toggles through the various shooting modes: normal, panorama, frames (of which there are 14) and BestPic. This latter one is Sony Ericsson's auto shooting mode. Nine pictures are taken in the space of a second, and you can choose which to keep.

The screen is bright and clear. Its 262 thousand colours are ample and it measures 2 inches from corner-to-corner across the diagonal. It works well both for framing and shooting photos as well as for viewing information more generally.

With all this emphasis on photography what about actually using the camera and image quality?

Using the camera was straightforward. As well as the shortcut buttons already mentioned (the ones above the screen), the 1, 4, 7 and * keys double up to provide access to megapixel size, macro, self-timer and flash settings, making it really fast to flick between these and also easier to take candid shots - a task that's far from slick with some mobiles.

During testing I left the camera on its auto mode and it had no trouble with some tight close-ups. The image stabiliser helped with the cat photo, which was taken at close range and also highlights how well the autofocus coped.

Other applications include an FM radio, RSS feed reader, sound recorder, email support, alarm clock, calculator, calendar, notes taker, stopwatch, tasks manager and timer.