Sony Ericsson W880i has a compact but sharp screen capable of showing 262K colours and 240x320 pixels. Sony Ericsson has made the W880i's keys as tiny slivers, which lack space between them vertically; large fingered people will have problems distinguishing the buttons. Sony Ericsson has abandoned its usual joystick in favour of a four-way nav key that, like the rest of the keypad, is fiddly and prone to accidental presses, mainly due to the closeness of the directional keys to the centre selection button. If your fingers are small, though, you shouldn't have a problem with navigation or typing text messages -- Sony Ericsson's interface remains one of the easiest to use.

Flip sony ericsson w880i over and you'll find a 2-megapixel camera on the back, but without a flash of any kind. Shortcuts on the side of the W880i are for launching the camera, opening the Walkman music application and adjusting the volume. The proprietary charging and connection port is moved from its usual bottom placement of the phone to the side, directly above the hot-swappable Memory Stick Micro (M2) card slot. Although svelte, Samsung's Ultra Edition 6.9 (X820) remains the skinniest phone we've seen, although it is wider and longer than the W880i.

As thin as the battery is, Sony Ericsson claims the W880i is capable of up to 6.5 hours of talk time or 425 hours (17 days) of standby per charge. Unfortunately we struggled to get more than three days from the W880i, with usage patterns of a few phone calls per day, a handful of text messages and a couple of minutes of 3G video content streaming. Two or three days from a phone isn't great; the W880i probably isn't the best phone for travellers.

At just 9.4 mm thin, the W880i is the slimmest Sony Ericsson phone yet and combines the full Walkman phone experience with a device that fits easily into a pocket. A host of innovative music applications (such as Walkman Player 2.0 and Disc2Phone) make it easy to get music onto their phone and search through play lists. With Bluetooth Audio Streaming, music can be enjoyed wirelessly on a Stereo Bluetooth Headset. And a 2.0-megapixel camera is integrated with high-speed UMTS support for picture blogging. Manage music on the Walkman music player including play, rewind, fast forward, equalize, shuffle tracks and create playlists - just like in any other digital music player.