This trendy offering from Sony measures a meager 0.46 in wide at its thinnest point, which is the center concave arc of the handset that runs upright down at the rear end of the phone. The slimness of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc could be estimated from the fact that if you run this handset in comparison with the iPhone 3GS, the iPhone will clearly look obese.

Slimness plays a significant role in the success of any handset and the simple reason for that being the fact that it minimizes the bunglesome Visible Phone Line that is exposed in your pocket. But taking into account that most of the smartphones generally have a tad of heft into them, and in that respect, we will say that the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc is a tad too thin, and even a tad flimsy. The Arc weighs 4.13oz, which makes it incredibly lightweight, and the light weight of the handset could be attributed to the removable plastic cover at the rear end of the handset which gives you access to the battery, SIM and SD memory card.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc no doubt is looks a fragile handset, but at the same time it’s a rather nicely performing Gingerbread phone having a superb camera and an stunning screen. The Arc does have some irks in the form of minor glitches in software and some other factors in the overall design of the phone, but on a whole we think we can recommend this handset. The Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc will debut in US markets this summer with either T-Mobile or AT&T networks.

The stunning design of the handset is capable of withdrawing a lot of attention during the gatherings especially when the iPhone is becoming a common sight among the users. The Xperia Arc definitely is not an iPhone, but the good thing here is that it’s as eye-catching as an iPhone.

Now keeping the coolness of the handset aside, let’s have a brief look at the handset. The Xperia Arc has a 4.2 in backlit “reality display”, which also is one of the strong reasons for considering the Xperia Arc. The LED touchscreen of the Arc gets its power from Sony’s mobile Bravia engine, a descendant of what the company is using in their HDTVs. The display of Ericsson Xperia Arc has superb color imitation and brightness, even in bright light conditions.

When it comes to display screen, we have to say that the iPhone 4 has better screen resolution of 960 x 640 pixels, while the Xperia Arc has a native resolution of 854 x 480 pixels, and overall is better than the screen of the Xperia Arc. If you are looking for a bigger screen for gaming or for watching movies, the Xperia Arc has sufficient power to drive an HDTV by means of the HDMI connector, which is supplied with the handset.

Our favorite feature in the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc probably was its camera. The phone has a Sony Exmor R sensor for its camera and at the same time has a bright, f/2.4 lens. The images developed here are immensely sharp, and are rather noise-free. The images also have superb contrast and color. In general, the Xperia Arc captures some of the finest photos that we’ve seen from a phone camera.

Finally we would like to say that the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc sports a superb design, and is immensely light and thin. The phone has a stunning LED backlit display. The camera delivers crunchy video and images from its 8 MP camera having Exmor sensor. The Gingerbread variant of the Android OS in the phone is also a humongous improvement over the previous editions of the handset, and delivers immaculate voice quality.

That said, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc has a tad plasticky and flimsy feel in comparison to a handset priced at $650 phone. The phone also has rigid and small buttons, and the Android issues in the phone are a lot annoying than appealing.

And, though the world is going towards smaller and sleek handsets, we think that for the Xperia Play, bigger is better.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play looks a as a fat and short sibling of Sony Ericsson’s graceful Xperia Arc, which Sony proclaimed as the “thinnest” smartphone in the world. The Experia Plya is 0.62 in thicker, and that makes it a tad more bulky than the other devices of the Xperia-line family.

The bulkiness of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play becomes understandable when you understand that the phone also comes with a PlayStation controller, and that’s why we were expectant of some swapping in size. And if you are gaming crazy then you definitely will accept the handset with both hands. The Xperia Play comes with the X, square, Circle and triangle buttons on right side of the keypad and on the left there is the usual D-pad.

The best thing about the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is that unlike many of the other flimsy slider phones in the market the plastic hardware here is not at all tacky. As a matter of fact the Xperia Play feels a lot strong in hand, even when the handset is in open position, and there are strong chances that it won’t get affected by the additional pressure applied by the excited gamers.

Instead of the centered Joysticks that come in the traditional PS3 controller, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play comes with two pressure sensitive touchpad. So, you will be using your fingers for operating the two physical touchpads, instead of covering the immaculate screen space. We must say that the overall concept is superb, and that we appreciate playing games on the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play using those pads, and the touchpads had decent reaction time, although the sensitivity was a bit of a problem here.

The Xperia Play has 7 preloaded games and considering the fact that its Sony’s first attempt down that road the Xperia Play won’t be able to play the Play station classics that we’ve played on the Plays Stations.

The entire experience of playing games on the Xperia Play was pretty pleasing and we at any given point we didn’t felt as if we are playing games on a handheld phone interface. The Xperia Play performs like a separate gaming device, and we must commend Sony Ericsson for doing that so well.

The 4 inch touchscreen of the Xperia Play is a capacitive touch screen and we will say that its sufficiently big for viewing the games that you generally play. At times it feels as a little more screen real estate would have been great here, but when you consider that the games like Call of Duty and some other games are not at all available on Xperia Play, that doesn’t makes any sense here.

Even in terms of power the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is sufficiently powered and comes with a 1-GHz single-core Qualcomm Snapdragon chip rather than Nvidia’s dual-core Tegra 2 processor, which we have seen in many of the modern smartphones and tablets currently available in market. The processor of the phone is sufficiently powerful and doesn’t feels slow at any given time, and that we didn’t found any noticeable lag in the system while playing games and neither when running Google’s modern smartphone apps such as Google Calendar or Gmail.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Play is an Android phone, and the good thing is that it isn’t a shabby one. The Xperia Play performed nicely even in our performance testing and we got decent network coverage overall, without any dropped calls and without having any troubles in catching any attention. It should be noted that Sony Ericsson Xperia Play runs on 3G networks and not the latest 4G network.

The just as most of the other smartphones in the market, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play comes with two cameras, one of which is at the rear end of the camera and is a 5 MP camera, while the second camera is a VGA camera placed on its front end. The performance of the cameras although wasn’t all that great, and the images that we captured from them was a bit grainier. But then no one expects the images from a camera phone to be as clear as they have been captured from a dSLR.

Finally we would say that, buy this phone if you are a die hard faming fanatic.

The Sony Ericsson C702 is a simple, yet impressive phone and will say that the phone comes with plethora of things to like. Though, the Cyber-shot camera of the phone is not one of the things that will impress you. People looking for a rough-n-tough mobile phone will surely appreciate this compact and appealing option from Sony Ericsson.

Design:

The initial images of the Sony Ericsson C702 defied with the rugged nature of the phone with a very teeny-bopper sweetie blue externals. But the review unit that we got was in total contradiction with what the images suggested and the Sony Ericsson C702 came with a black rubber, non-slip bottom half paired with a lusterless metal look plastic on the top, with all the trimmings fittings available in limited color palette. In short we will say that our C702 looks pretty much like a butch phone.

The Sony Ericsson C702 comes with a vibrant and colorful 2.4 in display, which is a must, especially when the phone is doubling as the viewfinder in camera mode. Positioned under the screen, is the keypad, which is a well known combination of the navigation keys and a T9 number pad. As a matter of fact the keys on the number pad of the Sony Ericsson C702 are not at all better than the rice-sized keys that we saw on Sony Ericsson W890i, and though one might think of it as a poor use of space, we will like to say that the keypad here is comfortable to use. Unluckily, the 5 way navigation panel of the phone is not all that comfortable, with the hollow square-style key feeling a tad sharper under the thumbs.

Features:

Just as the Samsung’s M110, the Sony Ericsson C702 also comes with a certification of resistance and here it’s an Ingress Protection rating of 54 (IP54), where the first digit signifies the score of 5 on a scale of 6 for dust protection, and the second digit indicated a 4 on a scale of 8 for water resistance. So it’s clear that the phone is capable of withstanding water splash and dust without getting any sort of damaging to the phone.

Unlike the Samsung M110, the Sony Ericsson C702 is also loaded with plethora of features. The rear end of the handset houses the 3.2 megapixel Cyber-shot branded camera, having dual-LED photo lights and having a sliding lens cover. The camera software for the Sony Ericsson C702 includes panoramic photo stitching and face detection auto-focus. The right panel of the numeric keypad changes the settings for the camera in shooting mode.

The Sony Ericsson C702 is one of the very few Sony Ericsson handsets having on-board GPS for the model year in which it was launched, and then followed by the C902 and the X1. Our review unit came with Wayfinder maps and Google Maps pre-installed for navigation, in addition to an application known as Tracker to couple the GPS according to your personal fitness regime. The Sony Ericsson C702 comes loaded with Bluetooth 2.0 fitted and a USB cable to sync files with your PC.

Verdict:

Finally we would like to say that the Sony Ericsson C702 is a nicely designed phone which matches the high standards set by Sony Ericsson in terms of messaging and voice-calling, the HSDPA data speeds for the phone is also superb and the ruggedized handset of the phone definitely will appeal a wider audiences than just special customer bracket, Though you will be disappointed with the camera performance of the Sony Ericsson C702.

Sony Ericsson W980i might not look attractive to you but for me, it is quite delicious. The square sharp design and the black glossy case makes the latest Walkman look more like dark choclate Tim Tam instead of a future mobile phone. Below the flip, I found a clash of the modern eras, QVGA resolution color pf the phones are put against retro feel, circular, art deco inspired, numeric keys. I showed this gadget to some of my friends and they were pretty impressed by the design.

Keys on the Sony Ericsson W980i are spaced evenly and they are located on the bottom half of the phone. Above them, there are the navigation keys. I have often complained about cell phone having keypads that are too small for comfortable use. But this keypad isn’t one of those but you will have to change the way you hold the phone too often in order to reach the bottom and top keys.

One impressive feature on the Sony Ericsson W980i is secondary OLED screen located on the front. This display is clear and sharp and it is in conjunction with external menu controls. This means that you can listen to radio or play the music without opening up the phone or drill down the menu.

Sony Ericsson hasn’t provided a 3.5 mm headphones jack here and it is really disappointing since we’ve all been asking for it for a long time. The company is using a proprietary port so that the different peripherals like charger, USB cord and headphones can be plugged in the same port and hence the phone is more compact. There is a 3.5 mm headphones jack adapter provided with the phone but if you use this, you will have to go through a lot of knotting and cable twisting.

Audio playback on the Sony Ericsson W980i is much better than its predecessors. It is called Clear Audio experience and combination of 2 separate Sony audio components, Clear Bass and Clear Stereo. Through Clear Audio, Sony Ericsson is promising better music performance on this phone.

Sony Ericsson W980i has the same PlayStation like menu system that we have seen on the earlier Walkmans. It is as impressive as the iTunes Coverflow feature and for me, it is one of the most attractive thing on the phone. There is support for a wide range of audio formats including AAC and MP3 and these tracks can also be used as ringtones. There is FM radio transmitter inside for streaming from the phone to a radio nearby through a short range dedicated frequency.

For music enthusiasts, the Sony Ericsson W980i comes with huge eight gigabytes internal storage space and this means you can put about 2,500 files sized between 3-4 megabytes each. Most Sony Ericsson Walkman phones come with M2 memory stick and memory card reader support. But this isn’t found on the W980. You don’t get microSD card slot here but it should be a big disappointment considering the internal space of the phone.

Sony Ericsson is known for making some of the best camera centric phones in the market and hence I expected a lot from the Sony Ericsson C 905 when it turned up in my labs for review. The manufacturer says that this phone is made as a camera replacement instead of just another camera phone and hence this handset has plenty to live up to. Sony Ericsson C 905 is offered for free on monthly contract of about £30 to £35 per month.

Some phone makers say that they want to make their camera phones look more like phones and less like camera but Sony Ericsson has taken a different route here and this phone has been made to look more like a camera. You might think that this handset is too large. I thought so too but after testing the phone for a while, I realized that the size is very useful while talking photos. You can hold the handset properly just like a standard camera.

Sony Ericsson C 905 isn’t the slickest phone in the market right now but it is definitely functional. I liked the layout of the keypad, it is easy to use just like other buttons including the one for shutter. The camera lens is properly covered by lens cover that will not automatically close and open in your pocket. I was relieved to see this as it was a big problem on the K800i.

The biggest feature on the Sony Ericsson C 905 is the camera and the first thing I did while testing the phone was taking photographs. The interface of the camera is user friendly and there are several settings that you can adjust like focus, white balance, flash, and lots more.

Sony Ericsson C 905 doesn’t have a lot of gimmicks that you’d find on phones like Samsung Pixon and LG Renoir but the camera experience is competent and the picture quality is quite good. Auto focus is quite fast and there is xenon flash for illumination during dim light conditions. There is built in accelerometer automatically changes the orientation when the phone is flipped sideways. But I was disappointed to see that this phone doesn’t have the capabilities of geo-tagging the photos through the GPS. This feature was available on earlier Cyber-shot devices. Web services like Flickr automatically uses the data for plotting your photos on a map.

Sony Ericsson Z530i is an updated version of Sony Ericsson Z520i. Both the cell phones have the same design along with loop aerial. The specifications too are quite similar on both the phones. But on the new version the manufacturer has given an expandable memory slot and new keypad. I wasn’t really convinced by the fish scale keypad design but the increased storage space is great news. Sony Ericsson Z530i is offered for free if you sign a service agreement from Vodafone, O2 and Carphone Warehouse.

On the front, the Sony Ericsson Z530i has monochrome orange screen which shows you the battery life, time and date, signal strength, incoming calls or messages, and the track time and title of the song. The display is surrounded by silver reflective border and it features the company logo and the phone model name.

Above the display, there is a 0.3 megapixel camera along with portrait mirror. The rest of front section is made up of rubber like cover which you can change or remote. This lets you customize the phone according to your preferences. On the left side, there is a big volume button and the infrared port is located on the right side. On the back, there is black battery cover and loudspeaker which can be removed too. On the top section’s back, there is loop aerial which is quite similar to Z520 handset but smoother and rounder. Charging port is on the phone’s bottom and it also doubles up as USB and headset port.

Once the Sony Ericsson Z530i is opened, you will see a screen having resolution of 128×160 pixels. It is surrounded by silver border that is quite similar to the external display and also shows the company name and model number. The two halves of the phone are connected through a hinge that is chunky and looks a bit out of place.

Underneath the hinge, there is 4 way navigation button having OK button in the middle. The navigation button is very easy to use and the OK key is too small for comfortable use. I did manage to select the right options using it but I also ended up tapping navigation button at same time, this annoyed me a bit.

On the either side of navigation button are soft buttons – top left key will give you access to the call information and top right gives you menu. Bottom left soft button takes you back by one page and the cancel key is located at bottom right.

Sony Ericsson W660i is a Walkman phone from this company and this handset focuses more on design as compared to other Walkman phones. This handset is available in two color options – Rose Red and Record Black. One thing worth noting here is that the actual color of the former is 2 shades lighter than what the pictures in the advertisements say.

Manufacturers are increasingly trying to put all possible features in every corner of the phone but Sony Ericsson stays aloof from this trend. You won’t find any groovy sliders or swiveling tricks here and this is the reason why I really liked the phone.

Sony Ericsson W660i numeric keypad is quite similar to Cyber-shot K800i and there are more grooves which make it easy to type on. The main controls on this phone are put in 3 circles just like the W610i. Each has a center button that is disjoined from disc. This might look congested to you initially but the buttons are quite thumb and user friendly. I had just one problem initially, I mistook the center stop/play button for joystick.

Sony Ericsson W660i is flashier as compared to the other phones in Walkman line up. I liked the pastel gold lines which run on the handset’s circumference but some of my friends didn’t like it. On the top half, there are some motifs that are etched on. There is no practical aspect and it does not interfere with the phone use but still it looks aesthetically appealing.

I got the red version of Sony Ericsson W660i in my labs for review and it is not as dark as what you see in the pictures. So don’t get alarmed if you don’t find dark red mahogany version of the Sony Ericsson W660i in the stores.

For the specs, the Sony Ericsson W660i has triband radio and comes along with 3G on 2100 MHz UMTS band. There is support for Bluetooth with A2DP. Apart from that, this phone FM radio along with RDS, external Memory Stick Micro card slot (you will need this as the phone has just 16MB internal memory) and there is also Sony Ericsson’s proprietary port for earphones and PC connections. The manufacturer gives a 512 MB memory card along with the phone.

Sony Ericsson W660i Walkman is a music centric phone and it supports plenty of file formats including AAC and MP3. Pressing the start/stop button on the left side of the device automatically launches the Walkman application.

Sony Ericsson Z600 is not really broad at 48 mm and not really long at 90 mm. But a weight of 110 grams certainly makes it a bit bulk. I was also concerned about the thickness of the phone at 28mm. Compared to this, the Samsung V200 and Panasonic GD88 (both having clamshell designs) are just 23 mm thick.

The exterior design of this phone is different from other folding type phones. On the top of the lid, there is a tiny LCD panel along with the camera lens. There is a lot of blank gap between the screen and camera. This chassis sports interchangeable covers. The device is well made and doesn’t have that cheap plasticky feeling. The weight is distributed evenly between the two halves and hence the bulky feeling ceases to exist when you open the phone.

Menu interface on the Sony Ericsson Z600 is simple and similar to that of T610. Many consider this UI to be the best one in the market right now and I think it is quite true. It gives a better view of all the submenus and functions as compared to Series 40 interface in Nokia phones. The commonly used functions appear in correct places in menu system when you need them. The experience is highly intuitive and hence it is not really surprising to see that a lot of cell phone makers are adapting to this style in their products.

The joystick on the T610 is replaced by a large and nice direction pad on this phone. Under the hood, there is a 740 mAh battery. The talk time and standby time of the phone is as good as its predecessor. The display too is quite similar to T610; the size is the same and you get resolution of 128×60 pixels with support for 65k colors. Quality of the display has been improved a bit here and the screen characters can be easily seen in direct sunlight too.

Display might be good here but it is still nowhere close to the super AMOLED displays found in high-end Samsung phones. The screen is still colorful and bright. The built in camera takes ordinary quality photos. The maximum resolution is 288×352 pixels and the images have a slight tinge on them.

Audiophiles will be pleased with what the Sony Ericsson Z600 has to offer. I liked the Music DJ feature which lets you create custom ringtones by mixing different pre-defined sounds that are included in package. The tempo and volume too can be changed. Another cool feature is sound recorder which I saw on T610 and T310 too but it wasn’t of any practical use. Through this, you can record loud ringtones. It is quite similar to the sound recording feature found on Siemens C55 which was brilliant, according to me.

A bit disappointment here is the lack of support for MP3 audio. The text messaging feature too has been improved and all SMS junkies will be proud about it. My only complaint is that the phone doesn’t give you confirmations for SMS receipt and this is probably due to the phone’s outdated firmware.

Sony Ericsson K660i is a mid range phone made for the youth. The handset is really simple looking with a candy bar design and QVGA 2 inch color display. Below the display and the navigational keys, there are circular tiny numeric keys. The design of the keypad isn’t the most attractive one I have ever seen to take but it is certainly useful.

Sony Ericsson K660i is 15mm thick and this thickness is a bit more than standard especially considering that it not a high end phone. On the phone’s left side, there is M2 memory slot through which you can easily swap memory and on the bottom, there is a single proprietary port for headphones and charging. The manufacturer has bundled a 256 MB memory card along with the device for loading songs and videos.

Sony Ericsson K660i comes with nice Web-based features. On the numeric pad’s right, there are 4 buttons for search entry, bookmarks, page zooming and shortcut for ‘Fun and Downloads’ site. You will appreciate the presence of these shortcuts while surfing. I browsed a little on this phone and the experience was quite good but for some pages I had to scroll a lot. There are zooming options available too.

Sony Ericsson K660i has a two megapixel camera on the back along with self-portrait mirror but it doesn’t have auto-focus or flash. I tested this camera on beautiful sunny day and could take some good photos. Color reproduction was true and bright and the focus was kept sharp thanks to quick processing. However, the absence of camera makes low light photos look miserable.

If you are getting the Sony Ericsson K660i for your kids, let me tell you that it has all the basics. During my tests, the reception was quite strong and the voice calls too sounded clear and loud. The battery life is somewhere between three to four days which is good for a handset having HSDPA chipset.

Sony Ericsson K660i comes with good media player and a Walkman-esque media browser. I don’t know if the manufacturer has put in the same hardware inside as in the Walkman branded phones but when I played music, the quality was fine with decent bass.

It is easy to access the menus and there is not much lag between the item selection and the time it takes to appear on the screen. However, Websites that were heavy on graphics had a lot of alg and I think the problem lies more with the slower processor than the network speed. The feature set on the Sony Ericsson K660i is typical of a basic phone apart from the presence of HSDPA.

Sony Ericsson W350i is an entry level Walkman phone having a retro look and candy bar form factor. The phone looks retro thanks to the flip design of the phone which is seldom seen these days. Inside, there is a glossy keypad which is easy to use and has a smooth and fairly large buttons. When you close the phone, the keypad is concealed and the exterior has dedicated buttons for the Walkman which makes the device look a lot like Sony MP3 player.

The flip panel design of the Sony Ericsson W350i is good but I thought it was a bit flimsy because it bent easily when I tried to twist it. Maybe it is because the of the slim profile of the phone; it is just 11 mm thick. Apart from this, the phone is reasonably rugged and will certainly survive accidental drops.

Sony Ericsson W350i is a nice phone to use too, it is lightweight, ergonomic and has an attractive finish. The screen is small and has a 176×220 pixels resolution. It is reasonably clear and bright. My only gripe here is that the Walkman buttons on the front let you skip, pause and play the music tracks but you will have to fold it down for navigating to other artists or albums. The music player only supports AAC and MP3 files. Unprotected or protected WMA files are not supported which might disappoint some but is definitely not a deal breaker.

For syncing content on the Sony Ericsson W350i, you can use the bundled media manager software and it can be also done through Windows Media Player. The included software has support for podcast subscriptions. Putting content is as easy as drag and drop.

Weak audio compatibly issues aside, the Sony Ericsson W350i has 1.3 megapixel camera without flash. Other features worth mentioning here are games, RSS and e-mail support, stereo Bluetooth, and FM radio. There is no 3.5 mm headphones jack which is a huge disappointment in a music phone like this.  Also remember that this is 2.5G and not 3G phone so the browsing speeds will be a bit slow. I would recommend you to install Opera Mini if you wish to browse on the Internet on the phone.

But most won’t complain about the slow network speeds because it is a music phone and wasn’t made for browsing in the first place.