Sony Ericsson W902

It’s hard to beat the music capabilities of Sony Ericsson’s Walkman mobiles: they have plenty of neat features to make sure the music sounds good.

While the W902 may not have the large, slick touch-sensitive screen of the Apple iPhone (it is only 2.2in across), it makes up for it in other ways: the camera is an exceptional five-megapixel model, and what’s more, it has autofocus, a bright flash and video recording capabilities to boot. The camera was easy to use and delivered strong results which can be quickly uploaded to a blog.

There’s an 8GB memory card bundled with the phone for music storage. It doesn’t match the highest-capacity phones on the market such as the Nokia N96 or Samsung i8510, but it’s acceptable.

However, this music phone has the same major flaw as many Walkman handsets: there’s no 3.5mm headphone jack on what is otherwise a handsome and technically impressive phone. Instead, there’s an adaptor so you can attach your own cans to the socket on the device. The supplied headphones are among the best we’ve seen on a mobile but they’re still worth upgrading.

Sound quality was exceptionally strong and the dedicated play and pause buttons start and operate the Walkman playback functions easily. Like the iPhone the W902 can sense when it’s being moved or shaken – shake the handset and you can change track or volume levels, which is a nice fun feature.

Like most high-end Sony Ericsson handsets it has a good FM radio built-in, and like other phones from the company, the excellent song-identifier program, Track ID, is there to help you name that tune when you hear music you don’t recognise at a party or a pub. And then there’s SensMe, a program that analyses tracks according to their rhythm and pace, allowing you to pick songs depending on whether it’s happy, sad, fast or slow music you’re after. It’s a bit quirky, but it’s quite fun.

The Sony Ericsson W902 is a slim, stylish and deeply satisfying-to-use music phone, let down only by a smallish screen and that missing headphone jack. But the plus points outweigh these considerations, making it a good choice.