Sony Ericsson Z520i

The Sony Ericsson Z520i is an admirable entry into the mid-range mobile phone market and contains a solid list of features for a reasonable price.

If you're an iPod freak, you'll fall in love with the Z520i as soon as you remove it from the packaging. Finished in gloss white with silver trim, the flip Z520i is a joy to cup in your hand and looks extremely sleek and stylish.

The Z520i has an excellent external screen, which is quite small in size but still big enough to display important information including Time and Date, Battery Life, Reception Levels, Profiles and Background Wallpaper.

Flipped open, the Z520i continues the all white theme, and the blue backlit keypad is an extremely nice touch. A flashy feature is the light effects, which notify you of incoming calls, missed calls and new messages. For example, when the phone rings, and you flip the Z520i open to answer the incoming call, the area surrounding the keypad lights up and flashes to the music of your ring tone. These lights can be adjusted to settings such as Waterfall, Heartbeat and Fountain.

The Z520i internal screen doesn't break any new ground and with just 65k colours, it is already quite outdated. The screen flickers on and off for about a second when you flip open the phone, but this is more of an annoyance than a significant problem. The keypad is easy to use and is probably the best feature of this handset. The keys are easy to press and the controls are very simple to use, with only a 4-way navigational pad, Two selection buttons and Back and Clear keys to deal with. The buttons feel sturdy yet slightly padded, which makes for a comfortable user experience - overall, one of the better control systems on the mobile phones we've seen to date.

If you've used a Sony Ericsson handset before you'll know that the user interface is one of the best around. Once again making use of a simple 3 x 3 grid system complete with animated menu icons, the Z520i can be mastered by even the most technologically challenged people out there.

The most disappointing feature of the Z520i is the camera. Although it is a fine effort for a VGA number, most handsets are shipping with 1.3 or even 2 megapixel cameras as a minimum so it's a bit dissapointingly with Sony Ericsson's decision not to upgrade the digital camera on the Z520i. In saying this, the camera does have quite a number of options and settings including Panorama, Frames and Burst shooting, Night Mode, Black and White and Sepia effects, and a Self-Timer.

Other notable features of the Z520i include Java support, WAP 2.0, Speakerphone, Bluetooth and Infrared connectivity, SMS, MMS and email messaging (with T9 predictive text input) and support for MP3 and AAC files. Unfortunately there is only 16MB of internal memory, so you won't be able to store much of your music collection, but this shouldn't be too much of concern to most - the MP3 player functionality is poor anyhow, as this isn't really designed as a multimedia handset. However the Z520i does come with in-phone software for editing videos, music and photos, even if it's lacking in options. The glaring omission from this handset is the lack of a USB port on the phone for the transfer of files. Only Bluetooth and Infrared are available for data transfer. Conveniently, Sony Ericsson has bundled a Bluetooth headset with the Z520i, which further enhances its value for money.