Product Reviews

For its exclusive handset, Vodafone has chosen Sony Ericsson's V800, a clamshell phone that's similar in appearance to LG's U8150 (left). However, this is by far the better phone.

First, the camera, which swivels in the phone's hinge, is a vast improvement. Its 1.3-megapixel CCD captures images up to a resolution of 1,024x768. We also noticed the difference when making video calls, as video was a lot smoother and less prone to artefacts.

The V800 has a 176x220-pixel colour screen similar to that of the LG. It's easy on the eye and produces an excellent image. A second colour screen displays incoming call information when the clamshell is shut.

The phone's interface is easy to use thanks to large, bright icons and a four-way direction pad. It also has short-cut buttons for common features including video calls, the camera and multimedia functions. For some reason there are no call and hang-up keys for making voice calls, so you have to use the two context-sensitive buttons instead.

As well as making phone calls on the V800, you can download email and browse the web. Vodafone has branded this phone under

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its Live! banner, which provides access to all the multimedia on its portal, including football highlights. Each channel is a subscription service, and you get only match highlights rather than clips of each goal.

One of the most useful services is Vodafone's Find Now, which lets you find points of interest including restaurants, clubs and cash points. The results appear on a map of the area.

The phone needs a lot of memory for all these videos and maps, but the 7MB of onboard memory isn't much. Fortunately, you can upgrade the V800's storage capacity through the Memory Stick Duo slot (32MB provided).

While the Live! service offers a little more than Orange's portal, it's still quite limited. Again, data is the main reason to opt for 3G. The phone comes with a USB cable and software to use the phone as a modem and synchronise data with Outlook.

If you don't want to use the cable, or you have a PDA, you can use Bluetooth to do the same job wirelessly. We soon had our PDA connected to the web and downloading files at around 167Kbit/s. Unfortunately no free data downloads are included in the monthly contract price - and, at £2.35 per megabyte, it's expensive to use.

From a phone perspective, the V800 is one of the best 3G phones we've seen, and the Vodafone Live! service is useful. However, the high price of data means that, for now, you're probably better off using a GSM phone and 3G data connect card or signing up with Orange as you get 50MB of free downloads per month.

Sony Ericsson user guides, FAQs and downloads at Know Your Mobile