Having looked last week at Sony Ericsson's W960i and come away feeling somewhat nonplussed, I thought I ought to give that phone's near sibling, the W910i, a turn in the limelight.

The bottom line differences between the two mobiles are easily summarised. The quad-band W910i is an HSDPA handset which is nice for those that want the faster data download this offers - obviously fast music download springs to mind. But its camera is a fairly mediocre 2-megapixel affair. It is a smallish slider, and it doesn't go a bundle on built-in memory, with only 35MB on board.

The W960i, you will recall, offers 8GB of built-in memory and a 3.2-megapixel camera, giving it one up on the W910i. In addition it is a fully-fledged smartphone. But its operating system setup left me feeling rather frustrated as it seemed to want to stop me getting at what the phone had to offer.
Will the W910i, with lesser specs in some important respects, actually prove to be a better mobile?
My review sample came from Vodafone and they chose to send me the ‘Havana gold' version. I can't say I liked the colour. Fancy it up in smart sounding language all you want, Sony Ericsson, but this is a dark brown mobile with light brown trim around the edges, and I don't like brown. I suspect I would have preferred the Black and silver version Vodafone is also selling.

The W910i is a slider, and the slider action is smooth and satisfying. It isn't too chunky for the hand or pocket being 99mm tall when closed, 50mm wide and 12mm thick. With the slider opened it grows to an acceptable 130mm. Weight-wise it is a dream at just 86g.