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This new budget-priced clamshell from Sony Ericsson is tri-band GSM with EDGE and GPRS. It is a small and neat phone weighing just 96g and sized at 95mm tall, 49mm wide and 16.5mm thick. Open the clam and it jumps to about 175mm.

It takes its lead from Nokia's Prism handset design. If you aren't familiar with that, take a quick squint at my reviews of the 7500 Prism and 7900 Prism. Both those phones, and this one, think diamonds are a mobile phone user's best friend and incorporate a diamond shaped design into the front fascia.

I can't say it appeals at all. My review sample was coloured ‘diamond black', though apparently ‘dusted rose' is also available. Apart from the silver Sony Ericsson branding, my review phone was entirely black on the outside. That's not the problem.

What I don't like is the diamond cut front fascia. It just doesn't look that classy to me, nor does it possess what Sony Ericsson's press release calls ‘striking good looks'. It just looks odd. The slight bevelling on the fascia is unusual but nothing to write home about. Still, if the looks float your boat, who am I to argue?

The front fascia houses the camera which I'll get to later, loudspeaker, and hidden away until it is called upon, an OLED screen. This is a letterbox style strip just 36 pixels high and 128 pixels wide. It sits about three quarters of the way down the front fascia and displays various bits of information such as showing track information for tunes as they play, or letting you know who is texting you.

Open the clam up and the inside is almost as uniformly mono-coloured as the outside. My black sample just had a few gold highlights. The navigation pad has a golden central select button and its outer frame is gold too, while there are gold highlights on the 0, 8, 5 and 2 keys as well as on the one vertically above the 2, which is the main power switch.

That's right, You can't turn this phone on and off without opening the clam.

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