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Right at the start of this year I reviewed Sony Ericsson's Cyber-shot C905. I was enamoured of its features, but not so amazed by its design. Well, just a few months on, Sony Ericsson has given the phone a facelift, and the developments are enough for me to want to give it a second glance.

Rather uninspiringly titled the C905 Plus, this revisited version of the handset retains the original phone's physical design but adds in new software features. If you already have a C905 there's absolutely no point in thinking about upgrading the phone itself as you can download new firmware. See here for how.

If you do want to buy the C905 Plus then you can get it SIM-free, and 3 is offering it for free on some tariffs. Plus, of course, with that deal you can take advantage of 3's new free Skype to Skype calls.

For the full take on the original handset design go back and read my earlier C905 review, but it is basically the chunkiness that got me down last time and does so again here. The handset measures 104mm tall, 49mm wide and 18mm thick, and weighs 136g. It is a slider, and with the slide extended I measured it at about 135mm. It is a little large for the hand, but perhaps more importantly, quite a size for the pocket.

My other bugbears remain too, and I'll get these chestnuts out of the way early. The awful, large, plastic mains power connector sits on the left side of the casing, sharing a slot with the even more awful, large, plastic headset connector.

The phone charger has a through port for the headset connector. Now, when the handset is charging things don't look too bad. Connect the headphones and the overall look of the phone is degraded somewhat. Use the headphones when you are out and about and you'll find the whole ensemble prone to pocket-snagging. There is another problem, too, in that the headset is one piece. If you want to use a favourite 3.5mm headset you'll need an adaptor.

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