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There is only 1.5GB of built in memory, but a microSD card slot sits on the right edge and you can get to it when you slide the keyboard down.

There is a front camera for two-way video calling, and the main camera shoots to 8-megapixels. It has an LED flash and self-portrait mirror. These and the lens are protected under the slide. There are a few tweakables including a good macro mode you can see in use on the pink flowers, and a continuous shot mode, but the extras aren't as plentiful as on many other phones. Smile and blink detection, for example, are missing.

Indoors photos were a bit washed out. The coloured dish photographed under normal household lights shows this. The chair, too, lacks the kind of definition and colour purity I'd expect from an 8-megapixel camera. If you are into digital zoom, then simply running a finger round the Transparent Touchpad does the trick.

Sadly I lacked the time to perform my usual battery rundown test, but I can say that battery life was fairly good. I was still using the phone after two days on a single charge, though you'll need to factor in daily charging if you are a heavy data user or like your Wi-Fi or music a lot.

Additional applications not already mentioned include mobile email, Google Maps, some accelerometer-friendly games, alarms, calendar, memo maker, stopwatch, voice recorder, calculator, world clock, and unit converter. Bluetooth is present too.

Verdict

It is a shame about the lack of GPS, the camera is not as good as other 8-megapixel offerings and the 3D cube part of the user interface is a waste of time. The phone is a magnet for greasy fingermarks, but the gesture control and Transparent Touchpad are nice ideas that work well.

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