When launched earlier this year, the S500i was touted by Sony Ericsson as a handset that had been ‘inspired by nature’, but despite its organic beginnings, how does it really compare to best sellers like the W880i and K800i?

The music player, often Sony Ericsson’s best feature, is accessible from the main menu and is near identical to other Sony Ericsson music players. After uploading tracks they can be arranged by artist and track, and users can also create their own playlists. The Memory Card Micro slot allows you to add a 1GB card, which will hold nearly 250 tracks. No card is included with the phone though, and with only 12MB of on-board memory, you'll need to invest in a card to use the music player.

One feature in the Music Player’s favour is the PlayNow function, which lets users connect to the Internet and download tracks and ringtones directly to their mobile phone; accessibility does depend on location and your network operator but when it works it works well, downloads are relatively cheap and the cost is added to your phone bill or deducted from your top-up pot… easy peasy.

Unfortunately Sony Ericsson decided not to include the clever Track ID feature on the S500i, a real shame as this could have catapulted the handset into the realms of being a seriously good music phone. Sound quality through the supplied Sony Ericsson headphones is clear, the handy volume controls located on the left-hand side of the headset makes adapting the sound to suit you very easy. The sound quality through the speaker is as ever, very tinny, but unless you plan of pissing off your fellow tube/train/bus passengers then keep that particular feature turned off.

At 2 megapixels the picture quality the S500i delivers is very average, but the main problem with this camera is the viewfinder. When in camera mode the screen is reduced by nearly a third, with controls featured on the top of the screen and commands on the bottom. I would have been far better to have a full-screen viewfinder, giving the user a clearer shot and inevitably, better pictures.

Camera features are pretty much as standard, you can blog pictures direct from your handset and edit them in PhotoDJ. PhotoDJ allows you to change auto levels, brightness, red eye removal, add effects and items; the effects allow you to cartoon or frost your images and you can add clipart, text and more in Add Item, which is fun and easy to use. However, the lack of a clear viewfinder and a flash means you can’t help but feel short-changed by the photography experience of the S500i.

Luckily the S500i’s features are not all mediocre, and the phone's Organizer in particular has a few nice extra flourishes. In addition to the usual Calendar, Tasks and Notes features, there is a Timer, Stopwatch and some nifty web-based applications. The first is Accuweather, an application that connects to the Internet to give you weather reports from all over the world. The second application is Audible, which lets you download audio books in an array of European languages, this does cost but is a fantastic forward-thinking feature.

Something new for Sony Ericsson is the dedicated Alarms button in the Main Menu. Using this you can set up to five alarms, deciding the Alarm Sound, (any music/ringtone saved on the S500i) whether the Alarm is recurrent and on which particular days it is to recur. It's a much more sophisticated Alarms function than we have been used to in the past and very handy.

The Entertainment section of the S500i is as ever an integral part of Sony Ericsson's mobile phone features. The Games on the phone are of a high quality, in particular the ‘Brain Juice’ game that is pretty much a watered down version of the ‘Brain Trainer’ from Nintendo DS, an addictive game that will drain your battery as you train your brain! From the Entertainment section of your phone you can also Record Sound, access the PhotoDJ and VideoDJ; with the VideoDJ function you can Trim and Add Text to videos.

The funkiest function is the Bluetooth Remote Control, a handy feature that allows you to flip through a presentation, a media player or access your desktop on another device, all using Bluetooth.

The most distinctive feature of the S500i is the mood lighting, more suited to a penthouse apartment than a mobile phone but a nice feature all the same. When a call or text is received the front and sides of the handset light up in a wave motion that flows down the front of the phone, lighting up the screen, navigation button, the side of the phone and the keypad - very swish. You can change the colour scheme of these sidelights easily via the Settings section, and the default colour can be changed to Apricot, Fire, Orange, Love or even Disco. Themes also use lighting effects to create an individual look; you can set the Day and Night theme that brightens in the morning and dims in the evening, or select Everchanging, a theme that changes with the seasons.

This sophisticated mood lighting helps underline just who this handset is aimed at; it’s a fun, entertainment and style-driven mobile phone designed with the youth/teenage/young professional market in mind. Overall, the S500i is a neat, easy-to-use handset. It’s not going to set the mobile phone industry on fire but it will no doubt be found in numerous stockings this Christmas.