ESIGN+LOOKS
the k800 is a candy-bar phone (ie it has a screen and keypad below that screen making it look supposedly like a candy bar) with dimensions of 10.5 x 4.7 x 2.2 cm. the phone is slightly longer than the k750 and slightly thicker than its predecessor too. the thickness however is not uniform - near the camera, it becomes a bit thicker and add to it the camera lens cover and you end up with perhaps 1cm thicker at the top. when you lay it down on a table however, it is nice to see the phone slanted so at an angle (due to the increased thickness at the top) but sometimes it looks a little unwieldly.

the phone is a fairly standard SE candybar phone lookswise but the one thing to notice is that the numeric keypad is failry small and is dwarfed by the elongated screen (ie it looks out of proportion). the wieght is 115g which is on the heavy side

there are features galore in this phone:

the camera is capable of taking 3.2mp pictures which is quite amazing. given the cyber shot brand, you would expect it to take standalone camera picture quality. and you wouldnt be disappointed. to be fair, any phone camera will not come close to a standalone camera..even a 3.2mp camera phone will not do better than say a nikon or canon 2mp digital camera. however, in relation to other camera phones, the k800 is unrivalled save sor the n70 which i hear as similar if not better quality.

another thing that sets the k800 from most other camera phones is the use of the xenon flash. unlike most phones that utilise a really bright LED to replace a flash, the k800 uses the flash commonly seen in cameras. therefore you get excellent quality in dark environments. the LEDs in most phones aren't really flashes and do not penetrate beyond half a metre at most. the k800 is capable of taking good pictures of a subject 2 metres away in complete darkness!

the video camera on the other hand is not quite as good as i would have liked. as with the k750, the video quality is not in keeping with the camera quality and even at the very best quality recording, the video is blocky and streaky. i was quite unhappy with this as i had expected sony ericsson to pay more attention to video quality. by comparison, the samusng d900 has an infinitely better video recording that is very clear.

BLUETOOTH and CONNECTIVITY
bluetooth is easily accessed through the phone settings menu and nothing has really changed from the k750. it is easy to use and also rather fast at transferring files. if you have a bluetooth dongle on your computer, you can use the k800 has a remote which is useful when doing powerpoint presentations. you are given a cd with the sony ericsson computer suite and it takes a while to install all the drivers for your phone. after that however, the suite is user friendly and quite exhaustive in what you can do. you can sync it with your computer ie outlook contacts, email, even time and date and load phone contacts, videos, songs, etc.

the headphone socket is a proprietary one meaning that you cannot plug in your sennheiser or even sony headphones witha standard jack. you are supplied with headphones/handsfree kit in anycase but these arent very good quality. you can buy an adapter nowadays if you search around.

GAMES+APPLICATIONS
bundled with the phone are 3 games...fotoquest fishing (cant remember the exact name), minigolf castle 3D and a tennis game. minigolf castle 3d is played using the k800 on its side therefore giving a wide screen rather than a long screen. you can hook up for multiplayer games through bluetooth for the golf and tennis...but i dont see the appeal. there are 4 more games you can download from the sony ericsson site including quadrapop, a puzzle game similar to tetris that is fun!

OVERALL
i've just realised that this review is getting long. so i'll be quick about the rest.
k800 has onboard memory of 72 mb which is large but then again quite small if you wish to use the phone as a camera or an mp3 player. for these purposes you can expand the memory using sony's new M2 memory cards which as usual with sony's proprietary products is more expensive without offering much advantage. you are looking at around 40 pounds for a 512mb card although hopefully the prices will be lowered.

i would not recommend replacing your camera or your mp3 player with this phone despite its features. standalone proiducts will always do better and offer more features. also the memory card for the k800 (M2) is expensive and not switchable with the memory stick pro duo or whatever sony has made in the past.

ps k800 is quite power hungry and if you use the features you will probably need to charge every night or so...the battery life on normal usage i would say is about a day and a half to two days so i plug in my charger every night. as reported by other users, it does tend to crash once in a while. it also has a slight lag in the software.