New Walkman Phone: W980i

The Sony Ericsson W980i walks the walk, and talks the talk. Or should that be sings the song?

Like Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Sony Ericsson has been taking care of business with its just-announced X1 yuppie phone, and now, also like Bachman-Turner Overdrive, it's making music with its latest Walkman mobile, the W980i. It's been working overtime, plastering the front with flush touch-sensitive buttons and a colour screen for showing album art, meaning you don't have to open it to flick through your music collection. Nice.

The 8GB of space will fit about 2,000 tunes. It also lets you share tracks with pals; the in-built FM transmitter allows you to play music from your phone through anything with an FM receiver, be it your car stereo, or a friend's Hi-Fi. Or you can just listen through the speaker.

On previous models the headphone cable acted as the receiver, so this is the first you can all enjoy while "just a-lying in the sun" (BTO again). And using the PlayNow service, you can download tracks straight to the phone when it launches in July. Work out!