It seems blindingly logical to start to combine devices before we al start to evolve extra bodily features to support the increasing number of gadgets we rely on and with the explosion of MP3 players and mobiles the two make good bedfellows. Arguably Sony are well placed with a foot in both camps, the success of the Network Walkman range and the Sony Smartphones gives the electronics giant the know how so exactly what have they done in the W800?

For a start this is no poor mobile phone, the tri band GSM phone has a colour 176x220 screen and an internal 32mb to run applications. It has all the expected functions like Bluetooth and a whopping 2 mega pixel camera making it a leader in the multimedia stakes. Bundled with applications to enable SMS, MMS and Video capture plus WAP and web browsing the W800 is all we'd expect of a high end Sony Ericsson smartphone.

For a while now the Sony range has come with a memory stick Duo slot, enabling their phones to cope with more memory intensive functions and the big change is the focus of this W800 on MP3 replay.

The 100 x 46 x 20.5 mm W800 leaves no doubt that it as much an MP3 player as phone with the Network Walkman logo emblazoned along its side and the fact it ships with "Disk to Phone"MP3 ripping software to create files from your CD collection in case you don't already have a programme.

But is the MP3 and ACC replay capability compromised by being inside a mobile phone, firstly the memory stick Duo Slot will handle up to 1gb cards so that makes it an equal to the larger Ipod shuffle and with a 30 hours battery life when in MP3 only mode the phone wins again. When using the phone and MP3 functions he typical battery performance drops to 15 hours but this is till better than many current MP3 devices.

The W800 ships with a set of reasonable quality headphones which make for a real useable MP3 player and should a phone call come in while you are enjoying listening to a few tracks a single push of the "direct music button" will pause replay and take the call.

The 100 gram Sony Ericsson W800 is the first in a cyclical process of gadget evolution to hit the MP3 / Smartphone market, it's not a quantum leap forward more clever bundling of a 512mb memory card and CD ripping / storage management application. But with a good does of Sony style and what on the face of it is an attractive and feature packed phone this looks like one for the Lordpercy.com Christmas list when it hits the UK in the Autumn.

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