With the Z600 Sony Ericsson are breaking new ground, the clamshell design that is very familiar to Motorola makes its way into the range that brought us the feature packed if not a bit bulky P800 / P900 and the sleek phones of choice the T610, it was only a matter of time before Sony Ericsson made an attempt to combine what makes their range so successful and the clamshell design.

Aimed squarely at the Male market age 25 - 45 it is predicted that 95% of all sales will be made to this group, measuring 90 x 48 x 27 mm its dimensions are typical flip size in two respects but is a tad on the chubby side which is also reflected in its 110 grams weight. When shut the sleek lines of the Z600 lead along the phone to the blue backlit LCD screen, this shows everything from the time to caller name and other status information allowing you to screen calls before opening the active flip. The inside is an ergonomic success the navigation keys form a ring around the main ok button allowing a kind of joy pad control over the windows style control panel now familiar to any Sony Ericsson user there are minor tweaks to this but they only build on the excellent user interface. The four buttons that surround the control pad allow for selection from the menu and a return or back on level feature, this makes getting into deeper menus relatively quick which is just as well because there are a fair few of them.

The 16bit colour screen is capable of displaying 65,536 colours giving a vibrant display and a good reproduction of photos and images and when it comes to imaging the Z600 includes a 288 x 352 pixel resolution camera which we have to say is a bit below even the current miserly standards set by the competition, it can't be long before we see a 1.3 mega pixel camera on a phone.  But don't be put off by the camera and its unusual mini mirror for self portraits! the Z600 is feature packed, with support for concatenated SMS messages, MMS, e-mail (POP3, IMAP), WAP 2.0 and polyphonic ringtones the inbuilt memory of just 2mb a shame that the memory stick is not included here.

Equipped as a tri band phone the Z600 will work at GSM 900 1800/1900 allowing a full range of roaming in Europe and the USA, connectivity continues at an impressive level with Bluetooth class one, irDA, WAP 2.0, GPRS and cabled connections, battery life is a claimed 8 days and 6 hours of talk time, in real life terms with variable coverage this quickly reduces to about 5 days and 4 - 5 hours of talk time.

The Z600 is packed with the usual collection of games and includes V racer, there is the ability to personalise the phone from clip on coloured shells to wallpapers and of course endless ringtones which can even be generated on the phone if you are so inclined.

Which exact market segment Sony Ericsson have aimed this phone at is a bit of a mystery it has all the business tools, we managed to sync outlook and download contacts, send business cards and pick up email, but it also has a range of lifestyle functions maybe this is the key to getting the whole 25 - 45 age range.

Overall we can't help but be impressed by its feature rich user experience, simple yet comprehensive user interface and 2004 styling, yes its a bit chubby and perhaps a tad heavy compared to Motorola but then with the amount packed into the Z600's frame we can excuse it.

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