Sony Ericsson K850i

Having hit upon a magical formula with the K800i, one might have assumed that the boffins at Sony Ericsson would develop future models along conventional lines by making them flatter, sleeker, incorporating wi-fi, and so on. Instead, they made the buttons funny.

And no phone has funnier buttons than the K850i. A cursory glance at the image accompanying this review will reveal not only that they're the same unprepossessing little nubbins the K810i featured, but that there's no D-Pad. Except there is. See that blue plastic rectangle encircling the '2' and '5' keys? That's it.

To be fair, the brace-like D-Pad works perfectly well. The only parts of such an input you need are the four vertical and horizontal extremes, after all, and so Sony Ericsson has decided with some ingenuity to pare the input down to just those, and the points of contact with your thumb are far enough away from the widely-spaced number keys to ensure that you don't accidentally touch them while you're using it.

However, we can't help but feel that it's an ingenious solution to a problem that never existed, and, even though the new D-Pad is fine, it's not a patch on the K800i's thumbstick, although it will undoubtedly prove more robust.

The K850i's oddness doesn't end there, and in fact it balloons to outright bizarreness when you get to the tentative touchscreen interface. Along the bottom of the screen there are three touch-sensitive regions, indicated by white strokes. They occupy the first centimetre or so of the display, after which it's back to ordinary glass. Like the D-Pad, these little islets of high-technology serve no purpose whatsoever.

In fact, they frequently decide not to register contact for a few moments at a time, which is an oddly disempowering sensation when there isn't a physical button to lividly mash.

And, on top of all that, the K850i looks a bit strange, with its silver wraparound bumper and blue go-faster stripe. It terms of styling, it doesn't seem much like a modern phone – at least not outside its glossy Sony Ericsson interface, which is sharper than ever. At 48x102x17mm and 118g, it's a hefty little toy brick.

However, none of this is criticism as such, and we're rather fond of the K850i's peculiar ways, particularly since they're underpinned by some outstanding features.

Most notable is the massive five-megapixel camera. In terms of photography, the K850i is peerless, with a super-bright Xenon flash and a host of features sufficiently extensive to make any digital camera you bought before 2006 more or less redundant.

It's clear Sony Ericsson takes photography very seriously. When you activate the camera mode the row of buttons containing '3', '6', '9', and '#' light up along with symbols for timer, flash, shoot mode, and scenes. You can gain access to other options with the touchscreen and D-Pad, and there's a sense when you're taking pictures that your phone really has become a camera.

Even here, though, there are peculiarities. There's a rather smart mechanical lens cover that flicks open when you press a small button on the side of the phone, but in front of that there's a piece of glass that never comes off. Apparently, it prevents the lens from becoming scratched should the automatic cover accidentally open, but this is a bit like making somebody wear clothes indoors in case the house blows away. And if the fixed cover gets scratched, you're boned.

Given the odd D-Pad, we were sceptical about whether the K850i would work as a gaming device, but while we haven't had cause to abandon our scepticism entirely, the selection of embedded games did much to put our minds at rest.

For a start, there's an unusually generous range, albeit mostly of demos rather than full games. You get a few minutes of high profile titles like Tetris, Worms 2007, Who Wants to be a Millionaire 2nd edition, Monopoly Here & Now, and Pac-Man, and then the option to either buy or rent the full versions.

There's also the same so-so tennis sim that comes with all modern Sony Ericsson handsets and, more intriguingly, a version of Marble Madness, in which you steer the marble through a series of 3D environments by tilting your handset. It's a neat gimmick, and amazing the first time you get to do it, but anybody with experience of tilt games on mobile is aware of their one big problem: you have to bend and twist around your phone like a craven animal just to keep the screen in eyeshot.

Still, in spite of the odd D-Pad, the K850i didn't give us any reason to question its gaming credentials, and the range of titles on offer demonstrates that Sony Ericsson is confident that it can function well as a gaming device. It's always going to be a camera first, but given the quality of that feature it's no criticism to say it's a games console second. And then a phone, obviously.