The Sony Ericsson M600i is a 3G phone with tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900), expandable memory (using Memory Stick Micro cards), plus a full range of applications including the Opera web browser, an email client, and multimedia player. Plus the M600i comes with a jog-dial control in addition to the touchscreen, as does the larger P900 series.

It supports a variety of push email applications too, such as BlackBerry and Visto, and it comes with a range of different VPN clients in order to connect to a corporate network. It can also edit Microsoft Office document. These features give us a clue as to the most likely market for the M600i – business users. One key feature that the M600i doesn’t have is a digital camera – it can’t take stills photos, video clips, nor can it be used for video calling.

This is great for many corporate customers, but it means that the M600i isn’t as consumer orientated as some might have hoped for. Still, it looks like a very promising phone for business use. There’s no WiFi either, but we firmly believe that 3G is more useful that WiFi in this type of device.

When it comes to battery life though, it’s clear that the 3G support drains the life out of the battery pretty quickly. On UMTS (3G) talktime is only 2.5 hours, with 10 days standby. Turn off 3G and use plain old GSM and it’s a whopping 7.5 hours talktime and 14 days standby.

Finally, the M600i looks the part too. It’s a classic Sony Ericsson design, harking back to the T630i (which we regard as one of the most attractive phones ever made). It’s relatively slim too, at 15mm thick.

The Sony Ericsson M600i should start to ship worldwide in Q2 2006, with different keyboard arrangements for those countries that do not use a “QWERTY” layout. There’s also an M600c for mainland China.

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Sony Ericsson M600i with 3G Phone Review