Smartphone is a word bandied around by mobile phone vendors to describe phones that do more than just make voice calls, access the web and send the odd text message or MMS.

It's fair to say that some smartphones are smarter than others and the Sony Ericsson P800 is worthy of a Mensa membership.

It runs the Symbian operating system, which is one of the reasons it is more capable than most. Symbian was born from the operating system that ran all of Psion's popular, but long defunct, handheld computers.

Since those days, it's seen a major revamp, as well as the name change, specifically to take advantage of smartphones and their portability.

Fortunately, all of these new features don't take away from the P800 being a fully-featured mobile phone. It's still as packed full of phone tools as previous Sony Ericsson offerings. The P800 is tri-band, for making phone calls in America as well as Europe, and supports GPRS for fast data transfer.

The built-in camera gives it the option of sending MMS messages, which it can also receive. We found that the camera worked quite well, although the images were a little grainy and needed a lot of light to get the best results.

As with the latest breed of phones, the P800 has polyphonic ringtones for irritating people around you and Java support for new applications and games. Connectivity is provided by built-in Bluetooth, although you will need a suitable Bluetooth card for your PC if you want to communicate wirelessly with the phone.

If you are stuck in the wired world, you will be pleased to see the docking cradle inside the box which connects to your PC and is used to synchronise data.

Just like buying a new handheld computer, the P800 comes loaded with a standard set of applications. There is a Contact book and Calender for organising your life, and a Jotter for taking notes using the on-screen keyboard or handwriting recognition.

If you need to access work on your PC, the document viewer gives you access to Microsoft Office documents. There's also a selection of games and an audio player for playing MP3s on the move.

All data and applications on the P800 have to be squeezed into the 12Mb of memory. If you find this isn't enough, there's a Memory Stick Duo slot, which is the new smaller Memory Stick designed for portable computing.

Accessing all of the phone's features is through a touch-sensitive screen with a resolution of 208 x 320. A standard phone-number pad flips down over the screen so that the P800 can be used like a standard phone.

If you don't want to be tied to the past, this number pad can be removed, leaving just the large screen to work on.

The need for the P800 to function as a proper handheld computer and accommodate that large screen means it is bigger than your average phone and heavier too. But it is less weighty than carrying both a handheld computer and a phone.

There is an awful lot on offer in one small package here and while much of it works well, there is some room for improvement.

You need to really want this device to be prepared to stump up the cash, but the P800 is definitely the most capable smartphone that we have seen so far.

With contract: £199
Without contract: £499

Contact: Sony Ericsson 08705 237237
www.sonyericsson.com/uk