A long time ago now, I decided that I'd had enough! No more hauling myself to the shops in the rain for top-ups when I ran out of credit, or counting every minute spent on the phone as if it were gold dust being frittered away. No more found or inherited phones. It was to be the 'limitless freedom' of a contract for me.

So, being with Orange, and having the commercial nouse of a hedgehog, I popped off down to the local Orange shop, and signed up for whatever deal the salesman decided to feed me. I presume I bought him a drink or two that evening.

The phone that I selected, on the purest of whims, was the Sony Ericsson W810i. Mine was white, with a garish orange trim. To this day, I still have this phone in a drawer in my house. I've had several different handsets since, from smartphones to stylish little numbers, and it is extremely telling, that this phone, and not any of the others, has remained with me as my backup unit.

Feature wise, it has a number keypad along with 4 or 5 miscellaneous additional buttons, a low resolution colour screen, a light on the back that can be used as a torch, the capacity to store a gig or so of music on an internal memory card, a camera, a loudspeaker mode, a headphone socket, and a charging port. It can connect to the internet and browse web pages in a rudimentary kind of way, but has no GPS, and no capability for using any kind of sat nav.

Compared to modern smart-phones, the battery lasts for eternity. You can charge it up, use it, head off to a weekend long festival, and give your friends a call on the way home.

It's audio capabilities are good, and in my opinion, have only recently just been matched by those provided within android operating systems. However it does have one fairly significant failing in this department, which was Sony's decision to use a proprietary headphone socket. This socket does however allow you , by means of a provided extension featuring a built in microphone, to use any headphones that you might have laying around for both listening to music, and making handsfree calls.
The camera takes capable photo's, although viewing them on the slightly pixelated screen is a waste of time. You will be surprised by their quality once loaded onto a computer, although it goes without saying that they won't match the levels attainable with a modern day apple or android powerhouse!

As a side effect of its audio credentials, call quality is also excellent, and provided that you have a reasonable signal, can be reliably used as a house phone substitute - if like me you consider yourself too "modern and untamed" to be tied to a landline (although have about a billion other 12 month utility contracts!).

The phone is also reliable. I acquired mine back in 2004/5, and it is still running well, although some of the cables for the proprietary devices that plug into it have ceased to function, and might now be tricky to replace.

To sum up; if you are looking for a great back-up phone, are on a budget, or have been the victim of a theft and need a cheap temporary replacement, this would be a great choice. When I looked, it was available on ebay, with an accessory package for around £25 pounds. At that price I'd much rather own this, than a budget supermarket model, and I recommend it highly.

A final warning however, do not be "upsold" to the W880i, which is a more stylish variant of the same product featuring additional utilities. My review on that will be forthcoming soon!