Sony Ericsson could have been accused of losing their way in recent months, the reliance on a constant stream of Cybershot and Walkman phones has overwhelmed the average customer with too much choice and too little distinction.

Whilst it is to early to tell whether giving handsets names which double as moody videogame characters (Aino, Yari and Satio) will be a success, the last of the old guard - the Sony Ericsson W995 - is certainly an ambassador of change.

The first to demonstrate Sony Ericsson's new direction of merging feature sets rather than compartmentalising them, the W995 sits squarely between being a fully kitted-out media device and a high-end camera phone.

So, is the Sony Erisson W995 a jack of all trades or a master of none? Let's find out...

Design and specs:

On the surface, the W995 certainly looks like a typical Walkman device from Sony Ericsson, albeit a little more bulky in the form factor than usual. A busy slider handset design, covered with an array of buttons, bells and whistles prove a little daunting to the uninitiated, but the phone feels sturdy, strong and confident in its role as multimedia hub.

With the slide closed, the W995 errs just on the right side of chunky, with a weight of 113g and dimensions of 97mm x 49mm x 15mm thick. The front of the device is dominated by a 2.6" display, but the keys make a concerted bid for attention.

The familiar Sony Ericsson layout of a call and end button on the outside edges, separated by 'clear' and menu selection keys as well as a d-pad with a Play/Pause button in the centre. Dedicated music buttons for the Walkman are along the right side of the W995, adjacent to the 'zoom' and camera shutter key. Sliding out the keypad presents a simple and organised 4 row alphanumeric effort, making text messages a breeze as each button proves both spongy and responsive.

Having been used to touchscreens dominating the market, the plethora of keys, sliders and buttons on the W995 provide a surety that comes as a welcome taste of nostalgia.

As a Walkman device, the metal kick-stand for viewing media and the 3.5mm audio jack on the top (a Sony Ericsson first!) are both solid and expected features. An 8.1 megapixel camera, however, is a very welcome addition and a focal point (sorry...) that deserves closer attention...but later.

The traditional two pin S-E port is still present and correct for charging (as well as for old-school proprietary headphones, which they still saw fit to include), and the lion's share of internal memory is provided by microSD, but they were at least kind enough to bulk up the W995's brain power with an 8GB card.

The music portion of the device is where Walkman phones earn their bread and butter, the W995 is no exception. Powered by Walkman 4.0 tech, the track management is top notch, with the usual array of artist and album selection complimented by TrackID, an FM radio, a bunch of audio-visual mixing aids and gesture-driven music selection.

Media Go software (included) enables music and movies to be ported from a computer to the W995 in a far more painless manner than most mobiles, and the PlayNow Arena is an online store offering direct downloads (of an admittedly lean selection of movies) to your handset in the correct aspect ratio and ready to go.

A swift shake of the W995 shifts tracks whilst a waggle adjusts volume, a function that was impossible to use without removing the device from my pocket...purely an attempt to avoid explaining what I was doing with my hands!

The visual side of things is catered for with a range of supported media formats and playback, and there is also BBC iPlayer built-in for both streaming and playback of the cream of British entertainment. Also, Eastenders.

Audio output is stellar, with equalizer settings completely customisable and offering a markedly different sound. The speakers are more than capable to serve as a public nuisance, whilst the sound through a decent pair of headphones is favourably comparable to a dedicated media player. On the low end, more bassy music tends to get a rattle out of the W995's in-built speaker, but it occurs very rarely...

The camera is the real surprise of the show, an 8 megapixel snapper with LED flash and autofocus would have been a killer app for a camera phone and yet it simply serves to bolster an already impressive feature set on the Sony W995. Having said that, the lack of a lens cover on such a flat-reared handset runs the risk of scratches and scrapes ruining the camera over time...

Replete with high-end features found on Cybershot devices including 16x digital zoom, face and smile detection, macro mode and BestPic, the camera on the W995 stands toe to toe with some of the cameraphone heavyweights including the Samsung Pixon and LG Viewty Smart.

Images are clear, bright and crisp, whilst standing up easily to being zoomed and blown up when ported to a computer. It doesn't wrestle the 'best camera phone' prize from the current champ of the Nokia N86 8MP, but still is very impressive considering that it isn't the W995's star feature.

Calling and connectivity:

The W995 is fully specced out to smart phone levels with 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS connectivity straight out of the box. BBC iPlayer gets a boost out of the Wi-Fi, as does using Google Maps. NearMe is a great little service for discovering local amenities and the Wayfinder Navigator trial shows that whilst turn-by-turn directions can be done on almost any mobile, it isn't necessarily a good idea...it proves laggy and barely functional.

The Netfront browser is decidedly last-gen as far as web browsing is concerned, and the nostalgia of buttons instead of a touchscreen starts to become pretty darned annoying when trying to scroll around a page.

E-mail connectivity over POP3 is possible but the W995 feels a little overstretched by this point, highlighting the gulf between a great feature handset and a dedicated smart phone.

As a phone, the W995 performed perfectly with calls clear and crisp and almost no echoing and dropouts in even the patchiest areas of reception in London.

Verdict

The high end W-series swansong is an impressive one. To marry Walkman multimedia functionality with the best of Cybershot imaging was the holy grail for many, and the Sony Ericsson W995 largely delivers.

The looks of the W995 are firmly steeped in old world Sony Ericsson values, but to embrace modern features like a 3.5mm audio jack and microSD card was a huge indication that the manufacturer was prepared to enter the mobile phone race with renewed vigour.

A fully featured personal media device attached to a digital camera in one device is impressive, and the W995 is a fitting tribute to the fact that Sony Ericsson has the technology and expertise to offer some of the best convergent devices in the market.