Sony Ericsson Spiro Black Mobile Phone on Vodafone Pay As You Go (PAYG)

I think this is a great little phone. I've been through a few smart phones and had loads of trouble with them so I decided to go back to my Sony Ericsson roots and get a 'dumb phone' (with a separate iPod touch for my gadget loving needs!!). My main criteria was to have a phone that could call, text and listen to music as I don't want to take two devices out with me.

Calling: I have found this to be very clear and very loud on the maximum setting. You can direct dial or select from your contacts (you don't even need the phone to be open to do this). Not much else to say really. 10/10

Texting: I have a real thing about clicking keypads so I was chuffed to bits that this keypad is quiet. It is very spacious considering the size of the device. 10/10

Music: This is done well enough and the huge plus is the 3.5mm jack. One let down is not being able to listen to radio without the headset plugged in but I don't use the radio that often so can live with that. I have a 16gb micro SD and my music plays well on the phone - though I only have about 4gb of music and I think that it could slow down a little with more music. 7/10

Overall, I think this is an excellent phone for the price and it looks great. I've not had the problems the other reviewer had, perhaps that was a dud. I personally highly recommend the phone.

PS: I bought yesterday at 3.45pm yesterday and it arrived today! Well done Vodafone!

I've outlined some of the most glaring faults below...

1. There are a lot of glitches listening to music off the memory card and the phone regularly crashes (at least 3 times an hour on average), with a wait of at least 5 minutes until it reboots, updates media off the memory card and is ready to play again.

2. The phone will only play albums in alphabetical order and not the order in which an album is created (ie track 2 "aardvark" will play before track 1 "zebra"). If you want to listen to an album in the correct order you need to retitle every track (ie "01 zebra", "02 aardvark" etc) which would be suicidely time consuming.

3. Certain file formats that played on my old Walkman phone are not compatible with this phone so if I want to listen to them I have to re rip my cd collection.

4. Setting up playlists is hugely tedious as you can only add an entire album and then delete the tracks that you don't want.

The only reason I got this phone was to listen to mp3's and it is hopelessly inadequate for this task... I understood that as an affordable phone it won't have all of the functionality of a top end ipod, but I would not expect any of the above faults for a phone being marketed as an mp3 player...

On a brighter note, the sound quality (when I can actually get it playing) is ok...

Do not be seduced by this phones good looks . I've given it one star cos you can't give it no stars !

I "updated " from a w800i its like going backwards instead .

The first week was ok . not brilliant but ok .then after that the problems started and oh so many faults in so little time .

It crashes , hangs , reboots, switches itself off for no reason , will not send a text message longer than 1 message length , if you try you just get a message "sending failed retry?", after a few trys it will send.
Your recipient however only gets the first half .the second half arrives a week later in the middle of another message .

If you are unfortunate to receive 2 messages within a few seconds of each other this phone can't cope,its nerves go bad and it screams, ( literally the vibrator alert gets stuck on :-)) it freezes , shuts down or just hangs , when you reboot the messages have vanished. the spiro(and the network) assumes you have read them .

Use the walkman feature and it will wipe your memory card during one of its frequent "freeze/ shut down/ reboot"sessions .

Memory reporting is abysmal , it will report an "out of memory " status message ,then wont let you do anything,there is a cure,yes u guessed it ( remove battery reboot)then u check memory and lo and behold the internal memory fairy waves her wand and you have 3mb again. Untill you try to send another text which pisses said fairy off and you'll get "out of memory " and have to repeat the whole sorry saga .

I Have tried resetting factory settings , no change , upgraded to later softwqare update . a small change it only takes 2 minutes to boot up now instead of 5 !!.

Battery life is absoultely woeful (a day if you're lucky even on standby ).

All in all the only thing positive about this phone is its looks , It does looks great , oh and the fm radio is good .

Unfortunately the very thing you buy a phone for ( phone calls )is poor too the microphone fades in and out and the earpiece makes people sound like they're stuck in the airing cupboard next to rumbling pipes !!

If you're upgrading from a previous sony be warned , the text layout has changed , space button is now the 0 button not the # key . small change but really annoying . also clear button on older is now the delete button . so you find yourself deleting whole message instead of one character . anyway if your text actually sends its a minor miracle so prob irrelevent ! the old joystick has been changed for a ring . not as easy to use .

No point having the alarm on as your main alarm clock because it can reboot itself through the night so the time and date reverts back to 21/12/2002 12.01.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY on one of these phones !
look at reviews online type in spiro freeze /crash into a search engine . Only a few people are happy with them (which makes me wonder if they wrote their reviews during the 1st week of ownership.)

SONY ERRICSON have had 2 years to sort this out now and havent. They have lost a loyal customer through incompetence /rushed launch or whatever . I wouldnt trust another one now .