The first thing to say about the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness is that it has few features and costs £650. Yep, £650. Why? Well, it has the first ever transparent display, £450 of the high price tag is a subscription to an “exclusive” concierge service and it's a limited-edition handset only available from Selfridges.

 

Designer looks on the  Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness was designed to be a “second phone”, a good-looking handset for fun over features. Designer Daniel Mauritzson wanted it to be the anti-smartphone, and he's cracked that. It does nothing but looks spectacular. About the length of the palm of our man hands, it's around  10mm thick with a 1.8-inch display that is transparent, but only when the phone is switched on, when it has a bright white edge. It's monochrome, which we haven't seen in a long time, and the greenish glow also lends a retro air, albeit an unwelcome one.

The number pad is also hugely minimalist – in fact, it doesn't even have any numbers on it until you switch the phone on and the keys light up. Between the screen and keypad are six keys and a navigation pad, but the only ones that are obvious are call, call end and OK. The navigation pad requires some dexterity to use, but the keypad is nice and tactile and makes for comfortable texting.

On the side of the phone sit volume control keys, and you can slip the SIM card out without removing the battery, presumably when you want to use your “first” phone. In fact, you can't actually remove the battery at all, and for all its minimalist looks, you're still stuck with the chunky Sony Ericsson charger.

 

User friendliness for the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness is easy enough to use as a phone. Just press the call button at any time to fire up the dialler, and the Sony Ericsson user interface is as intuitive and easy as ever. A shortcut key takes you to your (customisable) shortcuts, missed calls and running applications, and a handy new threaded SMS view and impressive 2GB of onboard memory add to the package.

 

The trasparent display may look cool, but it does make it hard to see what's going on onscreen, and we found ourselves angling the phone into odd position to be able to read texts. At 1.8 inches, the screen is pretty small, as is the font used for the user interface, so browing the web is quite a challenge.

 

Web, email and musci on the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness

The NetFront browser is standard issue for low-end phones, handling mobile-optimised sites only, and this version is sprase even by comparison to other NetFront phones. Zooming is difficult, which on a screen this small shouldn't happen, and pictures look terrible, low-resolution on a black-and- white screen – but as there's no camera, that hardly matters.

Email works better, offering push-email support for accounts including Microsoft Exchange, Hotmail and Gmail. It's basic but functional – you can sync more than one account at a time, and managing your various accounts is straightforward.

The music player is rather nice, using the same friendly user interface as other Sony Ericsson handsets. Its easy to manage and use your playlists, and you can sync with your media library. The bundled S800 Bluetooth headphones provide great sound, rich and full with good bass and treble. You can do some slight noise adjustment with MegaBass and stereo options, and you also get track recognition service TrackID, which is always good.

 

The verdict for the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness

This is the ultimate exercise in form over function, and while the idea of a simple vanilla phone is a good one, we're not sure who would want to spend £650 on it. The screen is low res and works badly – but we suspect that the high-design and exclusivity of the handset will be more of a concern for potential buyers.