This is one phone whose reputation precedes it – with the Walkman moniker, it’s easy to tell that it is going to have music at its core. This is a neat sized handset with a touch display – it’s pretty lightweight at 115g, but not so small that it will be replacing your tiddly iPod nano.

However, it looks good, is nicely designed and has loads of features. The power button sits on the right, and the Walkman button is on the left – this takes you straight to the music player. The 3.5mm audio jack can be found on the top edge in the middle. The home key sits on the front – it wakes the display – but takes a firm touch to get it working. The only other two buttons are the camera button and volume rocker on the phone’s right side.

Sony Ericsson has been having a lot of success with its phones recently – the Xperia Ray and Xperia Arc S in particular. The Live with Walkman doesn't have the Ray’s high res display, but it still does a good job. The screen is smaller (it measures 3.2 inches) and features the hot corners found on the Xperias. These are like shortcut buttons – touch the top-left corners and they’ll take you to ‘messages’ and let you search your music.

Even though the hot corners make the display appear smaller, they are really handy and do a great job. Another result of the slightly smaller screen is that when in portrait mode, the 1-9 phone keypad is the default while the QWERTY keyboard appears in landscape mode.

Music Unlimited is Sony’s own subscription service that streams music – you’ll find a widget takes you directly to its website. An Infinity button lets you find out more about the artist of the track you’re listening to – you’ll find extra info on Wikipedia, video on YouTube and song lyrics on Google. It’s a nifty extra touch, even though some things work better than others.

Other music-themed extras include a stereo FM radio, and TrackID, but our favourites are definitely the Infinity button and the Walkman screen.

Android

The Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman runs on Android’s Gingerbread 2.3, so you’ll get the benefit of the Timescape social networking aggregator, as well as a Facebook app. When it comes to Facebook, this handset has the Facebook Inside Xperia offering, so you’ll realise Facebook is integrated as much as possible into the phone.

There are also some neat graphics included on this handset – if you’re editing a screen, for instance, and hold down the Google Search bar, it wiggles to let you know you it is ready to be moved. When you do move the bar, it lands and wobbles like a jelly – a cool touch.

Our conclusion

The Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman is good looking, is a neat size and has a smooth interface. It works quickly and has lots of nice touches, most notable of which is the Walkman screen. It may lack a few of the high-end offerings you’ll find on its Xperia siblings, but it works well and is a fun handset to use.