Even though it has the afore mentioned slide-out keyboard it still retains a nice compact design, measuring 101 mm(L) x 50 mm(W) x 18.6 mm(T) and weighing 120g.

It also feels pretty good in the palm of your hand and the keypad and thumb stick are easy to reach and press, though the predictive text can get annoying after a while, you can at least use the slide-out keyboard - that makes entering text and connectivity settings so much easier (The Keyboard's back light automaticly lights up in low light conditions to).

Also the sim card interface is easy to access and installing our test sim was simply a case of sliding out the keyboard, opening the catch underneath and away you go. The microSD card slot is also located around the side for easy access, it’s just a pity that the headphone socket shares the USB interface, but you can use a pair of A2DP Bluetooth headphones instead and to be fair the supplied headphone/headset did the job.

One of the main benefits of the new SC710 lies with its operating system as it features the new Windows Mobile 6, which shares a similar look and feel to the PC's Vista operating system. Along side the new look comes enhancements to its applications and utilities, there is an updated version of Windows Media player, Internet Explorer and Instant Messenger program (Windows Live is also included). You also have the new Office Mobile suite of programs for viewing Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Adobe PDF files. All of which were able to view our test documents - created initially on our PC - perfectly.

The screen quality of the SC710 was vibrant thanks to its 240 x 320 2.4" TFT display, which was a good size for viewing webpages and watching videos.

From a connectivity point of view its a pity the SC710 did not come with 3G support (hi-speed connectivity) but it makes up for this by including Wifi 802.11g for tapping into wireless hotspots or routers. We found it easy to connect to our test router thanks to the supplied communication manager software, which allows you to control all aspects of the devices communication in a single screen.

You also get Quad-Band GSM/GPRS/Edge support - so the phone can be used anywhere. Plus there's Bluetooth 2 and bringing up the rear is push email support.

The camera is a 2.0MP variety and on the whole it takes good images, though you don’t get any flash support you can take images at 1200 x 1600 - an image taken from the SC710 is included in the gallery (note: used jpeg high setting and not maximum for saved image).

Phone reception on the whole from our Orange sim was good and call quality at both ends of the line was good, with our recipient hearing us clearly and vice versa.

The OMAP850 200Mhz CPU handled the device pretty well and you get around 52MB of free storage space for adding your own content, which seems to be the average these days.

Battery life from the 1050mAh has a standby time of 175hours and a talk time of 7 hours which is above average, of course using Wifi or watching videos will shorten the life span. So far we have had the phone on for about 5 days, using it for various tasks such as the odd phone call, listening to music, video tests and generally just playing around with it. There is still one bar left on the battery with no warning light coming up so far.