Sony Ericsson W100i

“The Sony Ericsson Spiro is available for £39 pay-as-you-go, making it a budget phone. If you are looking for a very basic phone that looks good and is capable of very strong audio playback, then the Spiro is a fair purchase.”

“The Spiro is certainly a modest phone, and there's nothing wrong with that, particulalry if you're after something that won't cost an arm and a leg. The lack of Wi-Fi and the tiny built-in memory certainly don't help its case but then at this price, we think that the Spiro can be forgiven. It's generally a reasonable phone, thanks largely to its music playing capabilities, as long as you don't intend to do too much web browsing on the move.”

“We're so close to recommending the Spiro wholeheartedly, but we just can't. Even the voice quality wouldn't be a deal-breaker if it weren't for the software crashes.We'd honestly say Sony Ericsson is onto a winner if it had only sorted out the software. Lacking fast internet is a shame, but many won't mind. Even the dodgy web browser can be avoided (though if it worked, that would be super).What good is a phone – no matter how nicely made, no matter how good value for money it appears – if you can't trust it not to crash on you?It's still worth a glance in the shop for those after a simple, well-built PAYG handset, but it doesn't get our vote.”

“At the end of the day, the Sony Ericsson Spiro proved to be an average music slider. The handset did not stand out in any of the categories we tested it, but it also did not fail, except for the camera department, where we found it to be very unpleasing. Still, the Spiro is a decent entry-level phone with a relaxing, compact design and good music capabilities, aided by the 3.5mm headset jack and pretty decent music output quality. Well, the materials in use are by no means ground shaking, but you can't have it all when your choice is a low-end cell phone.”