The stunning S500i is a totally fashion & style conscious mobile phone which will defiantly turn heads. The phone is equipped with many fun & useful features for the mobile phone user who is always on the go & wanting to stay in contact with friends, family & work colleagues. The handset comes in a choice of two colours which are an intriguing mysterious green colour & a glamour spring yellow colour which provides a natural element to the phones design. The overall design & style of the phone is inspired by nature which includes the colour of the handset, the internal patterns & materials used to create a smooth desirable handset.

S500i is a very stylish and eye-catching handset. It has a classy and sophisticated appearance, and there are even glowing LEDs along the sides whenever it's activated, making it appear extra sparkly. Not only is the S500i sleek, it's also compact, measuring only 3.9 inches by 1.8 inches by 0.5 inch and weighing about 3.3 ounces. The S500i is one of a few phones that Sony Ericsson has manufactured in a slider design, the others being the W580i and the W850i.There is a slight sloping curl along the chin of the phone that you can use to push the phone open, and to close it, you can slide your thumb down on the raised toggle--making the entire sliding process completely one-handed.

The display and the navigation buttons are on the front side of the top slider. The display is QVGA with 262k colors and size of 2.1 inches. It is bright and contrasting unit but as it was with the W910, the colors could be more and the transition from one hue to another is not very smooth.

There are three themes. One of these changes as the time goes from day to night, another offers you a different theme depending on the time of year. This isn't groundbreaking, but it is a nice touch. Certainly the screen does the themes and other aspects of this phone justice as its 262,000 colours and 320 x 240 pixels are clear and sharp.

S500 has a 2-megapixel camera, providing maximum resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels. The image quality won't surprise, but won't disappoint either. The camera would've definitely been better with a LED flash and autofocus, none of these is available unfortunately. Setup options are extensive as usual, including night mode, white balance, panoramic pictures, and user-configurable exposure compensation. One thing that hasn't changed is the video resolution. Videos are recorded in 3GP format, with resolution at the mere 176 x 144 pixels.

The Sony Ericsson S500i has a Standard battery, Li-Po 900 mAh and the rated battery life is of 9 hours talk time and 15.4 days standby time. According to FCC radiation tests, the S500i has a digital SAR rating of 0.77 watt per kilogram.

Though the S500i isn't a Walkman-branded phone, it still has a pretty nice built-in music player. Settings include an equalizer (with both automatic preset modes and manual controls), playlists, stereo widening, and shuffle and loop modes. There's also a flight mode so you can listen to your songs while on an aircraft. You can even send the song to someone else via a picture message, an e-mail, or via Bluetooth. The interface is on the generic side, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, since it maintains a simple minimalist look. All you need to load music on the phone is a provided USB cable plus the PC software included. We found the software to be memory-intensive and a bit of a hog, and would recommend dragging and dropping music directly to the phone instead. The music player supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, and eAAC+ file formats.

GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900

The user can communicate with others using one or more of the built in messaging services available on the S500i. The user can send & receive messages to & from any compatible messaging contact. The phone supports multimedia messaging, text messaging & email. The user can create messages easily on their handset with the clear cut keypad & help of predictive text input. The user can share their photographs & video clips with compatible multimedia messaging contacts.