You CAN charge the M600i over USB, but you need to enable it on the phone first. Bizarre, but there you go. Go to main menu, select tools, select control panel, select connections, select USB and tick the 'Allow USB charging'...

Why it's not done by default, is anyone's guess. Shouldn't imagine Sony Ericsson can even explain its choice...

I have used it for a couple of weeks right after its release - it did need SW updates to get in shape, several. However it's a great feature to be able to update it yourself, others should take note. The design of the update app isn't that great - I wouldn't call it communicative or fast but it does the job.

Most of the reviewer’s comments I subscribe to, except that USB charging does work, however I have some other issues that put together made me give back the phone and pick up my "old" Nokia 6630 again.

1) PIM sync is painfully slow - much slower than the not exactly lightning fast Nokia. It takes several minutes to determine that there are no changes.... God help you if there are, my patience could not take it. Palm sync or ActiveSync has given me much better experiences in that area.

2) If you, like me, have many contacts (ab 1k of them) in the phone it’s a pain finding the right one. You have to search by last name only (*or* first name if I change some setting) and can not alternate between searching on first name or last name as needed depending on who I look for. Why not allow for a global search? Well, why not have a true global search such as Palm had 7-8 years ago already? You found entries by search in phonebook, calendar or whatever in the whole device.

# 1 irritated me on a daily basis, #2 made me give up - I need to make calls, it's a phone, I can’t spend my life looking for their numbers with the little pen in hand…

A good thing worth highlighting is the calendar (bar the painful sync) which is beautifully laid out and better than my Nokia - it even handles the eternal problem of multiple time zones well. When I arrive in UK for example I reset the time zone and the calendar is in sync with time immediately. Good work.

My 25 Eurocent...

Claiming that a lack of camera function is not a quirk its a godsend. More and more companies and firms are denying entry to people who use cell phones with cameras. I use a Nokia 9500 at the moment and find it s camera to be a nuisance:

Ian

In summary, this little baby is probably too innovative and has too many features for most people who don't really want to read the manual or want to invest time in working out how to use it.

Searching Contacts, for example, can be done using the keyboard so need to scroll the long list of 1000 contacts.

The audio reproduction on this device is the best I have ever heard - I tested the i-Mate JasJar, Palm Lifedrive, Palm Treo, Nokia 9500, Nokia 7710, etc. The sound quality and bass reproduction are in a word superb (especially when used with the stereo BT HBH-DS970 headset from SE).

If you switch-off the hand writting recognition function the speed and performance of this device is blistering. Also like the other person said above, you must reflash the device with the latest firmware and SE have made three updates in the first 6 weeks after release.

If you have a T-mobile web'n'walk data package (only £7.50 for 2GB of data) you'll love this M600. It is super quick over 3G and Opera is superb. No need for wifi.

I can think of a good reason why you might want to disable USB charging. You may be connecting to a device, such as a palmtop, which doesn't have oodles of spare power to throw at the phone. So I think it's a good idea, though whether it should be disabled by default is another matter.

"Searching Contacts, for example, can be done using the keyboard so need to scroll the long list of 1000 contacts."

Yes, but that's not the point...

You *can only search on last name OR first name* depending on how you flip that switch on the phonebook. Keyboard, pen, whatever...you can still not search the *whole* name.

The predicament is that sometimes I need to search for first name and sometimes for last name - to do this I have to re-sort the phonebook. Not going to happen.

Re the keylock issue highlighted in the review, you can actually take keylock off by just pressing and holding the "back" button on the side of the phone - avoids the carry on with pressing the unlock button on the key pad and then tapping the unlock button on the screen.

Previous poster said: "You *can only search on last name OR first name* depending on how you flip that switch on the phonebook. Keyboard, pen, whatever...you can still not search the *whole* name.

The predicament is that sometimes I need to search for first name and sometimes for last name - to do this I have to re-sort the phonebook. Not going to happen."

Yeah, when I buy a phone, one of the criterias is that when I think of the person's name, the phone should call it too. :D Your comment made no sense whatsoever in searching for name criteria. Maybe you should stick w/ a regular phone line and not use cell phones at all and not post such stupid comments for everyone to see.