It is mid-2004, and Sony Ericsson has decided to follow up the world-beating T610 with a phone that feels like a piece of high-end hifi equipment you can carry in your pocket. The K700i is the ‘Dual Front’ pioneer; one side is clearly a mobile phone, but flip it over, and it looks exactly like a digital camera, complete with a horizontal shutter button and a lens cover. For the UK punter walking into a Vodafone shop, this is the most seductive bit of kit on the shelf, promised to be the ‘all-in-one’ device that finally makes you leave your bulky Olympus Camedia at home. At 93g, it’s a featherweight champion of the ‘monoblock’ world, finished in a stunning ‘Optic Silver’ that screams technical sophistication.nnOn the technical front, the screen is the first thing that hits you. It’s a 1.76-inch TFT display with a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels and 65,536 colours. Compared to the murky STN screens of the past, this is like looking through a freshly cleaned window; the icons are vibrant, and the new 3D-animated menus are fluid and genuinely impressive. The camera is a VGA unit that can interpolate images up to 1.3 megapixels, and while that sounds like a bit of digital wizardry, the results are surprisingly usable for the era, especially with the built-in ‘photo light’ which is essentially a very bright LED that helps you take photos of your mates in the dim corners of a Wetherspoons.nnHowever, we need to talk about the memory, because this is where the K700i breaks your heart. It has 41MB of internal storage, which is massive for 2004—but there is no expansion slot. You are trapped in a silver cage. You can fit maybe ten or twelve MP3s on here before the phone starts screaming for space, meaning your ‘mobile jukebox’ dreams are limited to a very short playlist of your absolute favourite Busted tracks. It’s a baffling technical decision that keeps the K700i from being truly perfect. Connectivity, however, is flawless: Bluetooth, Infrared, and a built-in FM radio that actually works. The joystick is back, and while it’s much more responsive than the T610’s, we’re all still slightly terrified it’ll start drifting after six months of heavy use.nnThe user interface is the pinnacle of the Sony Ericsson experience. It’s snappy, intuitive, and the ‘QuickShare’ philosophy is everywhere. The battery life is respectable, offering around 7 hours of talk time, though using the FM radio or the Bluetooth will inevitably see you reaching for the charger by bedtime. The K700i is a beautiful, highly capable, and slightly frustrating masterpiece. It’s a phone that wants to do everything, and it nearly succeeds, provided you don’t mind living within the strict 41MB limits of its silver-clad world.