On Friday the Orange shop on London’s Oxford Street opened its doors at midnight to celebrate the launch of the Sony Ericcson W800i Walkman Phone.

Orange said the opening hours had been set to deal with the expected rush of demand for the new phone. That seemed a little optimistic, but there is little doubt that the handset’s release is a big deal for Sony.

The Japanese company has sold more than 340 million Walkmans in the past 25 years, in formats ranging from tape cassettes to CDs and MP3 players. However, after the ill-fated launch of the poorly received mini-disk format, it became clear that the electronics giant was losing momentum in the music market.

Then, in 2001, came the iPod.

Ever since, Sony has been playing catch-up. This month, Apple claimed that in just four days its Japanese iTunes Music Store, from which iPod users download tracks, had hit 1 million downloads – more than twice the number Sony’s affiliated online music store in Japan, its home market, gets in a month.

Those figures summed up the depth of the hole in which Sony finds itself. Poor results led the iconic conglomerate to appoint its first Western chief executive this year. The Welshman Howard Stringer has since been criticised for the sprawling group’s continuing ill fortune.

The W800i is only a small device (about 10cm x 4.6cm x 2cm). But it carries both the Walkman brand and the hopes of Sony and its future in the digital music market. So, how does it fare against the iPod?

First impressions are promising. The smaller Sony machine is not quite as sleek as the original iPod, but its cream and orange livery holds its own in the aesthetics stakes and Times Online found its preview model drawing nods of approval.

That said, the handset won't be accused of re-writing too many rule-books. If Sony Ericsson really wanted to make an impact among those fabled "early adopters" who make and break the fortunes of consumer durables, it might just end up wishing it had tried a bit harder.

Where the Sony handset definitely fails to match the iPod is in terms of memory. The W800i will hold about 125 songs - around 12 albums worth of tunes. This is plenty for an average commute - and the same as the budget iPod shuffle (£69) - but it is not going to make the W800i the centrepiece of your hi-fi system.

The 60GB iPod, in contrast, will hold around 15,000 songs - albeit at a price (£299). Many W800i users are likely to pick up the gadget for free when they trade their old Orange phones in.

Both machines have been beset with battery issues. IPod owners will be aware that the Apple powerpacks have gained a reputation for running dry at little notice. The W800i we played with over the weekend stayed the course on just one charge up – a very creditable performance.

The W800i also falls down in terms of ease of use. The idea is that when you’re not buying music from Sony download sites, you are supposed to be able to transfer CDs onto the Walkman phone with a minimum of fuss.

Sony has slipped up here before, insisting that users of earlier digital Walkmans transform music files into their ATRAC3 format before being allowed to listen to them on their players. The W800i isn’t half as fiddly as these earlier products, but it has a way to go before it matches the intuitiveness of Apple’s iTunes software.

Overall, if you're a music lover, you are unlikely to swap your iPod for the W800i anytime soon. That said, once you get to grips with it, Sony’s Walkman phone is a very nifty bit of kit.

Special mention should be made of the excellent FM radio and the 2.0 megapixel digital still and video camera included in the deal.

Oh, and it makes phone calls too.

Also coming to the market

Nokia, the world’s largest cellphone maker, has struck a deal with Microsoft and the American music download service Loudeye to make it easier for music fans to browse, buy and download digital music and ringtones on-line and play them on their Nokia handsets.

Motorola has already unveiled an iTunes compatible mobile phone. The E1060 includes a version of Apple's iTunes music player software and allows users to carry a limited collection of music - without an iPod.

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