I have a brand-new K610i. And it didn't cost anything but a new 24-month contract. The salesguy at my local Optus store was impressed I had done my homework - the K610i was in fact my second choice but they had run out of W810's.

Amongst the things he had probably not encountered from a customer before: yes, the joystick was sucky. It went unreliable on my T300, too. The K610 (and the W810) have proper little keys instead of a joystick. This I revealed after he tried to sell me a K800i (it has a joystick).

I also need it to support Bluetooth dial-up networking. Which it does. This is listed on the sales brochures as 'Modem', which I pointed out for his information. He hadn't ever encountered someone who had even used that before, though he wasn't surprised it was possible. It seems Sony Ericsson have a reputation for making fairly complete Bluetooth protocol stacks.

Actually, my original choise of the W810 was because it was not new: i.e. it's been around a while, so it's been popular, and would be less likely to have bugs in its firmware. The salesguy said the K610 is currently popular albeit newer so I decided I could take my chances on firmware bugs.

At least I could have back the borrowed Nokia 6610. Ugh. So much of a 'wannabe' phone from Nokia, but I'm not sure what it was trying to be. It actually had a user-un-friendly menu requiring lots of arrow key presses, unlike SE's keypad shortcuts, and tiny little icons indicating activity states unlike SE's nice colour ones. And a single-tasking GPRS stack: it did dial-up networking over IrDa (I wonder what model it really borrowed that from) but couldn't accept a call whilst connected.

Interesting other things: the K610 came with a data cable! I really didn't expect that, but it makes sense as the kind of thing to include if a key feature of the phone is a 2MP camera (though a longer lens would be nicer). I guess music playing took second string, as it doesn't come with a earphones. No loss to me; I'd normally prefer the data cable but Bluetooth file transfer is just as effective. It also has a Memory Stick Micro (aka 'M2') slot and card. This would be Sony's attempt to take on MiniSD and MicroSD.

Wade.