A lot of marketing hype has surrounded the tri-band Z500a from Sony Ericsson. It's positioned as a dual screen VGA camera phone with multimedia features such as MP3 audio and MPEG4 video support. Additionally, it supports both GPRS and EDGE network data for web and email access. With all of these features, one might guess that this is a top-tier phone, but in reality the Z500a is an entry-level camera phone that Sony Ericsson hopes will appeal to a younger crowd.

The Z500a has an attractive clamshell design. The phone's primary teal color with silver accents might not appeal to everyone, but it does get style points for not looking like every other phone on the market. Sony Ericsson is trying to attract the younger buyer with ability to switch out phone covers (SE refers to them as 'style up covers'). Like the rest of its current mobile line-up, there is no external antenna to interrupt the lines of the Z500a. The face of the phone is home to the external color sub-display (4096 colors) with the camera lens just above it. While it's not an ultra-compact phone, it's lighter than it appears, weighing in at 110 grams.

Opening the phone, I was impressed by the somewhat invisible hinge. It almost seems over engineered. The hinge feels very solid when you are opening and closing the phone - like a good car door should feel. While I had a favorable first impression opening the phone, I was immediately let down by the size of the display, especially considering all of the physical real estate Sony Ericsson has to work with. Officially, it's a 128 x 160 pixel display, but seems even smaller, perhaps due to the excessive border around the display. Sony Ericsson claims that the display is a 65K color unit, but the colors don't seem vibrant to be able to notice. As the phone does not sport a TFT display, direct sunlight viewing is nearly impossible.

The amber backlighting of the keypad is pleasant, and the spacing of the inset keys is more than manageable, even for large hands. Just above the keypad is a five-way controller (including a center button) surrounded by four additional buttons - two softkeys for option selections (based upon screen selections), a 'back' key and a 'clear' key. Looking at the five-way key controller, it almost appears to be a nine-way controller with diagonal directions, but in reality, that's just a design touch.