I bought this phone online so there was no way to know what it actually looked like. When it arrived i was excited but upon opening it i immediately wanted to return it. It was ugly! Well not super ugly but i just didnt think it looked good. For one thing, it seemed big for some reason. It's weird, I mean its only slightly longer than my super old motorola t720 but it just looked like a big box. There is no antenna which is cool but because the phone has absolutely no curves except for its irregular shape, everything extends all the way to the edge like a box making it much larger. I was totally disappointed, having always bought Sony products because of their sleek designs. Sony should be ashamed for bring out something like this. Also someone mentioned that it looked to a big maxipad which i thought was hilarious but after I got it i just couldn't keep that thought out of my mind. I didn't want people lookin at me holding something that look like that. Then after charging the phone for 24 hours i tested the screen. It was horrible, the screen was blurry as everyone has told. I like the menus but the screen just kills it. The screen also looks very washed out because they don't seem to use black or something. It's all gray. Also when the screen light goes off, the screen is completely black, you can't see a thing. The keypads also look very cheaply designed, no red and green call buttons, it just doesnt look nice. Then there's the rings tones, they'r a total joke. There's like 5 or so rings tones that i'd be embarassed to have go off. You're gonna scare off all the girls with those stupid star wars sound effects. Then having not used the phone for 2 days after the full charge, I turned it on and it gave me a low battery warning and died. I was like "what the hell", this phone is suppose to standyby for 10 days or whatever and i've barely touched it. I'm not sure if it was the battery or charger because when you stick the charger in, the screen lights up and then disappears completely. There is no charging indicator at all to let you know its charging. Another annoyance. I have not tested how it calls and stuff because i did not want to activate the phone yet. I'm returning it for the motorola v551, dunno why i didn't get that in the first place. Well its only fair to say that, maybe the z500 may take time to get use to, since i only checked it out a little, but i'm not gonna waste that time. (wow, i just got the v551 and what a difference!!!)