Long-time listeners will know I'm a big fan of my Sony Ericsson P800 (commonly known as the Giant Phone) - and now Sony Ericsson have finally lifted the thick veil of secrecy regarding their newest P-series smartphone, codenamed "Hermione". The new phone follows on directly from the previous family line of P800, P900 and P910i, but is not the P950 as previously thought - which must be a little gutting for the owners of "fan site" P950.com.The new model is actually called the P990, and as expected it's a Symbian device with the new UIQ3.0 interface. It boasts every kind of radio connectivity you can imagine, from 3G for high speed data, to Wi-fi, Bluetooth, and even FM. There's a two megapixel camera with autofocus for stills and video, along with another for videocalling, and 80mb of user memory - with an MS Duo slot allowing up to 4GB of extra storage.

Despite all this extra technology the new phone manages to be slightly smaller than the giant phones that went before it (albeit not by much). It also departs slightly from past P-series by having a qwerty keyboard built in to the body of the phone itself - but retains the trademark flip up keypad which turns it back into a regular phone again.

The bad news is it won't be available until early next year - probably February or March. More on Esato, including pictures.