Girly phones are big sellers, but to sell they need to be cute – and associated with a big fashion brand, so this Sony Ericsson Jalou Dolce & Gabbana review will put its emphasis on style.

And this phone has plenty of style.  This phone is a rose pink edition of the original Sony Ericsson Jalou flip phone.  The angular body looks a bit like a facet cut gemstone.  The phone has a small footprint and two displays – one outside showing the time and basic information.  The outside display can switch to a mirror function at the press of a button – nifty.

Of course as befits Dolce & Gabbana the phone comes in exclusive limited edition packing and the unit is plated with 24 carat gold.  The Dolce & Gabbana headset is also ‘lavished’ with gold accents. Even dimensions are discussed by metaphor, with the length described as ‘shorter than your favourite lipstick’.

Foregoing the extended metaphors, the phone includes a 3.2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.0 and the standard screen size you’d expect of a compact flip phone.  There are a couple of social networking features including geo-tagging, interestingly.  The good news is that it is pretty good at music playback too, and gives you the option of adding more memory via a microSD card.

You might think all this fancy branding and slick construction materials will come at a price, but there are good Sony Ericsson Jalou Dolce & Gabbana deals around, and you will easily pick up the phone for £300 or thereabouts without paying for a contract.

Going green is ever popular these days, and it is somewhat predictable that a major phone maker would come up with a range of green phones, as did Sony Ericsson.

The Cedar is a member of the GreenHeart range released by the Swedish-Japanese phone maker, which includes the Elm and the Hazel.  Tree references, you see.  It is a comfortable phone with a light and compact footprint.  The angled numeric keys are nice and tactile, and are combined with a simple main menu system.

Sockets provided are of standard size, including a 3.5 mm headphone jack and micro USB for charging, a welcome move away from proprietary connectors.  Incidentally, when you unplug the phone from the charger you are reminded to turn off the charger at the mains.  Oh, and there are no paper manuals in the box.

Further features are as expected from a bread and butter phone, with a 2-megapixel camera and 3G – but no Wi-Fi.  Web browsing on anything other than 3G is painfully slow, and so are the Twitter and Facebook applications.  Apps-wise you don’t have the option of downloading and installing, as this phone runs a proprietary operating system.

Green credentials come cheap, at least in this particular case.  Sony Ericsson Cedar deals abound and you will easily find the handset contract-free for about £60.  That is a pretty decent value for a solid phone which also allows you to keep polishing your green sheen.