Sony Ericsson Spiro and Zylo: Housewife-seducing, plate-smashing Walkman phones

Two swarthy music phones with Greek names and a social-networking twist are set to woo neglected British housewives: the Sony Ericsson Spiro and Zylo.

Shirley Valentine types will no longer need to hold conversations with the wall, as both handsets offer Facebook and Twitter apps. Their music players can also operate in the background, providing a soundtrack for your social-networking shenanigans. That'll work you up into a plate-smashing, olive-munching frenzy.

The Zylo (shown on the right) is the more attractive of the pair. It offers YouTube, Flickr and Picasa uploading over HSPA and a 3.2-megapixel camera. It also supports the FLAC lossless audio codec, among more common formats. Bizarrely, it doesn't come with a 3.5mm headphone jack, so you'll have to use Sony headphones, which are unlikely to do FLAC tunes justice.

That omission is all the stranger when you learn the Spiro, which doesn't support FLAC or even 3G, does come with a 3.5mm jack. It's also got a 56mm (2.2-inch) display, compared to the Zylo's 66mm (2.6-inch) screen, a 2-megapixel camera, and, like the Zylo, an FM radio and microSD card slot, for storing your tunes.

Both handsets offer access to the PlayNow music store, and support the TrackID feature, which lets you hold the phone towards a music source in order to identify what song is playing.

Sony Ericsson says both phones will be available in the third quarter of this year. Pricing hasn't been revealed but Sony Ericsson's touting their affordability, so expect them to be cheaper than an ouzo-drenched jolly to Mykonos.