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Smart mobile users demand smart applications and even smarter phones. And while there's already a lot of mob-e-mail devices flooding the market in the wake of the success of RIM's BlackBerry and Palm's Treo, Sony Ericsson is about to make thumbsters’ choices even more difficult with the new M600.

This smartphone is the Swedish/Japanese partnership's second Symbian OS 9.1 and UIQ 3.0 interface handset, after the P990i. Both feature a touch screen, handwriting recognition, UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System)—a WCDMA 3G broadband technology that delivers 400 to 700 Kbps data transfers, a 262K (320 x 240 pixel resolution) 2.6-inch touch display, USB 2.0 with charging, and Bluetooth. Unlike the P990, the M660 doesn't offer Wi-Fi, however.

The larger 4.4 x 2.2 x 1.0-inch (114 x 57 x 26 millimeter) P990i is a flipphone with a traditional QWERTY thumb-keyboard embedded in the phone and a keypad on the flap, while the compact and thin M600 (just 15 millimeters thick) is built more in the mold of the Treo and Motorola's upcoming Q smartphone.

Sony Ericsson says the ergonomic design of the M600 makes it easy to operate with one hand or two and gives versatile options on how to perform messaging tasks. So it has a dual function keyboard for text and number input. The keypad/keyboard is a hybrid of sorts between a full QWERTY and number-pad layout. Blue numbers are embedded on the keys, which serve multiple letter and character functions as well.

Spell checking and word completion software takes care of the rest when messaging. It will be available in four keyboard variants: QWERTY, QWERTZ, AZERTY and Russian. There's also a 3-way jog dial.

E-mail and groupware applications include support for AlteXia, iAnywhere OneBridge, Intellisync, Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, RIM BlackBerry Connect, Seven, and Visto.

Inside, the tri-band GSM smartphone bundles 80 MB of memory with an added 64 MB Memory Stick Micro thrown in for good measure. That's right, another flash memory format. This one goes up to 2GB.

It supports the range of Microsoft Office document formats and bundles Opera 8 for Web browser, RSS for news feeds, VPN software, and a PDF viewer, and features a speakerphone, flight mode, plus an external antenna connector.

The M600's media player supports MP3, AAC, ACC+, E-AAC+ and m4a audio formats and it can stream both audio and video; Video playback is 30 frames per second. The lack of a camera and support for such a plethora of e-mail solutions gear the M600 directly at the enterprise, which often prefers handsets without picture taking capabilities for security reasons.

The M600 will ship in Granite Black and Crystal White sometime during the second quarter, about the same time the P990, which was supposed to ship this quarter, is now due.

Speaking of the P990, Sony Ericsson has just announced new features for the smartphone. These include business card scanning—take a picture of a business card and have its contents added to your contacts database (sounds cool & convenient), and support for the same push e-mail/groupware solutions - see above - to be available with the M600, plus some additional tidbits.

Sony Ericsson didn’t disclose pricing or carrier availability for either the M600 or P990.. We'll let you know when they do.