Michell returns to the hot subject of the week, and sheds some more light on the next SE UIQ flagship:

The slider form factor is going to be the form factor of Paris. Sony Ericsson has picked out some very nice materials for us, such as the shiny, mirror-like front cover, and metal has been used on large parts of the phone. Paris is quite slim (16 - 18 mm?), and we apologize for posting a picture that made it look a bit thicker than it really is.

The front of the phone holds a large touch display (with UIQ 3.3 supporting WQVGA, VGA & WVGA), a video call camera above the display, a minimalistic D-pad and two call keys making use of the same material as the rest of the front. This is quite nice, actually, and does affect the overall look of the device, more than you’d probably think it would.

Slide open the phone to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard beneath the exclusive-looking front. The keyboard consists of a number of multifunctional keys, like on M600 & P1, with the left part painted white and the right part painted black. This also looks much better than what your first thoughts may be. The phone is quite wide, making great room for this keyboard (and the large flush display, which pretty much fills out the device in width).

The back of Paris seems to have been made of metal. It looks quite nice, yet very simple. A sliding lens cover is protecting the 5 mega pixel camera on the top of the backside.

So, let’s talk about features. Paris features W-LAN 802.11b/g, Bluetooth, 3G and USB 2.0 cable transfers. It has a built-in GPS and comes bundled with Google Maps pre-installed, and we’re quite sure that WayFinder 7.0 will also be pre-installed on this device. The default web browser in Paris is Opera Mobile 9.5, as on other UIQ 3.3 devices.

[via USEB]