Sony's people are currently hopping up and down excitedly like supercharged bunnies after revealing the imminent release of their stylish new camcorder, the Handycam HDR-TG3E.

Little bigger than your mobile phone, it's being trumpeted as the smallest, slimmest, lightest camcorder ever to feature 1920 x 1080 Full HD recording, with 5.1-channel surround sound (though we have to wonder how well that works with no external mics). It's also the world's first camcorder with a pure titanium body, a material that's 40 percent lighter than steel and twice as strong as aluminium.

This chic and elegant camcorder uses a 2.7-inch, Clear Photo LCD Plus touch-screen and records on Memory Stick Pro Duo media (a 4GB Memory Stick is supplied). An optional 16GB Memory Stick records up to 5 hours and 55 minutes of full HD movies in LP mode.

Despite its tiny dimensions, the Handycam TG3E makes no compromises on performance, thanks to the ClearVid CMOS Sensor and the powerful BIONZ image processing engine, all claimed to maintain superlative image quality for video and stills shooting alike.

The Handycam HDR-TG3E will be available from May 2008.