My favourite phone - Sony Ericsson K750i (versus W800i)
Written: Mar 19 '06
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Pros: Good camera for phone, good clarity, menus easy to navigate, good music player
Cons: little built-in memory, small Memory Stick provided, no EDGE support, ?durability of active slide
The Bottom Line: A professional looking phone that manages to look 'cool' (for me!) with great features, good price and excellent battery life.
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| guohao's Full Review: Sony-Ericsson K750i |
Introducing...Sony Ericsson K750i
You're beautiful...yes you are K750i! It's a beautiful black front with white-backlight keypad, a multi-directional joystick and a camera side with brushed aluminium finish for the lens cover. The on/off button is located at the top of the phone, next to the Infrared port.
What's in the box
- the PHONE!
- wrist strap
- 64MB Memory Stick Pro Duo (already inserted into the phone)
- Memory Stick Duo adapter
- USB sync cable (to the PC)
- handsfree kit (that doubles as stereo headphones)
- User manual, quick guide, service and support information booklet
- Promotional leaflets (for Australian market - $50 worth of digital prints via Kodak Galley Australia plus 10 regular prints a month for one year (up to end of 2006) at participating stores with Kodak Picture Maker.
First impression
It looks great! I like the simple elegant design - I know, I'm too square! I've been using a SE W800i (that bright orange white Walkman(tm) phone) for two months and it was superb. The w800i and the k750i basically share similar features, since they are essentially the same phones with slightly different user interface and target market. I've been told that the k750i can be 'upgraded' to w800i - but essentially I see no point in doing so. The k750i plays MP3 nearly as effortlessly as the w800i - k750i just lacks the special "Walkman" logo (more on MP3s later).
The screen is very good - I would say about the same standards as Samsung's D500 series. However, I've seen Sharp's LCD (their phones are available via Vodaphone in Australia) and theirs is...GREAAT! Still, colour looks good, and text is sharp on the k750i.
The phone is really responsive - going through the main menu and selecting different options etc was a breeze. This, I would believe is the same for most newer phones these days. I really mind phone responsiveness because my old Motorola E365 is horrible. Scrolling through a text message too fast and my Motorola may just 'hang up' on me - stops working and restarts itself. So far I've not encountered any problems with my SE K750i (and fingers crossed...will never encounter any problems).
The only downside was that my phone's active slide cover for the camera did not work when I got it. I went in to Virgin shop (I'm on Virgin mobile Australia) and they gave a new phone - simple! What this means to me however is the susceptibility of the active cover to damage especially if used frequently (though in my case - it was only 2 days old, and it never worked anyway right from the start)
The joystick I believe is improved on the W800i. The joystick on K750i is a bit too short and could be a little hard to navigate using it. Note though I don't have the W800i with me at the time of writing this, so I'm not 100% sure, but when I first started using my k750i, I noticed that the joystick was a little uncomfortable. Weirdly, it feels more comfortable texting with this phone compared with the newer sibling. The buttons are easier to press and have a good 'click' feel to it. The 'Activity' button above the joystick is kind of a good idea - a shortcut button to functions that can be defined, stored web bookmarks plus a one stop "Reminder" for missed calls, scheduled task etc.
Basic phone functionality
The main reason why anyone gets a mobile phone (and I do hope this is true!) is for calling and texting other people on the move. Hence phone clarity, easy to use user interface, ease of texting, and a robust phone book are things I look for. K750i has a good level of volume for most uses - clear and loud! This is much better than my Motorola E365 (yeah I was really disappointed with this phone...you can tell...) which even in a quiet area was quite hard to hear at max volume. There was no problems with reception, line dropout etc, although in my opinion these are usually more network dependent rather than phone dependent.
SMS has been pretty straight forward. This phone supports multiple SMS'and dictionary (T9) function which are again pretty standard nowadays. It has pretty good MMS capabilities with built-in multimedia editors (VideoDJ, MusicDJ and PhotoDJ) - so everything can be personalised, clipped, added etc on the phone itself before being sent as MMS or set as background picture or ringtone. I must admit - I don't really find them useful to me as I don't even send much MMS in the first place.
Extra Functions
The K750i lacks EDGE support (Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution)- which means Internet speeds are limited to standard GPRS. This has not been a problem for me though, since my mobile operator does not support GPRS at the moment (sadly...). However, I've tried the W800i (which also does NOT support EDGE) on a EDGE-capable network before, and the speed was acceptable. I don't expect heavy browsing/surfing on mobile's small screen.
The 2-Megapixel camera is one of the main selling points (at least as far as Sony Ericsson is concerned) for K750i. IT was heavily marketed as an imaging solution on a phone though that role has probably been taken over by Sony Ericsson's new K800i Cybershot phone (which was revealed in CeBIT 2006). I've read some reviews comparing the quality of shots between K750i and Nokia N90's Carl Zeiss lens camera. The reviewer preferred the K750i's pictures compared to N90's. Unfortunately, I couldn't afford an N90 in addition to a K750i, to do a comparison (unless someone's willing to sponsor...anyone?!). However, the pictures I took looks great - when in daylight. It is an unavoidable fact that with little LEDs as photo light, the "flash" is inadequate for night shots - even some consumer grade cameras have poor night shots. (note though that the K800i mentioned earlier, will have a built-in Xenon flash, which will be interesting no doubt).
Using the camera is very easy - just turn it to it's side, slide the cover open, and there's a shutter button just located on the top right (when turned horizontally). Hold down the button half-way, and the camera will attempt to auto-focus (yup! There's auto-focus on this little thing!). Press down all the way and the picture is taken (with an accompanying sound that can't be switched off - even in silent mode). The camera has 4 modes - Normal, Panorama, Frames and Burst. These are usually standard on digital cameras, but not usually found on a phone camera. There's also options such as to adjust white balance, change image quality, change image size, macro mode and self-timer.
The camera is great for unexpected moments - how many people have digital cameras out of the pouch, switched on and ready to capture 'the' moment? Fact is K750i's camera is ready to go in around 2 seconds after you flip the cover open - the active slide overrides the keypad lock which is a great idea. However, the zoom buttons on the top left when held horizontally, are not comfortable to press nor easy to press. Furthermore, I never believed in digital zooms (which is what the phone can do up to 4x).
Sony keeps touting "QuickShare" feature on the phone - well - it's really not all that exciting. It just means one step to activate the camera, one click to take the picture and then immediately send it to anyone/anywhere using a variety of ways (e.g. MMS, Bluetooth, USB, Infrared). Most other phones have the capability to send photos via Bluetooth, MMs and Infrared as well I believe.
Need a Walkman(tm) phone? NAH!!!! Playing music with this phone is a snap and the sound quality is great with the right headphones (and not the bundled cheapo Sony earphones cum handsfree kit). The only reason why Walkman phones sound better is because they come with HPM-70 in-ear buds (the kind that you stuff the whole thing into your ear canal which I dislike). However, I easily purchased an adapter for the phone, one which has built in mic plus a 3.5mm jack, so that I can plug in my headphones (my new Sennheiser PX200!!!) for songs (AUD8.98 on eBay). Still, I'm a little disappointed that Sony Ericsson did not see fit to just include a 3.5mm jack in addition to the fast port.
The limitations of this phone with music are:
1. Lack of "Airplane" mode where all cellular functions are disabled (so that it can be used on the plane)
2. Relatively little memory - for a phone touted for camera and MP3 function, it only comes with 34MB built-in and 64MB Sandisk Memory Stick Pro Duo.
3. Radio only functions when earphones/handsfree adapter is plugged in (which isn't really all that big deal but still...)
It's really quite funny how I'm so excited about the features on this phone because really, I'm not a great believer of 'convergence' devices (as can be seen from my Dell Axim x50v review). Yet, this phone is a great (1)Phone (2)MP3 player (3)Everyday camera - Why not?!
In terms of memory support, this phone uses Memory Stick Pro Duo (which nowadays is priced around the same level as SD cards). A simple swap of the included 64MB card with a 2GB card will make the music and imaging functions of this phone more useful (since the included 64MB card really isn't enough for 2MP camera AND an MP3 player).
The K750i also has JAVA support - which means there are tonnes of programs/games waiting to be downloaded into the phone (refer to the last section of this review). Also it has something called "Playnow" which nothing but a preview service for ringtones and Mp3s...not all that great really.
Bluetooth is works like a charm - pretty standard really. I've only used it to transfer one video I took though and not for pairing with devices such as handsfree headsets. It also has the ability to disable 'discovery' - so the phone is pretty much 'undiscoverable' unless you want it to be.
Battery life!
The phone has a quoted battery life on standby of 400 hours and talk time of 9 hours. Whilst I did not measure these times objectively, I found myself needing to charge the phone every 3-4 days on normal usage (e.g. listening to MP3 rarely, a few phone calls, relatively heavy messaging, changing themes, taking photos, deleting files using file organiser). So I would say, pretty good battery life really!
Included software
Sony Ericsson included software "PC Suite" for syncing contact details, and basic PIM functions with Outlook, plus drivers for USB connection with the phone (sadly, the phone needs these drivers before the computer is able to access the Memory Stick as a removable drive.
Extras!
Sony Ericsson website allows for Themes creation - now you can make your own themes! However, it may be simpler to download FREE themes, games, ringtones and JAVA applications. Some places where you can find them are:
Themes: http://maestro.intramail.ru/files/thm/index.php?
Games: http://maestro.intramail.ru/files/java/index.php?page=2&sort=date
Games and Apps: http://k750i.net/index_en.php?p=aplikace
Everything: http://www.myk750.lasyk.net
Some of the themes that I downloaded were Matrix (which looks really nice as it is animated and matches with the black front panel of the phone), BMW Z3 (awesome car, looks awesome on the K750i) and many different abstract animations.
Sony Ericsson website also comes with updated Photoshop Starter Album V3.0.
There is also Opera Mini browser available for download - allows browsing of all webpages, and most pages are compressed in order to save data costs. It is a very useful JAVA application to have - and takes very little space. I have installed it on my phone and it loads quickly and looks good - unfortunately, my mobile operator does not support web browsing at the moment, so I cannot test how well it works.
Sony Ericsson also provides regular firmware updates via the phone, when connected to the Internet using the provided USB data cable. In order for this to work, a small program needs to be downloaded and installed from the Sony Ericsson website.
HACKS
(DISCLAIMER: Hacks invariably means unoffical, non-sanctioned software/firmware to modify your phone, which probably WILL invalidate your warranty and MAY damage your phone. I DO NOT recommend changing your firmware, especially without a good working knowledge of how they work. You are responsible for your own actions...!)
There are some websites if you searched hard enough that provides information on how to 'change' the firmware on the K750i to be that of W800i. This would obviously solve the problem of lacking airport mode on the K750i. However, after changing your firmware, you'll be unable to update your firmware via Sony Ericsson site for the latest updates. Technically, and theoretically (since I have not tried it, and will not recommend anyone to do so for no good reason) W800i and K750i are the same phones, with different coloured "shells" and a different firmware , with all other function are the same - so it IS possible to make your K750i into a W800i - but is it worth it?
Conclusion
I LOVE THIS PHONE! While it is not perfect (nothing ever is), it has many qualities which I like about it. I might have gone for the Motorola Razr V3 - but my previous experience with Motorala's E365 interface taught me a lesson. Sony Ericsson K750i is Highly recommended.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): AUD 360
Recommended for: Professionals On-the-Go - Internet and Email is a Must!
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Epinions.com ID:
guohao
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Member: Guohao
Location: Melbourne, Vic, Australia
Reviews written: 9
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
A student in a foreign country trying to make good with what little moolah available
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