I got my new phone a few days ago, and decided to write a small review of it. I got it as an upgrade on my contract (And got an awesome deal on my contract at the same time) from O2. Being my first Sony Ericsson I was interested to see how it shaped up to all my previous phones which were Nokias.
First Impressions
Out of the box the phone is pretty tasty looking. The buttons seemed well spaced out, and the large screen is of a very high quality. It feels robust, despite being light. This is probably due to the sheer amount of componentry packed into it. A lot of people have complained about the lack of lanyard on this phone, a point I don’t understand as the phone has a lanyard mount on the bottom right corner. The don’t provide a lanyard, but surely people must have something that would do lying around! I scratched my screen lightly ont he first day I had the phone, so be careful when putting it in your pocket with keys. I’ve ordered some screen protectors for mine, as I don’t fancy having to polish scratches out on a regular basis.
Keypad and Buttons
At first using the small joystick rather than a thumbpad seems rather fiddly, and I often found myself moving let or right while trying to click it. You soon get used to this though, and develop a more subtle touch. The interface of this phone is fantastic. A simple icon style menu leads you to all the main functions, and customisable shortcuts make getting to your most often used features very fast. Texting was slightly different from a Nokia, but once I turned off the rather annoying ‘T9 Spelling Suggestions’ menu that kept popping up, I got on with it a lot better.
On the left side of the phone is a rubber cover that protects the Memory Card Duo slot from dust, and the ‘Music’ button. Pressing this takes you into the phones inbuilt media player. On the opposite side there is a ‘+’ and ‘-’ button. These are used for adjusting volume on calls and media, changing tracks in the media player, and operating the digital zoom of the camera.
Camera
The camera of this phone was by far the most appeal feature of this phone for me. Protected by a sliding cover on the back, it is kept free of the grease and dust that often afflicts other camera phones. When the phone is on standby opening this cover starts the camera mode, and closing it again returns the phone to standby. The 2 Megapixel sensor is backed up by a fairly powerful LED flash which gives a good flooding of light in dark situations. A menu shortcut lets you use this as a torch if you wish. Options on the camera include a nightmode, several different resolutions, and a macro mode. The pictures outputted are impressive, especially where the ambient light is good. I’ve put an example photograph using the macro mode here
Accessories
The phone comes with a wired headset, a USB cable, a charger, and a 64MB MemoryStick Duo card. The Headset is a basic affair which I am going to mod to allow me to plug any earphones in, rather than using the cheapish earbuds provided. I was slightly disappointed with the charger, which uses the same connector as the USB cable. It seems slightly flimsy for plugging in and out on a regular basis.
Connectivity
The connectivity options on this phone are pretty comprehensive. Triband, GPRS, Bluetooth, Infra-Red and USB. The Quickshare features make it super easy to send and receive media between Sony Ericsson phones. The phone plays a variety of music and video formats, and has reasonably good sound quality considering this is not the primary consideration for a phone.
Rating
Overall I’m very happy with this phone. It has a few niggles, but these are fairly easily resolved. Definitely a 10/10!
Update
After looking a few forums and from the comments and emails I’ve had on this review, it seems a few people are rather unsatisfied with the Mac compatibility claims of this phone. The only issue I am having is that iSync on my Mac doesn’t find my phone on the USB cable. Other people have iSync working fine on bluetooth though. The other issue is that the firmware cannot be updated without a Windows PC, so all those with a Mac or Linux system are left out in the cold. Hopefully this situation will be resolved soon.
