Finally the k750i Post

Sony Ericsson k750i Review


A couple of months ago I bought a Sony Ericsson k750i from Expansys being it isn't not yet availble in the US you are warned that it comes with a UK power adapter, but the people at Expansys were nice enough to throw an adapter in the box that allows you use it stateside. So far my initial impression is pretty good, I got the phone Saturday afternoon waited a few hours for the battery to fully charge slipped in my SIM and began using it.


The first thing to mention it what I was looking for in a phone. I was hoping to find something that could reduce pocket clutter. I usually carry my iPod mini, a Cannon SD400 camera and my Nokia 6600 phone. Ideally I would be able to find a device that would a decent job at all three and from the specs and the reviews of the k750i it seemed to fit the bill. I'm going to break this down into four sections phone, camera, media player and the rest.

Phone

I've had several Sony Ericsson and Nokia phones over the last few years and I've learned what to expect from each company. A few of the things that encouraged me to switch away from the SE's a while back were that the T68i and T610 were a tad slow at times, there weren't a lot of cool programs for them (for example an ssh client (there is one for the k750!) or an IM client (this is now handled well via T-Mobile for AIM atleast which is what I use)) and the reception was horrible. There were also several things I liked about SE's that I in the past, the user interface, form factor.


From what I've seen from my own use the reception still isn't nearly as a strong as that of my Nokia 6600, but it is almost usable from inside the confines of my Faraday cage like condo. Incidentally T-Mobile has put a cool coverage tool on their site Otherwise the phone works as you would expect a phone to, the handset has clear sound and people didn't complain that I sounded strange. The sound is really good when using the headset attachment and the speakerphone is also decent. No complaints here. MMS and SMS text work fine, you can get the configurations sent you phone from the T-Mobile site.

Camera

While there is no way that the camera on the this phone comes close the quality of the Canon SD400, it does a damn good job. I really like way that it is activated by opening the slider door, which does a good job of protecting the lens from scratches and dust. It does have some features that I haven't seen on camera phones before, first off it focuses and even has a macro focus mode. It also has several different lighting settings and tags the images with EXIF data. Though from the some of the pictures I saw they still show a bit of the camera phone feel and don't work for shit in darker settings (they have the little line things that cut through the picture.

Media Player

The media player is what make this phone as far as I am concerned, while it doesn't have the space of an ipod mini, it is shorter and thinner and has a color screen (though I guess the nano beats it on that aspect now, but the nano-isn't a phone nor does it have a camera) The "media player" can either be controlled via the menu or even when the keypad is locked you can use the side button to play and and pause, and use the volume rocker to adjust the volume or hold down to navigate the tracks. In addition it can also play 3gp movies and you can use the tools available for PSPs to make movies that will be playable on the phone, the screen is very sharp and video actually looks good on it. Examples from the camera here

Overall

Overall I'm pretty happy with the phone, it syncs with my PowerBook it can go a day or two without a charge, and I don't need to carry around three things all of the time. The games on it are a pretty fun (especially if you get the ones for the w800 as well [which by the way the phones have the same "guts" just different casings]) The camera supports EXIF data so that importing into iPhoto is actually useful, though it doesn't have the smarts to do the thing where it knows which way you were holding the camera so you'll have to manually rotate the images. Also if you are a Mac user you need to apply the patch so that you don't get a kernel panic when you disconnect the phone from the USB connection (which by the way charges the phone and gives you access to the memory card, but not the phone's internal memory, but you can browse the phone's memory via bluetooth) I suggest picking up a larger memory stick and getting the HPM-70 so that you can use different headphones (the ones attached to the headset that come with the phone are a bit large, though sound fine) If you have any questions or comments leave a message below and I will try to get back to you on it.