K850i, It’s Here!
Hooray, I have a phone again! Finally I am no longer the ’slightly less connected’ individual I have been all weekend… Unfortunately I forgot I didn’t have a phone to take pictures of the unboxing with, so you’ll have to make do without. Sorry. Guess that kinda shows how I never, ever went anywhere without my phone. And that tradition can continue now, woo! Needless to say the box is a very nicely designed sleeve arrangement, with the phone being the first thing you see and two boxes beneath containg the plethora of booklets and leads included with the handset. This works very well, if creating a lot of waste, and looks pretty good, with glossy, but thin, black card to hold everything together. Something from the ‘Inspired by Apple’ department I think…
Onto the handset though, kinda what you shelled out your four hundred big ones for, and my God, it’s beautiful. Maybe a little thicker than I imagined, but definately not fat, and a lot more slender and well formed than the K800i with it’s wacky lens cover. Here all we have is a slick candy bar design, with a massive, bright screen (including the ever useful light sensor, used to automatically adjust screen and button backlighting brightness) and lots of useful buttons. The lens for the five (count ‘em!) megapixel camera is here covered by a circle of glass, under which there is an automatic lens cover that smoothly hides away when you turn on the camera ‘mode’ of the phone. As I mentioned in my first thoughts, Sony have gone over the top in showing the user this is a camera and phone, not just a camera-phone. To do this they have added a dedicated on/off switch for the photo taking abilities of the unit, and basically forced the user to use portrait mode for the phone and landscape for the camera. Even so far as making the camera very blue-schemed and the phone white-schemed, with the LED lighting, and user interface, co-ordinating very well.
How to use the camera? Well, from my first playing around with this, it takes some very nice photographs with the flash and without, that appear nice and sharp and well exposed. The integrated auto-focus helper LED, tucked under the Xenon flash, helps greatly with this, and for a bit of fun can be (back in phone mode now) set to blink out ‘S-O-S’ repeatedly. It can also be set to ‘on’ permanently, or just for a minute, for example, to use the phone as a make shift torch. Brilliant bit of functionality there, well done Sony.
The movie making function is also very good and, with the LED light switched on, can take quite good videos indoors or in poor light. What really blew me away about this though was the night-mode, which although seeming like a cheap gimmick, actually works fantastically. It certainly made my bedroom seem flooded in light in the quick video I took earlier, all from a single 60W bulb on the ceiling. Great stuff, and always useful in a push.
Okay, so that’s the extra bit covered, now the phone. Well the usual Sony interface is here, which is no bad thing at all, as it’s a wonderful interface and with the gradual updates that have been applied lots of little annoyances have been ironed out. However, there are two significant changes from previous Sony Ericsson’s, which I personally love. Let me explain. Instead of the usual two regular button’s directly under the screen, here we have three touch buttons, and instead of the joystick we have come to know and love, we have four well spaced direction bars (I’m sure that’s completely the wrong term, but what the hell). What does this mean? Well, for example, instead of trying to press the middle of the joystick to select the middle option, you simply ‘touch’ the middle button. It works flawlessly, you just have to make sure you touch the screen (almost like a touch screen) and this thing registers your touch, and performs the action. The lack of joystick means you now have four bar-like buttons, around the two and five keys, that are very easy to press correctly and quickly, unlike the joystick.
Using the phone is much the same as using any other Sony phone… so amazingly simple and quick then. There are a few tweaks to the interface, such as new categories for numbers in the phone book, and making the Alarms function a main menu option rather than a sub menu. The change that threw me most was the moving of File Manager from the main menu to a sub option of Organizer (And before you say it, yes, it is the American-English spelling…). Took me a while to find it, but I still got there without the manual, so in my book they’re still the best phones in the world to use. Although the numerical buttons seem a little odd, they are in fact brilliant to use, each seperated nicely, and with the perfect amount of travel, making text messaging a joy to perform.
Another neat usability feature is the battery/SIM/memory card slots all being accessible from a sliding cover on the base of the phone, very much inspired by, you guessed it, a digital camera. No more removing the back of the casing and the battery and every other conceivable component to change the SIM. Now you just pop the base open and take it out, as you would a memory card in some other phones.
Well I think that just about wraps up my initial review, I will of course bring you more insight as I get to know the phone better, but until then you’ll just have to take my word that this phone is an awe inspiring piece of design and a marvel in technical design. What will Sony accomplish next??
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This is a really nice review. I’ve just review it on my site too. I think its a fantastic phone!
Have you noticed that when you press ‘up’ you sometimes (about 5% of the time) hit select accidentally?
The actual review is here:
http://www.thingy-ma-jig.co.uk/blog/23-10-2007/my-sony-ericsson-k850i
The link I posted as my website is the short URL for it which should redirect. Your website field was too short for the full URL.
Nice blog too btw… Although I notice your adsense on this page seems to be floating out of line.