K750i

Took receipt of my new phone today – Sony Ericsson K750i. Since getting a T68i I can’t see past Sony phones – the T610 was next and now the K750i. I’ve only had a few hours to charge and play with it but already it’s very impressive and certainly the most feature rich phone I’ve owned. What wins it for me though is the connectivity.

Out the box you get the following kit supplied as standard:

Usually a phone will come without a memory card or the USB cable so it was nice to see both included.

First thing to comment on is the look, feel and weight of it. Similar to my T610 although slightly weightier and thicker due to the camera cover and also the fact it’s a 2 mega pixel camera. The buttons feel good although they are more awkward for texting than the T610 – thankfully not something I do much off unless it’s Jim at 1:30 in the morning again. The screen is great – clear, colourful and just the right size for me. I still like the menu layouts of the Sony Ericsson and the newer version is better than ever. There is a home bottom which takes you to shortcuts and also the latest ‘events’. Events are anything that is new since the last time you used the phone – missed calls, answer phone, text messages. Very smart and allows quick access to the info that matters. Shortcuts are also configurable allowing you to get to your most used features easily.

Most important for a phone is the audio quality, the ability to see the network and the battery life. The last one I can’t comment on yet but the audio quality is good – on a par with the T610 and the network seems to work just the same as my old phone so no loss in functionality there.

New features that ‘will sell’ the phone are the 2 Mega pixel camera and also the media playing functionality. The camera is very impressive for a phone camera. I’ve put some sample photo’s up in the Gallery but suffice to say this is the first camera phone I’ve owned that allows me to take usable pictures. The phone has a macro mode, night settings, a light (which is bright enough to help close-ups), 4x digital zoom (what a waste – don’t use it anyone please), panoramic mode allowing you to stitch images together and Burst mode which allows you to take 4 pictures in quick succession. All these options are presented in menu’s that are exactly the same as Sony camera menu’s – smart. You can also take a video clip – by default these are 10 seconds long so that you can send them on but you can set it to unlimited which will keep recording until you run out of room. The Sample file here is only 400k for around 25 seconds (right click and save as – should work in Quicktime).

The phone is also an mp3 player and a radio. Plug in the hands free kit and you can listen to mp3’s (which you can use as tones – nae luck Jamster) stored on the phone or on the memory stick (which can be up to 1 gig in size). Quality is very nice and it can go quite loud – louder than the iPod. The radio is also very neat and works really well – it’s something I always missed when I was listening to the iPod but now I’ve got that option via the phone. If you don’t have an mp3 player you could easily use this instead.

Connectivity is the winner for me with this phone. It has Infra-red and Blue tooth but including the USB cable in the box makes a big difference. Plug in the cable and the memory card appears as a drive meaning you can drag and drop mp3’s, photo’s etc with ease. Also the phone comes with software that allows you to browse the phone contents and add/remove via the pc as you wish – far easier than trying to manage files on the phone. There is also new synchronising software that keeps Contacts, Tasks, Appointments and Notes in synch with Outlook on the pc. All automatic, all out the box. I prefer this to blue tooth which I think is too buggy and clunky, certainly in Windows XP. The fact that it’s pro duo also means I can share images between the phone and the PSP which is nice – some digital convergence at last.

You can also do all the other things you would expect – Internet browsing, MMS and e-mail, Java Games (there’s a nice looking tennis game that comes with the phone – playability sucks though) and as mentioned earlier all through a nice easy to use interface – although animated buttons are starting to annoy slightly.

All in all a top phone which I would recommend even after a few hours. There’s a few sites saying that the software is buggy but I don’t know of a phone that’s come out in the last 3-4 years that didn’t have bugs. What is nice is that I don’t have to find a shop to update the firmware – I can do it myself via the Sony site and the usb cable. And it hasn’t crashed once on me…yet.