Sony Ericsson K810i Review

The new flagship of Sony Ericsson is the new K810i ,which is basicly the same phone as the K800i.In a time when other manufactures are releasing phones with a 5 Megapixel camera Sony Ericsson is launching an improved K800i.From a K800i owners point of view there's no point in buying the new K810i.Sony K810i is an almost replica of the K800i housed in a different casing.

The first difference we can notice is the keypad which now has round buttons instead of the classical keypad. The numeric buttons are easy to use and since the keys themselves could not possible have backlighting, the key padding, the front panel itself glows with blue. The front panel is made of transparent plastic, unlike the K800i's metal.Above the display we can notice two functional keys.


The main speaker is different from the one found in the K800i , it lacks the metal grill and it doesn't look so attractive.On the front plate Sony Ericsson decided to use a plastic material and this wasn't a great decision because it picks up finger prints and grease more quickly than its predecessor.The phone measures only 104x46x17 mm being 2 mm slimmer than the k800i and it weights just 115 grams being one of the lightest phones in it's class.The display hasn't changed , remaining the same as the one in the K800i.It can show up to 262.000 colors at a resolution of 240x320 pixels,and it can display up to 8 lines of text and 3 service lines.


On the bottom we can find the Fast Port Socket which is used for the headset and the USB data cable.On the top end we can find ,like in all Sony Ericsson models the power button which can also change profiles in standby-mode.

On the right side the infrared port is housed as well as the volume button (which can also be used as zoom in the camera mode ) and the camera key.On the left side of the phone is the music button which if pressed launches the player,below the button is the memory expansion slot for Memory Stick M2.It takes around 2 hours for the phone to charge up from zero.

The battery used in the K810i is a a 900mAh Li-Pol battery,which can be found on all Sony Ericsson's latest phones.The producer claims that it can last up to 350 hours in standby and 7.5 hours in GSM networks and 2.5 hours of talking in UMTS networks.If you use the phone intensely by this we mean listening to music ,taking photos , around one hour of talking time a day you should prepare to charge the phone almost on a daily basis.

Let's talk a little about the K810's menu:

The main menu is a grid composed of 12 icons.If you press the "#" key you'll see a list of available languages and you can easily switch between them while typing

The user is able to have up to 8 Java applications launched simultaneously and switch between them. This is very usefull in case you use an ICQ mobile client, which should be constantly online, and at the same time want to play a Java-game or listen to music.Until now no other manufacturer has announced a similar solution.When you plug in the USB data cable you're asked to pick the connection mode(Access data just from the memory card manage the phone's memory or activate Print mode).The phone has USB 2.0 but the transfer speed is around 500 kb/s. Also the phone has available RSS feeds,the settings for this option are realy simple you just specify the title for feed and its address and the phone will do the rest.

Let's start with the Address Book.
Here you can store up to 1000 contacts ,up to 5 numbers can be assigned to each contact but the number of total phone numbers is limited to 2500 entries.This should be enough for most users. Beside phone numbers you can assign to each contact address, email, IM number, other contact information.It is possible to assign custom ring tone and photo to each contact. On incoming call the image and ring tone will be used. Date of birth field can be synchronized with Organizer, at that you will have a chance to set how many days prior to the event the handset should warn you.Up to 40 voice tags can be added but they are still based on the system that can be found on other Sony Ericsson phones while the competition has brand new voice recognition software.You can create a back-up copy of all entries in phonebook, which will be stored on the memory card.A new thing is that every video clip can be used as caller ID for any entry in the phonebook.

In the call list the phone can store up to 30 records all of them having the date and time. Icon that stands for call type (missed/received/dialed) are shown next to each entry.In the Messages section all things are standard they are the same as any Sony Ericsson phone.E-Mail client can send and receive e-mails, all sorts of encodings are supported. The emails can be stored on memory card.

Entertainment :
From this part of the menu you can easily access photos,music files and other media.Like all new SE phones this ones has the three applications MusicDJ, VideoDJ and PhotoDJ .

In the MusicDj application you can edit/modify music files ,create ringtones..etc. VideoDj is a more evolved version of the MusicDj it allows editing not only music files, but also adding images and signs. The resulting file is recorded in .3GP file which can be sent by MMS or Email.PhotoDj allows you to modify existing photos or just draw new ones,at the same time you can add different effects or remove red-eyes effect ,adjusting brightness..etc.This phone has only one preinstalled game - Tennis , of course you can install you're favorite games at any time. The sound can be recorded by the Sound Recorder application - it allows making clips that can be later used as ring tones. Phone calls can be recorded too, this is done from context menu, no time limits are set for the Sound Recorder,only the amount of available memory.
Organizer
Again here everything is pretty standard and it's just like any other SE phone.Let's talk at first about the calendar:Like in the W800 there are three ways of viewing the events on the calendar : weekly, monthly and daily.The next function is "To do list" which has two types of events: phone call and reminder.The device has a search function for the calendar : you type a word and the phone shows you all events that match that word.This feature is quite nice and also has a good speed.
Another feature found in the Organize is the Notes function.
The phone supports notes entry, though they are limited in length. The name of the note you see on the list will be first word entered.Like any other phone the K810i, has the Alarm Clock where you have access to 5 alarm clocks.Besides the ring tone for alarm clock you can select small note and picture, they will be displayed when alarm clock goes on. Any music file can be assigned as the alarm tone.

Then let's see the Stopwatch/Countdown-everything is standard here and is no different from any other mobile phone.
The phone also has an application for storing secret codes, which had a huge success in previous models.The last function of the organizer is the calculator which has standard functions.
All settings related to connectivity can be set from here, starting from WAP and GPRS to Bluetooth and Synchronization.The Bluetooth version is 2.0 and all profiles are supported including A2DP. The following Bluetooth profiles are supported:
• Dial-up networking profile
• Generic Access profile
• Generic Object Exchange Profile
• Object Push Profile
• Serial Port Profile
• Handsfree Profile
• Headset Profile
• Synchronization Profile
• Basic Imaging Profile
• File Transfer Profile
• HID Profile
• SyncML OBEX binding
• JSR-82 Java API
• A2DP

WAP


Standard browser for Sony Ericsson phones is NetFront which supports single-column web pages display and HTML. One of the best things about it, is the ability to create folders with files and bookmarks. The browser is considered to be one of the market's best offerings, but limited phone resources do it no favors.

The browser also supports RSS feeds allowing you to read the news or any other articles that you like. HTML pages that contain advanced formatting or exceed 500kb in their size will not be displayed
In the Settings menu you can find all settings related to the phone and everything here is pretty standard(change themes,set the clock,display settings..etc)


The user has 70 MB of available memory and a M2 memory card included in the retail box. The remaining memory is occupied by preinstalled applications, which cannot be wiped. Part of memory is dedicated to phonebook, call lists, etc.The phone can also be used as a storage device and there are no problems in copying on the phone files that can't be opened.

File sorting includes the following options: date, type and size. A new setting has appeard in the Image Gallery called Timeline, after you activate it you will see a bar on which months will be shown. And in lists you will see photos that were made during this or that month. You can make the list more detailed by pressing the same key twice, in that case you will see days instead of months, meaning that photos will be sorted in the following structure: list of images made on October 6th, for example.The handset comes with3 extra applications - PhotoMate (another picture editor ), FaceWarp (wraps faces), HP Print.

Sony Ericsson K810i is capable of storing up to 20 FM radio stations,also it is has RDS support and auto-tuning capability.The handset comes with a stereo-headset the HPM-70 ,the model has good performance it performs well in most conditions and the quality of the sound is realy good.

The phone is capable playing any 3gp file regardless of its size ,also it has ability to playback QVGA-clips at 30 frames per second, progressive fast-forward feature, landscape mode switcher, auto-scaling of high resolutions down to the display's size.A new feature is the possibility to get snaps of frames of the played back video which are saved as pictures.As for the audio player , the phone is capable of playing any mp3, AAC, 3GP and mpeg4 player file.You also have an equalizer with predefined settings like Bass, Voice, Tremble..etc.

Camera

The phone has the 3.2 megapixel camera found in the K800i,the only difference being the Fix Photo mode allowing you to apply sharpness boost filter right after taking a snap.If the phone has the same camera as the K800i it makes sense that it also has the same xenon flash as the K800i which is one of the best available on the market.

 

Below you have two photos taken with the K810i :

(click on a image to enlarge)

Conclusions


Sony Ericsson K810i has been launched as an addition to the K800i rather that being it's successor.The phone has good performances , the camera takes good quality shots,the reception is fine as well as the display which gives a clear and crisp image.All in all the K810i is a good phone with an interesting design and it's likely that the sales will be as good Sony Ericsson expects them to be.

Below you can watch two videos about the new Sony Ericsson K810i :
Source: www.mobile-review.com