Sony Ericsson D750i

...and she pointed to the Sony Ericsson D750i, which was also one of the most expensive on the wall. I was told that it would be free if I went on a contract, but as I said, I don't want to keep paying loads each month when I only send a few texts!

♥Features

So, the phone. The price on the wall was £229.99, but I got £25 off as they had a special promotion for that day, so I paid £204.99. It is available on contract, ...
...computer. If you have a Sony Vaio computer, you can take out the memory card, insert it into the Memory Stick Duo Adapter and insert into your PC/Laptop and open the files in the same way as you would with a USB stick.

I've installed the software on the CD that came with the phone. The CD contains "PC Suite for D750", which is the following software: Sync Station to synchronise your phone with Outlook, Image Editor to create ... more

I've had my old phone for about 4 years and I didn't really want a new one but it was starting to act up - it kept switching itself off at odd moments while I was trying to text or even just as I was switching it on! So I decided that it was time for a new phone, and I went to a couple of different phone shops to look around before I decided on this one. I wanted a phone with a decent camera that was on pay as you go because I hardly make any calls, so I don't want to keep paying loads each month for something I don't use!

So I had a look in a couple of different phone shops to compare types of phone and prices before I made my move. I finally went into a Phones4U store and asked the assistant for help - which phone had the best camera, with organiser, plays music etc on pay as you go, and she pointed to the Sony Ericsson D750i, which was also one of the most expensive on the wall. I was told that it would be free if I went on a contract, but as I said, I don't want to keep paying loads each month when I only send a few texts!

♥Features

So, the phone. The price on the wall was £229.99, but I got £25 off as they had a special promotion for that day, so I paid £204.99. It is available on contract, but only with T-Mobile as it is (supposedly) an exclusive model. The phone is silver with a light blue metallic trim, has a large colour screen, camera on the back with light and lens cover, shutter button on the right side with the zoom controls, on the left the music play button and memory card port. Aside from the usual 0-9, * and # buttons, there are 5 other buttons: left and right soft keys for selecting options that are shown on the screen, between these is the T-Zones button for direct access to the T-Mobile website, a return button for going to the previous screen when navigating through the menu, and the C button for clearing or deleting text. There is also a stalk control, which acts both as a button and a mini joystick for navigation through menus and playing games.

With the phone you also get a charger, memory card, memory stick duo adapter, sim card, top up card, manual, CD with software, USB cable, and headphones which also doubles as the aerial for listening to the radio.

On first use, you have to charge the phone for 14 hours, but after that you only need to charge for about 2.5 hours. For this amount of charging, I am supposed to get 9 hours of talk time! If only I had someone to talk to ;) The details also say that the phone can be on standby for 16 days! I assume this means only if you don't touch it at all, because although I haven't let the battery run down to zero to see how long it lasts (recharge about every 3 days) I'm sure it won't last for over 2 weeks if I keep using the camera and playing the games!

♥Menu

The phone has a graphical user interface (GUI) - which is a complicated way of saying it's got pictures for the menu options! The menu screen shows 12 pictures, as you can see from the picture of the phone at the top of this review. You use the stalk control to move between the icons and select the one you want. From left to right, top to bottom, the icons are as follows:

Row 1 is Mobile Jukebox, t-zones, File manager.

Mobile Jukebox allows you to search the t-mobile website for songs. T-zones takes you to the main t-mobile site for downloading games, screen savers, pictures, ring tones etc. File Manager lets you look at the files that are stored on the phone.

Row 2 is Media Player, Messages, Camera.

Media Player lets you play videos, music, and create playlists. Messages is where you send and receive texts and emails. Camera takes you to the camera ;-)

Row 3 is Radio, Contacts, Entertainment.

Radio cannot be used when the headphones are not plugged in. When they are, you can listen to the radio through the headphones or through the speaker in order to annoy everybody on the train. Contacts is your address book, you can store more than one number for each contact, associate a picture which will appear when that person phones you, save their email address and loads of another information. You can also set up a voice command to call them when you say their name. Entertainment is where you will find the games, photo editing software, music composer, video editor and voice recorder.

Row 4 is Calls, Organizer, Settings.

Calls is the records of calls made and received. Organizer is where you can find the alarm clock, calendar, write notes, tasks, timer, stopwatch, calculator, and dictionary in four languages so that you'll never be lost for words!

♥Camera

The main reason I bought the phone was for the camera, so I'll be telling you all about those features. The camera is accessed through the menu or by simply opening the lens cover. The camera is 2 megapixels, which gives quite a good photo. The camera has lots of different settings and features which can be accessed in the settings menu. You can switch between Camera and Video mode. Shoot Mode has 4 different options, Normal, Frame, Panorama and Burst .You can set the camera to add a frame to pictures, there are 24 different frames to choose from. You can take a panorama picture, the camera stitches 3 pictures together to create 1 long picture, you take the first picture, the camera shows the right hand side of that picture so that you can line up the next picture, and then you can line this up with the third picture. The camera stitches the three together and fades between them. Some great effects can be produced by taking 3 completely different pictures, have a look at the one I have uploaded! In Burst mode you can take as many pictures as you like one after the other - but you can only use the smallest file size and the camera makes an annoying sound constantly. Normally you have a choice of 3 picture sizes, Large - 1632 x 1224 pixels, Medium - 640 x 480 pixels, and Small - 160 x 120 pixels. The large size can't be sent by text, you have to re-size your pictures before you send them, the camera does this for you.

There is also several options that you would find in a normal digital camera: Macro mode, where you can take close-up pictures, Night mode for when it's dark, Self Timer, Light (light comes on permanently, is very bright but is not a "flash" as such), Effects, White Balance, Picture quality, time & date stamp, set file number, save to phone memory or memory card. There are 4 "Effects" available, Black & White, Negative, Sepia and Solarize.

Once a photo has been taken, you can edit it using the phone. Open the photo in the phone's editing software, and you can then add clipart or a frame to your photo, such as putting glasses on the person you have taken a photo of, or have a thought bubble coming out of their head! You can also do some other simple editing like changing light levels, or turn the picture into a cartoon or painting,

There seems to be a million ways to share your photos! You can send pictures to other people by pressing send once you have taken a picture and you can also add a text message, in this way you can send to other phones or to email addresses. Point the camera at a printer that is equipped with an infra-red receiver and you can print a picture without plugging the camera in (be prepared to have an aching arm from holding it there though as it takes about 5 minutes!). Using an optional "dongle" (Bluetooth USB receiver) you can send the pictures to your computer from your phone from up to 10 metres away. You can connect the phone to a PC (if you've installed the software) and download the photos to your computer. If you have a Sony Vaio computer, you can take out the memory card, insert it into the Memory Stick Duo Adapter and insert into your PC/Laptop and open the files in the same way as you would with a USB stick.

I've installed the software on the CD that came with the phone. The CD contains "PC Suite for D750", which is the following software: Sync Station to synchronise your phone with Outlook, Image Editor to create backgrounds and graphics to upload to the phone, File Manager to download and upload sounds videos and pictures, MMS Home Studio for creating animations to upload to the phone, Mobile Networking Wizard modem scripts to connect to the internet using your phone & computer.

♥Other stuff

OK, I'll have to remember that it's not just a camera, you can also use it to make calls and send text messages.

When making and taking calls, the sound quality is really good wither through the phone's speaker or through the headphones, you can also switch to speaker phone mode to listen to the call out loud, although this sounds a bit weird to the person on the other end as they get an echo of their own voice.

Texting is pretty easy. The phone has predictive text, as you are writing a text message, a list of possible words pops up and you can then select from the list instead of having to type the whole word in.

The phone also came with a game installed, a 3D driving game where you have to avoid the police while trying to find various places on a map within a time limit - this is very tricky to master, I haven't got past the first level yet! I've downloaded another game which is easier to use, and which was £5!!!! I won't be getting too many of those!

You can access the radio or media player instantly by pressing the play button on the side of the phone. You can download music (mp3s) from the t-mobile site or upload them from your computer and listen on your phone either through the headphones or the speaker. The speaker can play quite loud music, which has always annoyed me when other people do it so I won't be doing that to anyone else!

♥Summing up

I'm really happy with this phone, it has so many features I can play around with! I think I've listed all of them, but I keep on finding new things. I love the fact there's so many ways to move the pictures around and send them to people, it's exactly what I was looking for when I set out to buy! The phone is also really easy to use, everything is self-explanatory once you start using it. I would recommend this phone to anyone!

A final note: When I logged in to check my bank details after buying the phone, there was a message from the bank asking me to phone them... when I phoned them I got through to the Fraud line! They wanted to know it was really me that had bought the phone! Nice to know they're paying attention, but why didn't they say anything when I bought my camera which cost more than 3 times as much? Weird...
 

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