Following an encounter between my T610 and some orange squash I had to change phone. I had been very impressed by Sony Ericsson in the past and found them better Nokias in the build quality, software, and style were all far superior. The K500i is also very cheap at a similar price to competitors less well-known and Sony Ericsson. I believe you can pick one up for around £80 on pay-as-you-go or from free on even the cheapest contracts.
---Features---
The biggest advancements between the T610 and the K500 is that the camera quality is vastly improved on the T610, the camera is only 0.3 megapixels whereas the K500 is over four times the quality with 1.2 megapixels. They have also incorporated a digital zoom which can zoom up to four times. The
screen is of good quality as with all Sony Ericsson phones with a good degree of crispness and a high number of colours. The screen is also very large, which is useful when you taking pictures or reading text messages or e-mails. The very has all the features you expect a modern phone including e-mail, multimedia messaging and GPRS Internet access. I find that the predictive text was better than most manufacturers’, because it incorporates your own words and the more often use the word, the higher up it gets in its listed suggestions. There is also speakerphone as is becoming industry-standard.
--- Games ---
The games on the phone are nothing to get excited about; there is a darts game, a fighting game and a 3-Dtennis game. These are fairly basic and will only entertain you if you are particularly simple yourself. It does, however, have Java, which means you can download better games instead.
--- Multimedia - Camera, Video, Sound ---
The camera quality, although it appears bad on-screen, is actually all right when you download the photos to your PC. They have solved the problem of the camera being slow to react and will take pictures, as soon as you press the button. It has a four times digital zoom which is useful because normally you have to be quite close to be able to take a picture. There is a mirror back of the phone and also a shutter, which means your lens doesn't get covered in dust or scratched. The camera also has some effects; you can change the image to black and white, negative, sepia, or solarized. These options are also available on video mode as is the digital zoom. Although the phone will originally limit video length to 9 seconds, you can override this and the camera will cope with all but the fastest images way doesn't have time to adjust and the image may appear pixelated. The problem is video is that the microphone isn't strong enough to pick up people more than two metres away, in effect.
The MP3 player is the biggest disappointment of the phone after the software and their standard ringtones are installed, you are left with only 11MB of free space and this means you have only got enough room to 1 or 2 tracks at most. You don’t have a hands-free kit either meaning that you can't even listen to them without buying one. I also think is little bit unfair, how they missed out a radio – the K500’s big brother, the K700 has one but they’ve missed it out on the K500. I don't think there is much difference between the two models apart from this though. Strangely the phone doesn't have Bluetooth so if you've already got a hands-free kit it will be useless.
---Software and style ---
The phone itself, although not ugly, is quite conservative for Sony Ericsson, although onscreen, it is attractive, with a variety of themes and colours are nice addition is that you can have moving backgrounds. Sony Ericsson sorted out the problem, where when the clock appears you can't see if you've got any messages as now there is little icon. The good feature is the quick menu on the desktop or may screen wage access your address book, call list, messages and Internet quicker than before. However, if you used to having a T610, then you might find it frustrating that the more button has gone. They now have two hot keys and star key for keylock and the hash key for silent mode. The phone has a calculator, notebook and organiser, but these aren't very exciting and are pretty much bog standard.
--- Conclusion ---
The worst things about the phone is that it doesn't have Bluetooth or radio, and the MP3 player can't be upgraded and the capacity is far too small. I think this is a great phone teenagers and adults alike looking for phones that step above standard. It isn’t the highest spec phone although it has enough features for all but the most demanding. It is of the usual Sony Ericsson quality, that I had come to expect of them. I think that if you know, what this phone offers, you won't be disappointed
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Advantages: This phone has great quality pictures and quite a good video quality for its price Disadvantages: The joystick may take a while to get used to, and I have yet to find a way to transfer data from the phone to a computer
bawney123 04.12.2005 ·
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Review of Sony Ericsson K500i
Feb 13th, 2005
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