Sony Ericsson K510i

...and even at low prices, Sony does not compromise on quality.

Before we start, I'm not sure whether this makes any difference but
my phone is from and on Virgin Media.

''' The design.''' _Sleek and functional_
This phone is an obvious candy bar and is a good size for slipping into your pocket. The 40mm x 93mm x 15mmm design makes it feel and sit nice in your hand, and the edges are curved so it's not such ...
...
As with most Sony Ericssons, the phone has a little joysitck in the middle to navigate the menus by either flicking it up, down left or right or pressing it down to select . Sometimes simple features on technology are the best and I find the joystick is once of those times. It takes away all the infuriating difficulty of finding which part of the arrow key to press on other phones. However I have heard the joystick does eventually break and ... more

I've had this phone about a year and a half and even at low prices, Sony does not compromise on quality.

Before we start, I'm not sure whether this makes any difference but
my phone is from and on Virgin Media.

The design. Sleek and functional
This phone is an obvious candy bar and is a good size for slipping into your pocket. The 40mm x 93mm x 15mmm design makes it feel and sit nice in your hand, and the edges are curved so it's not such a block of cuboid like other Sony Ericssons

The number keys are a bit awkward for big fingers but for normal sized fingers they're fine. The design also features a shutter release (for the camera) on the left side and a hot key button on the right. I find the shutter release button really useful as it enable you to turn the whole phone horizontal so it's as if you're holding a normal camera. It's also useful if you're taking the occasional picture of yourself but I don't normally take that many.....=] I don't really use the hot key button that much but it it brings up the shortcut menu and so you access features faster (more on that later).

As with most Sony Ericssons, the phone has a little joysitck in the middle to navigate the menus by either flicking it up, down left or right or pressing it down to select . Sometimes simple features on technology are the best and I find the joystick is once of those times. It takes away all the infuriating difficulty of finding which part of the arrow key to press on other phones. However I have heard the joystick does eventually break and this has been a widespread problem with this design but mine isn't showing any signs of breaking just yet.

The top buttons on either side are used to select, sometimes options appear on the sides, but when they don't appear, the left button is the selecting button ( giving you the option of either pressing the joystick or the top left key) and the right button isn't really used. I really like this arrangement because, as you hold the phone in your right hand, your thumb feels better extending and pressing the left button rather than being scrunched up all the time on the right. This is a bit anti-lefty, but for the majority it works out better.

The lower right hand button is used for canceling or going back, which is useful for the same reason as above, and the right hand button is only really used for ending calls.

On the reverse side is the speaker which is played through rather creatively arranged holes on the upper right side. I like the speaker arrangement because, as well as the design of the speaker actually adding to the sleekness of the design, when you place the phone on a surface the sound is somehow amplified (useful for when you want to quickly blast some tunes out at home) There's also the camera on to the left and a round reflective circle diagonally up to the right which acts as a not very accurate mirror for self portraits (another use for that increasingly useful exterior shutter release). I'm not that impressed with the mirror as it looks a bit cheap and the surface is curved so it's a bit like looking at yourself in a a very small spoon which doesn't really help you take very accurate photos.

All in all, I really like the design as it's sleek, but also functional. The only possible downside is that the silver rim (going round the sides of the phone) when dented, sort of flakes off to reveal a black underneath.

The Phone itself.

The overall feel of the phone is good. When in a call , it's easy to hear what the other person is saying, and it's easy to answer the call, but hard to accidentally end it, which has been a problem for me with other phones. Also, the phone sits comfortably in your hand and feels good on your ear even after a long period of time.

Texting has the option of predictive text or normal button pressing, and it's got loads of useful extra characters like accents and basically anything you can find on a QWERTY keyboard. I found this especially useful when I was texting my french exchange, but otherwise I didn't really use it. You can also include a lot of extra items like pictures, sound effects, animations and you can also send files you have made in VideoDj (more on that later). Don't get too carried away though, the pictures aren't photos; they're just black and white cartoons depicting different emotions and they only leave you nine characters left in a regular text message.

The sound effects don't take up much characters but they sound as if they've come straight out of a cartoon. I just don't really use them when I'm writing normal texts because i just want to get it done and sent.

I've used the animations a bit more though, but I think they only show up on other Sony Ericssons. When they do show up, they are quite funny and there is a good selection of them (angry, happy,sceptical). But I do think that the only key to the success of these if Sony Ericcsons are widely used, and this may not be the case in the future.

The Features.

The Camera - An OK basic camera but some problems with adjusting the colours to different environments, 4x zoom only available on very small photos and problems converting video files

A good point and shoot which has some quite cool features. I like the black and white and sepia effects, and although I didn't really find them particularly useful they were still good for playing around with.

I like the idea of the different shoot modes,( you can choose from normal, panorama, burst and frames)
'Panorama is useful and lining up the shots is made easier by some small dots which kind of overlay the last part of your last photo onto your next one. However, it doesn't really work well if it's in a dark conditions and it doesn't really work if you're in bright sunlight and can't see the screen that well.
Burst' takes four photos at a times at a reasonably fast pace, but it takes three seconds to get going and by then the moment has usually passed
The 'frames' option is basically some picture frame laid over the top of the photo. I haven't used them that much, but there's a good selection of twenty to choose from (monkey face, film reel, wanted poster etc)

I have taken some good photos with the camera but it does have some letdowns. I don't like the fact that you can only have no shutter sound when the whole phone is in silent mode and the other sounds can get quite annoying( the choices are an over-dramatic camera click, a can opening sound and two other laser type sounds).

Don't get fooled by the 4x digital zoom either, as that's only available on the small, 160 x 120 pixels, photo size (that's a bit bigger than an msn display picture). The medium size photo is is only marginally better than the large size because the medium has a 2x zoom (you can't zoom on the large size)

I also found that the lens took quite a while to adjust to outdoors, and often (even when in bright sunshine) the pictures have come out quite dark and I ended up having to edit them to make them brighter. This really kills the panorama shooting mode, as sometimes the camera adjusts itself as you're taking the different pictures, and I have ended up with people's skins coming out a geisha white.

However, the phone is ok for taking the occasional video, although the phones memory restricts you from taking any long films of anything. The video really has got a 4x zoom in both shooting modes (high quality and picture message) but if you want to have a phone you can take a good video with, I would recommend something bigger like the K800i because of it's improved memory and also because I've experienced problems converting the 3gp video files into something that windows media player and movie maker will actually play and that model has the conversion application on it already.

The Media Player (and earphone) - easy to use, but lack of memory stops it from doing it justice.

I found this really easy to use as you are able to have play lists as well
as view your music by individual track and artist. It plays video too, but I've had some problems with this and it doesn't seem to delete videos from the media player either,but this can be fixed by deleting from the folder.

I also like the simplicity of the controls. You can change the song by just flicking with the joystick and you can also lock the phone when it's in the media player, so you can just press play, lock, slip in your pocket and not worry about the music changing.

The volume goes quite loud (loud enough for playing as background music with friends) and it does do quiet quite well too. It does come with a car headset (one earphone) but I don't find it that good quality (and it keeps falling out my ear) so I don't use it much.

The only possible downside to the media player is that it's an application on a phone that hasn't really got the memory to do it justice. A media player needs collection of songs to be useful in managing them but you can only fit about five songs on this phone so it isn't really that much of a necessity (although it would be harder to play even a small collection of songs if it wasn't there).

VideoDj, PhotoDj, SoundDj and Record Sound - The Dj's nice to play around with, but not that useful.

In a nutshell, the Video, Photo and Sound Djs are basically applications which play around and create media on your phone. The VideoDj is basically stringing photos and video together. SoundDj is basically ring tone creation using preloaded bits of music and PhotoDj is just a more awkward, simplified version of paint.

The 'Dj's aren't particularly amazing, and at first it's a bit hit and miss when you try and work out how each application works I think the the SoundDj was the best, but I don't really use the sound files after vI've created them.

The record sound has a range of about 3 metres if someones talking normally, but at that point it does get quite quiet. The playback quality is quite good, but it isn't really anything special.

Games MinigolfBT and QuadraPop

Both games are powered by Java and out of the two, I find QuadraPop the most entertaining. It basically a mix between Tetris and Connect4, where you have to put four same coloured gems together for them to disappear, and the game is made more difficult by the gems falling faster.

I found the MiniGolfBT a bit hard and fiddly. There's different courses, and you can control where the ball goes by either the joystick or the number buttons. However, when you've got the direction sorted, there's fiddly gauges which control the power and acceleration and if you get it even the tiny bit wrong the ball goes off course which is annoying. Because of this, I got bored of the game really quickly, and I didn't really play it at all after the first few goes.

Calendar and Organiser

The organizer consists of a task list, notes, alarms, calculator, a timer, stopwatch, a code memo (a pin number protected place to store valuable info) and three applications (A world clock, a news reader -goes online to get headlines- and face warp - changes pictures of people so they have big chin etc-)
I find the Alarm most usefully as you can set it to recur every day or once a week and you can choose the sound alert from the sounds on your phone. The calculator and timer is quite useful too, but when the timer runs out it has a quite annoying trilling alarm.

There's also a synchronization option too, but I haven't ever used it (I believe it's something to do with synchronizing with an internet server).

The calender does what it says on the tin. You can create appointments and set the date, time, duration, location and when, if ever, you want to be alerted. I've only ever used this feature for birthdays and even then I've know anyway so I can't really give a good judgment.

Connectivity, Technical Stuff

The whole phone comes with a a cable to connect to your PC, and a disc with some programs to manage your media. This includes an Adobe program from your photos, a computer to phone music transferrer and a MMS creation program. The music transferrer is good, but it's success is limited by the phone's annoying lack of memory. As you can only fit about five songs on the whole phone, a music transferrer isn't really needed. But, like the media player, it would be harder to transfer the songs without it so it's useful in this respect. The PC cable is also good in the fact that if you put it in the phone mode is charges from your computer, which I've found is a lifesaver solution for a lost or broken charger.

The Adobe program is ok, use Picasa instead because i found it's a bit easier to work. It was good little program to work though, and over time you do accumulate quite a lot of photos and it is really useful to be able to download and manage them effectively.

All in all

Overall, the phone is amazing value for money if you want a little phone-text-communicate device, but when you start looking towards the more complicated features, the phone just hasn't got the capacity to support them. If you want a cheaper version of higher models, don't look here. Get a phone with a pro duo memory stick slot and go from there.

At the end of the day, this phone is absolutely amazing in it's own little right, but as soon as you start comparing it to other phones (particularly Sony Ericssons) it just doesn't hold it's own. 

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