Sony Ericsson K750

I've had this phone a couple of weeks now, and feel comfortable enough with it to break it down for you all.

I paid £20 for an upgrade to this phone on my existing 200minute O2 Contract.

Camera
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This is the item that most people will be considering the phone for- finally a camera that can produce half decent pictures built into a phone?

Indeed- the quality of the 2mp shots are ...
...Sunny days, cloudy days, inside and occasional night shots, and have been very pleased with the results.

Firstly, I'd say the sliding cover is a lifesaver for the picture quality. Anyone with a phone like my old Nokia 6230 will know that a pocket phone can easily acquire scratches on an unprotected lense. The cover also serves the dual function of turning on the camera, which is great.

The camera suffers from the typical ... more

I've had this phone a couple of weeks now, and feel comfortable enough with it to break it down for you all.

I paid £20 for an upgrade to this phone on my existing 200minute O2 Contract.

Camera
-----------
This is the item that most people will be considering the phone for- finally a camera that can produce half decent pictures built into a phone?

Indeed- the quality of the 2mp shots are quite superb. I've taken pictures in varying lighting conditions-- Sunny days, cloudy days, inside and occasional night shots, and have been very pleased with the results.

Firstly, I'd say the sliding cover is a lifesaver for the picture quality. Anyone with a phone like my old Nokia 6230 will know that a pocket phone can easily acquire scratches on an unprotected lense. The cover also serves the dual function of turning on the camera, which is great.

The camera suffers from the typical problem of small lense auto-focus type cameras in that it is not always clear what in a shot the camera has decided to focus on. I found it was worthwhile screening the shots before printing them as on the tiny screen, it's not always obvious if you've got a slightly blurred picture or not. Thankfully in good lighting conditions, the shots tend to come out very sharp.

Night shots are a not that great-- the camera has a very impressive built in pair of white LED's which operate as a flash. It's a nice idea, but isn't perfect, and I'd recommend the flash attachment if you don't want the picture to become fairly grainy. Also, I found subjects were a little shell-shocked by the light, which I think needs to be turned on first before it works as a flash, so the subject has to face a bright pair of LED's while you ready them for the shot.

The phone has a sturdy side slot for a memory stick duo, and they supply a 64mb card as standard. This stores something like 80 photos, so more than adequate for picture taking.

One thing to note- when printing shots for example in Boots, don't forget to take along the "duo to normal" memory stick converter, as most shop machines only take the larger version. Thankfully a converter is provided as standard within the package.

The phone shots printed produce excellent 6x4's and I've even had a few 8x6's done and have been pleased with the results (good for album pics if not "art" photography). Frankly, office colleagues have been astounded with the quality considering it's a phone. It's certainly as good as any small lense non-zooming 2mp camera out there!

The phone also does standard video clips albeit at a tiny resolution, and I can't say I've used it much-- more of a toy although they do provide an application on the phone that allows you to join several clips together to send as an MMS, add sounds, titles etc.

Calling
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I find the normal calling volume to be excellent- clear, and with plenty of scope for "more volume" if you want to blast your ears. Pressing the little joystick on the face downwards brings up the phonebook as standard, and it can be searched easily. It's also reasonably intuitive to find and save a number from a text, call it, sift through missed calls and call the person back.

I won't go into too much detail here, but suffice to say I was comfortable with all calling elements of the phone within about a day or two.

Contacts
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Very nicely done- You can add several numbers for a person, and the contacts page has a tabbed interface- an idea that crops up a lot in the phone. Effectively using the joystick going left or right brings up alternative pages of information you can fill in for a contact including address, company name etc etc. Very complete and probably more than most people will ever need or use.

The good thing here is that default page remains uncluttered, and yet there is still scope to add as much detail as you'd like.

Ringtones/Vibrating
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The built in ones are horrible-- frankly, I stuck to a standard ring-ring until I could port my "U2-Beautiful Day" from my old Nokia across. The vibration when ringing is strong enough to feel and probably marginally better than my old Nokia.

The vibrating is on by default when in Silent mode, accessibly by holding down the # key, which makes it very easy to access.

Reception
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I think this is more of a network issue-- I've found it to be very good (O2) but no different to my last phone.

Texting
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Texting is fair on the phone. By default it doesn't let you type more than 1 sms worth of text, but some reading of the manual soon sorted that out. It takes getting used to if you're a Nokia person as the space key is at the bottom right instead of left.

Annoyingly switching through the word options in a intellitext typing mode involves using the joystick as opposed to a more closely located key as on the Nokia-- In practice I've found I've just gotten used to it.

Overall, having had a T68 years ago, I'd say that SE's texting technology (T9) is very mature now- works quickly and predictably when you're used to the key layout.

When a text arrives, it appears as an "event" on the front screen. That event page can contain Calendar warnings, Alarms, Texts, Missed calls, and it usefully provides a time next to the event so you can easily see for example a missed call, followed by your answering machine, followed by a text.

Calendar
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Perfect. Syncronises with Outlook, through the kindly provided USB cable. Incidentally this must be one of the first non-3g phones on the market where the supplier actually provides a USB connector cable as part of the initial package!

You can set alarms for calendar entries, to go off at any point in time (including previous day, which is my favourite trick).

There is no default calendar shortcut, but pressing the joystick to the right from the main screen will bring up a dialog asking if you want to assign a shortcut to that action (which I did), so you can use that little joystick to bring up the radio or calendar etc etc.

As a standard interface feature, most pages on the phone have a "more" button that will give you more options. Through that, calendar can be searched, you can do things like specify that the reminder will not apply if the phone is off (or will if you prefer).

Again, the focus seems to be to provide a simple, one size fits all interface for each page, with the ability to do more nitty gritty stuff if that's your thing.

Games
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Here comes the Wow factor. 3 games come with the phone.

Aero Mission 3- More of an impress the friends than really playable game-- it's a 3d flight-sim that looks incredibly impressive (watch your friends blanche when they see the horizon tilting for the first time!) Not playable though-- too difficult to kill the enemy fighters and I gave up on it for enjoyment

PuzzleSlider- A thoroughly annoying implementation of the standard slidey-block type puzzle. Why is it annoying? Because you have to click on the piece you want to move, and then move the cursor to the empty space, then click again! There is only one space that it can go to, so why not have it simply move to it when clicked? Hard to explain, but those who have the phone or know the game will know what I mean....

and
Super Real Tennis-
I groaned when I saw this game, but, this is the most playable little phone game I've owned to date (besides PuzzleBobble!) Frankly an astounding little 3d tennis game, quite difficult to master but with great depth for a mobile game. Fancy running up to the net and hoping he won't lob over your head? Miss hit the ball, and have the opponent smash it cross court, or run for the ball and desperately dive to make the shot. It is great but tough.

Overall, not bad games-- but one caveat-- expect the 3d games to drain your battery! You can practically see the lines drop off while playing the 3d games...

Radio
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Above average mobile radio-- with some standard features. It supports RDS which for the uninitiated means that it picks up the radio station name, and can track alternative frequencies that the station broadcasts on, switching between them to get the strongest one. Overall, definitely better than my old Nokia 6230's radio-- easier to pick up the stations and easier to get a strong enough signal to maintain good stereo listening.

It does require the (provided) headset to function as an aerial, but I think this is pretty standard these days.

Connectivity
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Bluetooth-- works reasonably well, and thanks to the supplied USB cable, you can store normal files on your phone as though it was a USB key! It's not that quick to transfer files but still is an option.

The only issue I've had with bluetooth is when trying to send the 600kb 2mp pictures to my PDA-- it seems to send a smaller version of the file (and oddly cut the transfer only 80kb in the 600kb file). Luckily my PDA takes memory sticks, so it's not really a problem.

IR works as usual (badly) but that's only due to the limited range/bandwidth of IR. Still good to have as an option if you want to transfer contacts from an older phone.

Music
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The phone can play MP3 and AAC but won't typically play for example songs from iTunes (yes, I suppose that's because iTunes is pretty much locked for Apple). I've been able to burn the iTunes songs to CD and then rerip the CD's but it is frankly too much hassle to do regularly.

the memory is not really adequate for it to function as a media player, but by buying a 1gb or 2gb memorystick duo pro, it could easily replace your iPod mini.

The sound quality through supplied headphones is surprisingly good and with the ability to change the equaliser and set up playlists, it is certainly as functional as any MP3 player out there.

In addition, it does one thing that an iPod cannot do-- it can make music out loud through the speaker. This is remarkably loud, and means your favourite chart tunes can be used a loud and useful ringtone if necessary.

Alarms
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Yes we all use mobiles as alarms these days... The alarm on this phone is great-- you can set a recurring alarm that only goes off Mon-Fri, and leaves you in peace for the weekend. This in addition to a standard alarm that can run in parallel (for example if you want to time your oven roast)

Other general points
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There is a shortcut button above the joystick that gives you direct access to most of the useful functions.

The light is fantastic as a flashlight, and can even be set to blink the SOS signal!

Silent mode is accessed by holding the # key down-- so easy to access.

Negatives
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Battery life if you're an interminable gamer like myself is not that great. I've had as little as 2.5 days out of it, although without playing endless rounds of Super Real Tennis, it would extend to as long as 4 or 5 days. Being as addicted as I am to Tennis, I may never know!!

The interface takes a little getting used to for Nokia-heads, but I'd say that once you understand the basics, and get used to it, it is very logical, and you find it easy to explore and to find out how to do what you want to do.

Conclusion
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That's about as much detail as I can give for now. Overall, I'm still exceptionally pleased with this phone and have impressed other people into considering it for their next phone, with ease. The camera element alone makes it stand out amongst its (current) peers and given that you can upgrade the memory stick , I think it's definitely worth trying to get hold of, especially if you're due an upgrade. Top notch. 

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