Sony Ericsson K800i Cyber-shot

What can I say... Apart form that this product blew me away!

The last time I had a Sony Ericsson was at the time of the P900 which I thought it could not be topped in functionality and product quality. How wrong was I? This phone has everything one would want and maybe a few more…

Lets start with its main selling point:

CYBERSHOT - Definitely deserves this mark of camera quality. The quality is amazing. The functions that come with it are more that some dedicated camera manufacturers' offer let alone phones. All the usual suspects for in camera manipulation (B & W, Sepia, Solarise etc) are all there. K800i adds to this a succession shot that take a number of shots in sequence and lets you pick the best one, an Autofocus and redeye correction. This is the whole deal. At to this a proper 3.2 mgpix camera with the lens like any other Sony camera courtesy of Mr. Carl Zeiss this phone is worth getting only for the camera. I have included a picture taken with this camera and they look just great.

On the down side the camera lens cover that slides down feel a bit cheap and tacky. I would have really loved a metallic or pseudo-metallic material like front facia of the phone but just plastic with black veneer. Cybershot doesn't deserve to be engraved on that hideous bit of plastic, luckily is only small.

What makes up for it though a earth scorching xenon flash light. Impressive stuff! The picture quality dramatically improves when taking pictures at dark obviously but when compared to other flashes (including a not to old Nikon Camera) the difference is very noticeable. I do also like the flashing red light in order to avoid the red eye effect which I thought it is a nice touch from Sony Ericsson.
As mentioned before though the quality is impressive but still night pictures are a bit grainy.
The K800i though has another camera at the front in order to facilitate video messaging and/or 3G calls. It is not obviously as good as the main camera is only a VGA quality but it works a treat on 3G calls. A good feature though to have.

MP3 - If one is to be picky the absence of the walkman branding would deter urban cool users but to my opinion having Cybershot/Walkman branding would just look silly. Especially when this phone only lacks walkman written on it as it has everything that every Walkman phone has. It also has a little play/pause button at the top of the phone. Just avoid Hutchinson Mobile aka "3" branded phones as they put their own software which severely circumcises the phone capabilities.
On top of the mp3 player it comes with a RDS radio albeit not digital radio but still a good feature to have even it was a feature that Nokia brought out ages ago..

SOFTWARE
It also has a myriad of applications to play about with your music and your videos in the likes of VideoDj and MusicDJ which do exactly what it says on the tin. I.e mock about with your videos and songs.

Bundled also comes a voice recorder, handy when you want to record your mates being silly down the pub or just a makeshift Dictaphone for wannabe journalists.

The other feature I absolutely love is the Bluetooth remote control. You can use your phone to take over the control of you computer (if Bluetooth enabled) and use the joystick to move the mouse cursor and the buttons on the phone to add functionality. The other modes (comes with Presenter, MediaPlayer, Desktop) are handy for various reasons feeling slick while giving a presentation or changing the tunes playing through your PC while eating breaky)
GAMES
If your phone is unlocked (or bought from o2) you only get three games:

PICTURE QUEST
This is an addictive game in where you take the role of scuba-photographer in order to take pictures of different fishes which sounds boring enough but is quite entertaining actually. More interesting is the fact that once you get a high score you can unlock pictures to use all wallpaper. Cute cool that is (well if you like sea-life). A bit short though and finished this after 3 days, so never played again.

GOLF
Well this is actually Mini-Golf and you can chose from 4 characters. There are 3 different courses that can only be unlocked one after the other if you get higher enough scores. The Game is entertaining and unlike the first one you would like to play over and over again to finish with the lowest score under par.

MULTI-PLAYER TENNIS
This is the jewel of the games. Very intuitive, plenty of players to chose from, impressing graphics, intelligent gameplay, ohh and you can play against your mates over Bluetooth. Amazing…..But then again Sony knows a thing or two about Video Games…lol

MESSAGING - Texting is a bit fiddly or so I find as the buttons are a bit small having big hands is a bit of a problem but i will manage to get used to it eventually. I would like the t9 text to be a bit more intuitive and the txt to be a bit more accessible with a one touch button I would say.

ORAGANISING - The reason that I ditched my P900 in the past was that didn't fully sync with outlook as opposed to my MDA. The K800i doesn't even know what a problem is in that department. The contacts are downloaded all in the same format as outlook and also calendar notifications and notes are all synchronized. Perfect!! The representation and the menus are all pretty and fell like the new eye candy icons on the Royale theme for XP and the new vista. A nice touch from Sony-Eriksson…

CONNECTIVITY - Bluetooth, IR and USB they are all there but the neatest bit was the sync and the downloading of all my contacts automatically through my VAIO laptop. That was neat. On the other end I think the proprietary connection should have been ditched in favour of a mini USB. It is annoying should you lose the cable and cannot borrow one from the countless USB devices out there. Same goes for the earphones. A 3.5 mm jack would have been highly favoured.
One thing to mention here though….disable the firewall if you have one otherwise you will keep thinking why it doesn't connect.

GENERAL - I love the Sony's X-Black type screens, having a PSP and a Sony VAIO laptop that use these screens but boy they smudge like no other. It is a full time job trying to keep them nice and shiny. Ahh, if only they could stay smudge free so I would indulge myself in the crispiness that these screens offer.

The pseudo metallic front with aluminium "go faster" trim, definitely give it a touch of style and convinces you of a good build. Complete this with rubber coated antiskid rear, you know Sony-Ericsson has quality in the building materials.

This phone has some small flaws but like Cindy Crawford's mole they not annoying, they are there just to make the real beauty shine more.