Sony Ericsson K800 is one of the handsets we were so anxious to test that we could hardly wait for the phone to be brought in the office. Its highly advertised Cyber-shot camera made us as restless as kids on Christmas morning. Once we got it and before we started working on this review we spent a good deal of time experimenting with the exciting 3.2 megapixel camera. Not that we haven't seen a better camera, no! The thing is that this good camera just happens to be a good mobile phone, too.

Sony Ericsson K800 official photos

Key features:

• A 3.2 megapixel Cyber-shot™ camera with autofocus
  
• Xenon flash
  
• Integrated image blogging support
  
• Memory card slot with hot swap functionality
  
• 3G support with video calls
  
• Great MP3 player
  
• FM radio with RDS
  
• Infrared port
  
• Bluetooth stereo support (A2DP)
  
  
• Multi-tasking support
  

Main disadvantages:

• A bit oversized
  
• Somewhat uncomfortable keypad design
  
• No EDGE or Wi-Fi support (K790 has EDGE, but no 3G)
  
• Records video in ancient QCIF (176 x 144 pixels) resolution only
  
• Memory Stick Micro™ (M2™) card type is still very new and unpopular
  

Sony Ericsson falls in the market niche of highly functional devices for which size is not that important. It's a camera phone and the devices we like to call camera phones are phones that boast a digital camera that's on par with the low-end digital cameras on the market. Speaking of camera phones, nowadays we see an increase in the maximum image resolution. We see implementation of new features which not long ago belonged to the world of the digital cameras only - such as specific scene modes, xenon flash, auto focus. Recently announced Nokia multimedia phones would even have optical zoom. The camera functionalities of the mobile phones are becoming increasingly important since the battle for the ultimate multimedia device continues - a device that can take great pictures, capture hi-res video, one that plays high-quality music, one that you can browse photos or play games on, one that helps you organize your daily schedule and browse the Internet, and in the same time functions equally well as a regular phone. Right about now buying a new mobile phone is always a bit of a trade-off on some of those things. There is no perfect phone.

In today's review we are going to take a look at a handset that makes a big stride in the quest for the ideal mobile multimedia device - a camera phone that still has its flaws, of course, but that shows us clearly the direction in which the industry is going to and thus turns into a symbolic device for us. Yes, we are talking about the Sony Ericson K800 Cyber-shot mobile phone. It has GPRS and UMTS support, memory card slot, great camera, a great MP3 player, stereo Bluetooth support, FM radio, integrated image blogging service and Google search and last but not least - a great 3.2 megapixel camera with an integrated real xenon flash.

The phone will be manufactured in two versions - one will be designated K800 and the other one - K790. The difference between the two is that the first one is produced with 3G UMTS support and a second VGA camera for video calls but no EDGE support, while K790 will have only EDGE support. The availability of the two models would be market-dependent, of course.

Before we start, though, I should warn you that the phone we tested was a beta version so there are some bugs we found and we are more than sure that they would be fixed in the final version. We won't mention those as we go along the review though, because the bugs are a pretty common thing in a pre-release version.
As regards the retail package, the box should include a stereo headset, a USB cable and a 64MB Memory Stick Micro (M2) card along with a Memory Stick Duo Pro adapter but as we have always said - the contents of the retail package are market and country dependant.

All those numbers

The phone design follows the trend of all K-series phones of SE. It's really nice and it's only half a centimeter longer than the well-known K750, although at first sight it seems a lot bigger than K750. Otherwise the measures of both phones are pretty close to one another. K800 has dimensions of 105 x 47 x 22 mm and weighs 115 g. Just for comparison, the dimensions of K750 are 100 x 46 x 20.5 mm, while its weight is 99 g.

K800 compared to K750

We got to admit that the phone's construction is pretty solid and the construction quality deserves a compliment. The weight on the other hand is perfectly balanced and doesn't feel much at all.

Back in black

The handset will be available in two colors - brown and black. The one we got to test was black. The front panel, a lot like its predecessor's, is made out of slightly brushed black metal. In the upper part you can see two silver dashes which are actually soft keys. The speaker grill is situated between them. A VGA camera for video calls is positioned in the right side of the grill. K790, which is the 3G-less version of the phone, won't have that camera, of course.

The impressive QVGA resolution TFT display is surrounded by a mirror frame. The display protecting glass also has a mirror-like effect applied to it so when the display is off, the whole area becomes a uniform reflecting surface. This really adds to the classy overall look of the phone but also adds for the catching of a whole lot of fingerprints. It's really frustrating in fact and you constantly have to clean it. The other parts of the phone don't have that problem.

K800 front view • Secondary VGA video camera

Let me switch to the left side of the phone where you can see the Memory Stick Micro (M2) card slot. It has a protective rubber cap and allows for hot-swap functionality of the M2 card since it could be opened without turning the phone off or removing the battery. The M2 card that came with the phone was the first one we see since this type of memory cards is still very new and is not widely available on the market. It was announced in September 2005 by Sony as an alternative to its "big brothers" - the Memory Stick Pro and Duo. It is targeted at the mobile phones market for its small size -15 x 12.5 mm. An yet it is compatible with the Memory Stick Pro cards and it can be loaded into an adapter card and inserted into a Memory Stick Pro slot on a notebook computer or a PC card reader.

On the same left side of the handset there is a PLAY/STOP key for the music player. Pressing it turns on the music player which starts playing the last playlist used. The Music player starts in the background only scrolling the artist and song name in the upper part of the screen as seen in K750i and the W-series Sony Ericsson phones. Pressing the key again turns off the Music player.

K800 left side view • M2 memory card slot • M2 card compared to a SIM card in size

On the right side of the phone there is a camera key which serves the double purpose of a camera shortcut key and a camera release key. The Infrared port is located below it. In the upper part of the same side of the phone we see the two volume control keys which are used for zooming in and out when using the phone's camera.

The top end of the phone accommodates only the ON/OFF button, which when pressed once in standby, brings up a shortcut menu for turning on the silent mode, locking the keypad, changing the current ringing profile, as well as, of course, shutting down the phone.

On/Off button menu

The bottom end accommodates the usual Fast port used for USB cable connection, battery recharging and for plugging in the stereo headset. In the left part you can see an interesting eyelet for fastening the neck strap.

K800: right side, top end and bottom end views

Now flipping the phone over reveals an interesting sight - the back of the phone which is made out of matt black plastic, houses the camera lens protected by a slider cover. The awesome xenon flash we are so used to see in digital cameras is located on the left to the camera lens. In fact it's above the camera lens when you hold the phone horizontally, and it is meant to be used that way in camera mode. Sliding down the Cyber-shot branded slider automatically turns the camera application on and the handset turns into a fully-fledged digital camera. In case you started the camera application without sliding down the cover, a warning comes up to inform you of that fact. The self-portrait mirror is below the camera lens when holding the phone vertically.

K800 back side view • Camera slider opened

The battery cover is located in the lower back part of the phone. The Li-Polymer battery itself has a capacity of 900 mAh and according to the manufacturer it should offer 350 hours of standby time and 2.5 hours of talk time in UMTS networks and 7.5 hours of talk time in GSM-only networks.

The battery cover opens fairly easy with a slide. The SIM card holder is under the battery itself and is the usual SIM holder used in most Sony Ericsson phones, meaning that the SIM card is easy to be put in, but hard to be taken out.

Battery cover and the battery itself removed

We are generally impressed by the quality of the materials used for the phone's body. It has a fairly solid construction and didn't give out any creaks throughout the testing period.

K800 held in hand

Sticky fingers

The menu navigation is performed through a central joystick - the same as in previous models of the product line, only now Sony Ericsson claim that this one is better protected from dust and should be problem-free.

On both sides of the joystick there are two soft keys and the traditional Sony Ericsson clear 'C' key and BACK key. There are two tiny shortcut keys on the left and right slotted between the regular keys - one is for the browser and the other one - for the Activity menu.

In the dark the whole keypad glows evenly in purple - this color is a rather unusual solution but a great one, we must add. The first word that came up to our mind when we saw the keypad backlighting was "really classy".

Keypad glowing in nice purple color

The first problem we encountered was that the "classy" keypad is really hard to get used to. The keys are made out of a rubber-like material and are generally easy to distinguish horizontally but not vertically. The keys around the joystick are pretty bad in that aspect too since you can hardly distinguish the separating lines between them without taking a look at them. All the keys are pretty small and are hard to use even by a female hand. Otherwise, the joystick has a very good response and is very precise. Generally speaking, the keypad ergonomics need improvements.

The phone feels nice to hold; it has a great balance and all in all, has a very nice design that appealed to us all. The slider cover on the back makes it tilt forward a bit when lying down on a table. That seemed strange in the beginning but in a few hours usage we began to even find it an attractive feature.

The eye of the tiger

The phone sports a 2-inch TFT display with 262 000 colors and a QVGA resolution of 240 x 320 pixels. The display is very good and offers vivid colors and wide viewing angle. It's a lot better than the one of K750 and compared to it, the K750 image is much rougher.

The mirror effect we already told you about is used to ensure the legibility of the display under direct sunlight and it manages very well but only if there are no fingerprints on it. The more fingerprints there are, the less legible the display is in the sun.

A superb display this time

The phone is ringing

We got to admit that the sound quality during calls was fabulous and we were pleased with the reception at all times. When it comes to the ringing loudness K800 is a bit of an underdog. It might be just our test version but we have seen many louder phones. The vibration alert strength isn't that impressive also.

Otherwise, MP3 music played through the loudspeaker sounds really nice but of course lacks the low bass elements. But hey, who would want bass sound from a mobile phone! The important thing is that even at the maximum level of loudness the sound is clear and there are no unwanted noises or cracks to be heard.

Calling our friend Dexter

Inside out

Generally, we are quite pleased with the speed of the menu navigation. In standby mode the upper two soft keys correspond to the Calls menu and the Main menu. The display also shows all the info about the current time and date, carrier name, network signal and battery status and the next time an alarm is set to go off. The stand-by display also shows the time and date of the next alarm that is due to go off. Now, an interesting thing in the K800 interface is that at some places the font size is awfully tiny. An example for that are all the fields available throughout the phone's menu that require a typing input from the user - such as the SMS composing field as well as the clock and date shown on the main display. Otherwise, the font size of the menus and submenu items is pretty OK. The current time can be shown on the display in the abovementioned tiny font size or you can choose to see the clock in large semi-transparent numbers which take up half the screen but blend with the chosen wallpaper very well. A good thing is that the clock is seen in the upper right angle of the screen even while browsing through the menu.

Standby screen: two different themes

Entering the main menu is pretty straightforward - you could do that by pressing either the joystick or the corresponding soft key. The menu itself is the same as in all current Sony Ericsson phones - a grid composed of 4 rows and 3 columns. The icons are pretty much the same as those used in K750, the only exception being the camera icon which is a new one, reminding us of a certain line of Sony digital cameras, designed to reflect the new camera orientated side of the phone. There is a slight difference regarding the menu icons between K800 and K790 - the K800 has a video call icon in the main menu instead of the FM radio that is present in the K790 menu as also seen in K750i.

As with any other current Sony Ericsson phone the phone's visual interface is totally customizable through themes. They change the overall looks of the interface including the main menu icons. Pitifully, the available preinstalled themes didn't change the icons.

Main menu: two different themes

One of the new things that have been developed a lot is the Activity menu which has a dedicated shortcut key on the keypad. The Now running tab of the menu offers real multi-tasking. In K750 you could only run simultaneously one regular application and one Java application, for example. Now you can run two Java applications in the same time which allows for a lot more freedom and flexibility in everyday usage.

Activity menu: Running apps tab, My shortcuts tab, Internet tab

What about a thousand?

A usual thing when dealing with the Sony Ericsson phonebook is that the SIM contacts seem a bit redundant. It looks as if the purpose of the contact-storing capabilities of the SIM card is only ensuring portability across different phones and nothing more.
In order to see your SIM stored contacts on K800 you have to dig down in the phonebook menu in order to find them. Don't get us wrong, it's not a bad solution especially when, as in the case of most Sony Ericsson phones, you have the option to auto save to the SIM card copies of the entries that you save in the phone's memory.

SIM contacts are hidden deep in the Contacts menu

The phonebook offers the creation of Groups but those are used for the purpose of mass communication only, they cannot be assigned common ringtones or pictures.

The total phonebook capacity is 1000 contacts, but you can have a total of 2500 numbers for those 1000 contacts. All those can be ordered either by first or last name. As usual the available fields include: 5 different phone numbers, 3 email addresses, 1 web address, a picture, a ringtone, a voice command used for voice dialing, position, company, company address, home address, a general note and a birthday date. A good thing is that the birthday date can be automatically transferred to the Calendar. Another positive change is that now you can see the entire information stored on a given contact without the need to enter the editing mode.

Again, we see the tiny font size here when we try to edit any field in the phonebook.

A contact details

The Call records tabs are readily accessible from numerous places as usual. It stores the information of the last 30 call events no matter what they are. Nothing fancy here.

All calls list

Good as it used to be

Messaging offers no improvements over the other already well-known Sony Ericsson models. The messages and emails are stored in the phone's memory with the exception of emails which also could be stored on the memory card. The My Friends chat service is also present here but that is network dependent. The only new thing here is the new set of emoticons which are quite amusing and lively.

The phone supports SMS, MMS, and email and more importantly RSS feeds. The RSS feeds support is nicely implemented. You can update the individual feeds one by one or as a whole. The feeds themselves are viewed in the NetFront web browser.

The MMS options are as good as always especially when you have nice applications such as the Video DJ which allows you to let your creative spirits soar high in the skies and literally create your own videos or video messages.

The email client is also pretty decent for a phone without OS like Symbian or Windows Mobile. It supports POP3 and SMTP and allows for entering a separate password for the SMTP server. There is no fixed limit for the email attachments size.

The email client • Email inbox • Creating and reading an email message

Of course, the sending of all messages is carried out in the background. We have always liked the Recent Recipients list that Sony Ericsson phones offer when sending a message. It really saves time and we would like to see that feature more often in mobile phones of other manufacturers.

Browse…

If you have used other Sony Ericsson handsets you won't be surprised by the K800 file manager because there are no significant improvements here. On the other hand if you are still new to SE phones, well let me tell you that they have one of the best non-OS file managers. It allows you to mark files (single or multiple), copy them, move them, and also create and delete folders as you please. There are three tabs of file lists - one for the phone memory files, one for the memory stick files and one mutual for all files. By selecting a given tab you can filter the file list you wish to see.

File browser: All files tab, Memory Stick tab, Phone memory tab

Browsing your pictures is as easy as ever - you could do that as a list with or without thumbnails where the file names are visible. You can also choose to view your pictures as a grid matrix of thumbnails in 3 x 3 or 5 x 5 grids with no file names visible. The video files can also be browsed as thumbnails. You can view the pictures themselves vertically just as you would on a normal phone or horizontally. The horizontal viewing allows for more details since most of the pictures are shot in a landscape aspect ratio which is best viewed in landscape mode. When viewing the pictures one by one the phone shows a rough preview and preloads the images in order to allow you fast browsing. By saying rough preview we mean that it displays them with a much lower quality than normally. Once you find a picture you would like to see in its full glory you should stop browsing for a couple of seconds and the phone would load it with its normal quality. Zooming in to the actual size of the picture or more is also available of course. We were pleasantly surprised by the speed you can scroll the zoomed in image horizontally or vertically.

Browsing pictures in portrait and landscape mode • Browsing pictures one by one and zooming in

The new thing about the file browser is the Timeline view which allows you to filter the pictures according to the month they have been taken in. After you specify the month, you could choose even the exact date. It's that sort of image filtering that is offered by computer picture browsers.

You can even print your images directly from the phone since it supports the Pictbridge and DPOF interfaces.

The music player in fact is directly copied from the Walkman phones series - it's just been stripped of any Walkman branding and there's no MegaBass equalizer preset. We suppose you are already aware that it's one of the best in the business.

The Music player

We think that this is the best place to mention the FM radio capabilities of the phone. Of course, the radio works only when the earphones are plugged in since those are used as an antenna. Again, it's the usual Sony Ericsson radio with RDS support and 20 stations memory. It has the same quality as the radio seen in K750. A cool innovation is the implementation of the Identify Music feature. If you happen to hear a song on the radio that you really like, you could start the Identify Music and it will record a few seconds from the song, upload it to a server and get the Artists and Songs names. This feature is going to be seen in all new Sony Ericsson models that have FM Radio capabilities.

Going on a shooting spree

Now comes one of the most interesting things about that phone. In all other departments we saw only a moderate upgrade or improvement of functionality over K750 but the greatest of all is the camera. The camera application itself has not changed much since K750 too. But that's not bad at all since K750 has one of the best cameras in its market segment.

Using the still camera

Some of the camera interface settings - more to see in our 3MP camera shootout

You can have a look at our detailed review of the camera qualities of Sony Ericsson K800 in the 3MP camera shootout in which we compare head to head Nokia N80 and K800 in order to see which of the two has got the most advanced digital eye. We are not going to get into details here regarding the available options and settings since those are covered in the shootout. We just want to take you around the most significant features of this mobile. For your convenience we just insert some of the sample photos in this review.

Samples in full resolution

Downsampled to 1024 x 768

Let's mention the video calls camera on the front of K800 first. We are pleasantly surprised by the functionality that the VGA camera offers. The other party's video feed is viewed in a large frame in the middle of the screen while you view your own image in the very same time in a small frame in the lower left corner. There is also a possibility to view your own image mirror-like, meaning that the image gets reversed and looks as if you are staring at yourself in a mirror. It's much more natural that way. You can also zoom digitally your image at a 2x degree or choose to replace your live video feed with a picture of your taste. You can also do that during an actual video call and it's handy when you want to show the other call party an interesting picture you have taken for example. The options don't end here. You can further on control the exposure compensation of the camera or even switch it into a night mode.

There are 3 different video quality modes: Smooth, Sharp and Normal. Smooth delivers a smoother picture flow while Sharp provides more detailed images.

Video calls camera main screen

Anyways, let's cut to the chase and see what's new as far as the main camera capabilities of the phone are concerned. The first and most obvious thing is the new 3.2 megapixel matrix which delivers pictures at the resolution of 2048 x 1536. The picture size varies between 100-200KB at 1 megapixel normal quality setting and reaches 800-900KB at 3 megapixel fine quality setting.
The second of the goodies that really warm our hearts is the xenon flash which is the same as the ones we are so used to see in regular digital cameras. The flash itself does a great job in lighting the surroundings when shooting in dark places.

The camera sports an image stabilizer which is only used in video recording mode. Let us just say that the term "video recording support" would be the most suitable one when describing the video capturing capabilities of the handset. The thing is that the video camera shoots in the ancient QCIF resolution (176 x 144 pixels) at 15 fps which is far outdated and is more than useless really.

Using the video camera • video sample

Anyways, this camera truly inspired us and we went on a weekend shooting rampage in the country in order to see what the autofocus and macro mode could really offer us. Here are some shots that you won't find in the 3MP shootout.

Samples in full resolution

Downsampled to 1024 x 768

We are more than happy with the fast processing of the images which is a definite plus when shooting at such high resolution.
So in conclusion - great job with the camera from Sony Ericsson, they deserve our sincere compliments.

Plugging it in…

Besides the USB support and the Infrared port, the handset offers the usual connectivity capabilities such as 3G and GPRS for fast data transfers, video calls and streaming content.

As we tested, the integrated HTML NetFront Internet browser is at a good level and it does its job more than all right. It has a lot of options - you can view the pages fullscreen with no menus showing and you can even browse your Web pages horizontally or vertically on the screen - the so-called Landscape and Portrait modes. The browser uses the same tiny font size I already mentioned as a disadvantage of the phone menu system. But here it serves a good purpose and you could zoom in the pages if you want to. Generally, the Smart-fit function of the browser manages well with fitting the web content into the screen.

The handset supports Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP profile support which means that you could use stereo Bluetooth speakers with it and that is something you don't see in every phone nowadays. Another notable thing about the excellent Bluetooth support is the Human Interface Device (HID) profile which allows the phone to be used as a remote control for PC and other Bluetooth-enabled devices. Further on the phone could be used as a Bluetooth modem for Internet access of a PC or a mobile computer. Besides that, the phone supports the following Bluetooth profiles: Dial-up networking profile; Generic Access profile; Generic Object Exchange Profile; Object Push Profile; Serial Port Profile; Handsfree Profile; Synchronization Profile; Basic Imaging Profile; File Transfer Profile; HID Profile; SyncML OBEX binding; JSR-82 Java API; A2DP. An interesting feature is that you can connect to a wireless Bluetooth remote screen when browsing your pictures, for example.

The phone has support for local and remote synchronization of contacts and calendar events. The local one is with Outlook and a PC while the remote synchronization is with remote servers. The USB connectivity of the phone has two modes - one for file transfers and one for USB Internet or to put it simply - the second one is for using the phone as a modem. A great feature is the capability to update the firmware version of the phone over-the-air, meaning you can download the new version through the phone itself.

Time management

This phone offers plenty of time organizing features. There is an Organizer icon in the main menu and it contains several applications: Alarms, Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Synchronization, Timer, Stopwatch, Calculator and Code memo. The Calendar allows for monthly/weekly view or weekly/daily view. The New Appointment menu is fashioned in a nice way and doesn't feature any unnecessary options seen in most phones. As we have mentioned above, when you add a birthday date in the phonebook, the phone asks you if you wish to add it in the Calendar.

Adding an appointment to the calendar

The Tasks menu offers option to save small tasks that don't need a reminder. Under the Notes menu you can save up to 25 notes of your choice. A nice feature is that you can add text and a picture of your choice to any of the five available alarm slots. You can further on decide the behavior of the alarm if the silent mode is enabled at the time it is set to go off. The FM radio broadcast can be used as an alarm instead of the saved ringtones.

The Organizer menu • Setting an alarm and adding text and a picture to it

The entertainment of the user is well ensured by the Entertainment menu of the phone, no pun intended. A Video Player is present here which has an interface strangely resembling the NetFront web browser. It's nothing special anyways and you've probably seen it already in K750. It doesn't have any special options to it that would make it a preferred application for watching videos.
There are some other interesting applications such as VideoDJ, PhotoDJ and MusicDJ, Remote Control and Voice Recorder. VideoDJ is for making video clips from scratch using special transition effects and even by adding background music. It's a very amusing application. PhotoDJ is for applying effects on images and MusicDJ is a very simple application for creating polyphonic melodies. The Remote Control application is for controlling a PC via Bluetooth. It offers three modes: Presenter /for making PowerPoint presentations/, Media Player /for commanding media players/ and Desktop /for commanding the PC mouse with the joystick/. The Voice Recorder allows for unlimited recording and saves the recordings in .amr format.

The Entertainment menu • Sound recorder has no length limits

Have time to waste?

The test phone came with two preinstalled games - FotoQuest Fishing and Mini Golf: Castles. Both games are very good, 3D, nice to play, and rather amusing we must add. The FotoQuest Fishing immerses you underwater in the role of a diver photographer where you get to do assignments on capturing rare and beautiful fishes on film. The pity thing is that the game is rather easy to complete. The Mini Golf is a well-known game genre but the thing that sets this game apart is that you play it with the phone in horizontal mode. And of course the game graphics are well developed.

FotoQuest: hunting for the best fish picture • Mini Golf: Aiming for the hole

Final words

Undoubtedly, K800 is an exciting phone to have and use. The feature packed 3G handset would become a market hit and it would develop a strong fan base of people who do not consider the size of their mobile phone that important. The superb display and the high-level still camera functionality are something that many men would fall for. We look forward to see more on how the mobile phone will find its place on the market.

Sony Ericsson K800 photos

Sony Ericsson K800 screenshots

Pictures taken with the Sony Ericsson K800

Samples in full resolution

Downsampled to 1024 x 768

Samples in full resolution

Downsampled to 1024 x 768













Source Taken from HERE