So you’ve got bored of your old phone that you’ve been hanging on to for months and months now. Well, I did! Like half the population of the world (or so it seems) I owned a Nokia. This company is starting to become a McDonalds, wherever you look there’s one! I can’t fault Nokia on the phones they build, they are great, but with everyone sitting there comparing their scores on snake, I thought it was time for a change. And so, off I swaggered with money bag in hand down to The Car Phone Warehouse. I walked in, perused the selection of micro phones, so small they could be used as a suppository, and then, there it was. Glistening under the harsh artificial lights, the screen all scratched and smashed from the poor attempt to anchor the phone down.
The Sony CMD J5…ta da! Sony have only quite recently come on to the mobile scene and have yet to really make a significant dent in sales. However, because of this op their sales will almosts triple in the next weeks. Oops, joking again :o) In all seriousness sales deserve to increase as this and its little, yet older brother , the Z5 are very good phones. So what does it do and have? Well, this sleek silver beast attacks the market in a slightly different way. Yes it has all the normal features that are expected of a phone nowadays such as: Text messaging with predictive text. A must nowadays to reduce the amount of smoke that can be seen coming from peoples key pads as they maniacally smash away meaningless yet amusing messages to friends. The dictionary isn’t that great as the standard one that I had on my 8210, but it learns once you type in word that it doesn’t recognise and then just turn on the predictive text again after it. One thing that you have to remember is that Sony are Japanese and this phone is exactly that, so some of the words that you may come across in the dictionary are rather, strange shall we say. It’s all good though. About a million ring tones. Yes yes, it’s the thing that we are all obsessed with nowadays. Have you got the latest song blaring out in a high pitch screech?… well sorry you just aren’t cool. But yes, fret not this has many a ring tone, 20 in fact. Not the typical sounding ring tones though. As I mentioned previously the phone has a real Japanese edge to it. In all honesty some really sounds like the cheesy tunes that you might hear on a megadrive game or something. Well, they are fun and novel at least and most of all different from anything others have. WAP. Yup, it’s got that to. I’m not a great fan of WAP but then I had not really used it before. Now I’ve got it it’s handy, but not essential because it’s slow. The J5 doesn’t have the fastest modem in the world, the Nokia (surprise surprise) 6210 holds this record.
However saying that I can get my AOL mail on my phone in a minute or two which is nice and will be handy when I’m off gallivanting around the world. Games. Something more entertaining then snake! Well, kinda. There is a game where you are a monkey (??!) and have to aim and throw bananas at each other, some code solving game for all you mathematicians out there, a puzzle moving game and then one of the most useless things I’ve ever seen. Remember those ‘sand art’ things you used to have that you turned upside down and sand of different colours gradually fell making little mountains of sand? Well, you can do this on the phone as well, but only in grey and white! You will have to be really bored to use this!! Schedule and other useful but boring bits. Again like the Nokia it has a calendar that you can make little notes and alarms on which can be really handy is you’ve got a sieve like memory like me. (where am I again?) Also its got a calculator that you never need but ‘might just come in handy one day’. Right, so that’s the standard bits done, but what does it have that sets it apart from the rest? Ringtone and Sound recorder. Oh yes…this is one of the beat features I’ve ever seen on a phone and I am most chuffed with it. No longer do you have to pay for some crap rendition of your favourite song as a ring tone, you can actually have that song! All you have to do is put the phone up to the speaker when it’s playing and press record, and hey presto you can have up to 10 seconds of anything you want. Then you can set this as a ring tone, SMS message tone, start up or shut down sound. It’s all rather impressive. Personally, I like having my phone belch at me when I’ve got a text! Speaker phone. I’ve not had one of these before but they are great! No longer is the hands free kit needed to stop your head getting fried, just stick it on a table and chat away with not noticeable difference in quality at either end. A wheel. Mobile phone makers have discovered the wheel! Amazing. Instead of having to fiddle with little menu buttons Sony have cleverly put everything on a wheel on the side of the phone. Push it in for the menu, then spin it round through the animated menu screen (very clever) to whatever service you want. Multi shade display. Instead of just being black and white on the display, the screen is in greyscale, be it the menu screen, wallpaper on the display (choice of 2 backing drawings to jazz thins up a bit) or in the games, it puts some depth in to what you see. So, does this sun shine out of this silver belching machine? Well, it’s very close.
The phone is very good. Light (2 oz or about 60grams), thin (about three quarters of an inch), clever (it burps!). From my use of it there is only one real problem with the phone. It’s too quiet. With the slightly different sounding ring tones i.e. not an electronic beep, the sounds doesn’t carry as far sadly. I’ve had it in my car with the music going or with it in my pocket and have missed the calls. It does vibrate but not as impressively as the 8210 which could rival some products sold by Ms Anne Summers. I’ve got mine on the highest sound setting now and that seems to be ok. All in all, a great phone that really is suited to people business men who aren’t in high noise areas all the time, though not solely for this group. It’s a shame about the volume level as otherwise this would be the best phone that money can buy. As it is, it’s as good as an 8210 but a good sight cheaper. Expect to pay from nothing to £140 depending on what contract you choose. Not bad really.