I recently had a chance to test both a Sony J7 (essentially the same the J70) and the J5.
I thought I’d write a few words on these two phones since I recently bought these two (with 28 days to take them back) - I think the observations will be useful for people considering buying either of these two phones.
The J5 is the older model but to all intense purposes in use these two phones are very, very similar.
From a users point of view nothing much had changed from the J5 to J7. The menus are the same, the games are the same, etc.
The J5 is taller but lighter then the J7. They both look pretty good but coming from Sony I have some real gripes about these phones which people considering buying them should know.(as well as good points)
1) Vibrator Alert
On the Sony (J5 & J7) vibration is achieved by using it’s own speaker to create a vibration, thus you can’t have a ringer and Vibration alert on at the same time and even when on it doesn’t vibrate that much at all. This is
a huge pain in loud areas.
2) Software
Both these phones have built in modems and data cables are available - but I can’t as yet find a single piece of software written especially for these
phones and unlike phones like the Nokia 7710, 6210, etc the manufacturer doesn’t provide a CD with software.
3) Games
This phones comes from the people that made the play station - so why are the games so boring & secondly why are the games on the newer phone exactly the same as the earlier model? Is there a lack of mobile phone programmers
out there? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - instead of lame games with monkeys chucking bananas at each other what’s wrong with good old Pac man and those kind of games you could buy in the 80’s built into a Casio watch? Also I’m sure I’ve seen one of the first Z models and that had way better games, some sort of duck hunt and shooting range game if I remember correctly.
4) Charger
The charger is very small and light - one of the smallest I’ve seen that has a built in UK style plug.
5) Display
The display is a bit on the dim side - a bit like the one on the Siemens 35i series of phones, also the front glass looks and feels very thin and looks like it would scratch easily, unlike a phone like the Siemens M35i which had
a pretty tough front panel covering the LCD. Also the LCD on the J7 seems to be a little smaller then on the J5.
6) Wheel Control
The wheel is really good, but I can’t figure out why if 90% of the world population is right handed they put the wheel on the left The wheel on the J7 is wider and thus easier to use then the J5 wheel.
7) Missing button on the J7
The J5 has a really handy two way switch under it’s wheel, pull down and it locks the keys (pull down again to unlock) - push up and it goes onto speaker phone
The J7 doesn’t have this switch instead you must use a combination of that middle button at the top with # key to lock/unlock and press the middle key during a call and scroll through the menu to invoke the handsfree - I for
one don’t like this set-up on the J7 at all it means you have to take the phone away from your ear, look at it and scroll through the display to find the option you want instead of a simple movement of the thumb to turn the
speaker phone on or off
8) Infrared
Neither phone has this feature - pretty dumb I think since they both have modems and every modern laptop has infrared built in. Even if you don’t intend to connect to the internet through you phone it’s a handy way to edit
your phone book. (assuming you can find the software to do it - point 2).
9) Coolness
They are both modern looking but the J7 in blue is a cool looking phone and the animated menus look great.
10) WAP
They both have WAP and if it didn’t cost the same as a phone call to try it out I’d try it and tell you about it. I haven’t used WAP on a phone since I had a company phone and someone else was picking up the phone bill.
11) Phonebook
Both phone can store a massive 500 phones numbers + whatever your SIM card can hold - personally I don’t know enough people to fill all that up so I’m sticking to keeping them all on my 200 memory SIM card for now.
CONCLUSION
I don’t know if I’ll be keeping the phones (either of them) - some of the big features I was looking for vibrate alert, speaker phone and modem are all there. But the vibra alert without ringer is a poor comprosmise - most
people want vibra alert only in quiet places - but sony’s answer is probably too gentle - the J5 is very similar to the Panasonic GD93 which I used to have and I loved that phone - in fact you had to be careful where you left
the Panasonic because if it was on vibra alert it would usually start moving across the table. Also the Panasonic’s display was so much brighter and with 7 different backlight colours to choose from made it pretty cool looking.
Some people have complained the ringer’s aren’t loud enough - well I think they are pretty loud - it kind of depends more on the tune you have playing
more then anything - some tunes are simply at a pitch that makes it easier to hear then others.
The biggest thing going for keeping any of the phones is that the girl on the till under charged me by a tenner for the J7 and the fact I used £15 worth of gift vouchers so the phone wasn’t that much in real costs to me.
Some times I wonder who actually gets a job designing phones because I don’t see many phones that satisfy people’s desires - or may be that’s the point so we always want something more and end up buying a new phone each year. I think the real lack of downloadable software for the Sony is the biggest problem - do a search on the net for Nokia software and you’ll find loads and Nokia help greatly with their datasuite. The J7 is suppose to support
downloadable ringtones through a datacable (which I have) just no software to make use of the cable other then generic phone book manager programs that are out there.
Anyway hope all this information helps in your decision making process - all I can say is consider you choice wisely cos you’ll probably be lugging whatever you choose around for at least a year - personally I really miss my
Panasonic G93 (which was a company phone - which is why I no longer have it) and if Panasonic had made it with an inbuilt ariel it would still look dead modern. Plus is had voice dialing which niether of these have. And was only
80g.
https://mcuk.panasonic.co.uk/2001/phones/gd93/gd93p.html