Sony Ericsson K700i
I’ll keep this a barebones review, cause quite a large amount of info/reviews are available on this phone. For that matter, there are good reviews here in mouthshut itself! So let me hit the list straightaway…
The good:
Loads of features! It’s a shade short of being a smart-phone.
A wonderful phonebook that can be synched with Outlook (including all the details like address, website and to-do list etc.)
Tabbed interface, much like using a mini windows application; very intuitive.
Brilliant screen, supports full 65K colors. Fairly large screen size of 176x220 pixels. Dims a bit under direct sunlight.
Bluetooth, Infrared works smoothly. No hitch at all. Check out the Bluetooth remote desktop controller (also controls Media Player and PowerPoint presentation, awesome.)
FM radio, with ability to store 20 favorite stations. Needs the Hands-free to be attached for using this feature (included in the package.)
Support for Java applications (MIDP 1.0) and game (jar files ran smoothly.) In particular visit https://getjar.com and download the ‘MoneyManager’, ‘ToDo’ List and ‘ShoppingList’ applications.
Nice camera with flashlight. Takes pictures with max resolution of 1280x960. Am not too sure about the mega-pixel capacity, but must be 0.3 MP (VGA). Panorama shot is outstanding feature. Zoom works only for lower resolution and it’s a digital zoom. Not that great but a good feature. Also has night shot mode with enhanced exposure time, but isn’t that good. A great add-on will be a timestamp feature.
Media Player: neat mp3 player reads the ID3 tag within the mp3 files. Supports VBR mp3 files as well. Long file names are automatically truncated to fit the phone file name limit. Supports 3gp video format.
Notes feature. Here you can create a note and pin one of them onto the idle screen. Great utility.
Lots of options for managing pictures, animations and clipart. Sending them is just as easy. But before you do that, you need to create an internet profile, which can be a bit tricky for the average user. MMS features needs to be activated by the carrier; they are the best people to seek help on setting up an account!
Has 41MB of internal memory! That’s big enough for 3 full length good quality mp3s and some space for a few camera shots.
Loads of software to work with the phone and your PC. But beware of corrupt CD-ROMs. I had to download all the programs from https://sonyericsson.com.
Interesting graphics, animations and themes. The best in the market as far as the visual design is concerned.
Voice call is very decent. Also the phone is tri-bad, so you can be assured you’ll have near global connectivity. Ah, voice calls can also be recorded!
Brushed aluminum cover plate makes it look very contemporary, smudge-free and firm to hold.
The bad:
Rather poor battery life. This sucks big time. It will last just a day or max. two with moderate use (30~60 min of talk, 5 min of camera and 10 minutes of general application use will reduce the battery by half.)
The speakerphone is rather weak. But then again, it works fine when playing media files.
Switching on speakerphone is not as intuitive as is many other brands.
The charging socket and the Handsfree port are protected by a plastic covering that’s difficult to use. The charging port’s construction is poor. This remains an issue with most Sony Ericsson phones. They have a rather difficult way to plug in the charger and to remove it is also a thing that the user needs to get used to.
Profiles cannot have customized wallpapers. Neither are they default-mapped to a shortcut key like in Nokia. Also the profile name is not displayed in the idle screen. Instead an icon is shown to indicate that a profile is in use. This again is a traditional Ericsson feature.
The navigations keys can be mapped to only four shortcuts. The left one being defaulted to creating a new SMS/EMS. The rest are configurable. This is restrictive; why can’t we have a section of shortcuts? This can contain some 10 or 20 user shortcuts as might be the need. The clear key [C] could have been used for this purpose as it has no mappings from the idle screen.
Poor vibration alert. Doesn’t have the Nokia like synchronized vibration that matches the tempo of the ring tone.
Powersaver screen shows time and icons for missed call, new message etc. But there is no count of the number of new messages or missed calls that might have come.
The joy-stick needs some getting used to. I spoiled mine by having played the on-board Tennis game too much, so awaiting replacement. Here, I must say, the after-sales aren’t that great. They seem to be understaffed and overloaded with repair jobs!
Conclusion:
Many a reviews say it doesn’t have a memory card so they gave it a somewhat average rating. In my opinion, you are going to be very satisfied with this phone. The lightweight and stylish form-factor makes it very desirable, more so as it hosts a lot of features. Some of these are quite future ready. Sony Ericsson also allows you to upgrade the firmware using a docker (not included) and online connection. As for price, I bought it late 2005 for 10K plus. By now the price might have come down to 9K plus. Those looking to upgrade to a powerful and feature packed phone can very much consider this masterpiece.