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It has been said that the Sony Ericsson K810 marked the rebirth of the Cyber-shot. I believe the Sony Ericsson K850 marks yet another leap forward in the evolution of the camera phone. It has design, functionality and design innovations and the 5 megapixel camera, combined with the new Media Center application combine to make the Sony Ericsson K850 a shining star in Sony’s portfolio. |
Things I like:
- 5 mp autofocus with auto lens cap
- Media Center application
- Three soft keys
- D-pad layout
- Dedicated call and end keys
- Large 2.2 inch display
- Hot swap functionality
- FM Radio with RDS
- Bluetooth
Things that disappointed me
- The D-pad was awkward
- Soft key functions were reversed
- No wi-fi or infrared
- Picks up fingerprints
Sony Ericsson unveiled in June their latest baby in the Cyber-shot line: the Sony Ericsson K850. It was considered a landmark achievement for the entire Sony Ericsson portfolio. It is clearly a winner with its wealth of features brought about by the latest technologies. As I review this phone, especially consider the budget Sony Ericsson K550, the some what snooty Sony Ericsson K800 and its follow-up, the Sony Ericsson K810.
Evolution of the Cyber-shot
The rounded and somewhat soft Sony Ericsson K850 is very different visually from the Sony Ericsson K810. The only real similarity to its predecessors is the bar-shape form. The K850 includes some navigation and construction innovations: dedicated end and call keys, a three position camera button key, a new D-pad layout and a bottom battery cover like you would see on a digicam.
Most of the front panel is taken up by the 2.2” TFT display screen and is much brighter and has better contrast that the Sony Ericsson K810. One thing designers struggle with is increasing display size while marinating the same dimensions. With the K850 the solution was to integrate the D-pad into the keyboard, increasing the room available for the 2.2” display. While the display and the entire front of the phone, for that matter, has a nice mirror finish, regrettably it attracts fingerprints, just like the K800 and K810. Above the display we see a small secondary VGA camera and the earpiece: the camera is sunken below the panel surface, giving you a nice flat front.
Immediately under the display are the three new soft keys. They have different functions, depending upon the application being used. The soft keys are almost sensor like and offer a singular experience in using the Sony Ericsson K850. The hardcore Sony Ericsson user will recognize almost immediately that the soft key functions are reversed from other Sony Ericsson phones. Typically, Sony Ericsson places the More soft key on the right, which has been relocated to the new left soft key. Missing is the Back key, which has been replaced by the right soft key. The center soft key has various functions, dependent upon the application. It was interesting using the Sony Ericsson K850 because I often hit the wrong button by habit. I quickly adapted, however, and inside a week I was on the right track. In fact, this key setup brings Sony Ericsson in line with most other major manufactures who already use this key arrangement. Also, the new soft keys are partly a design decision to make up for the space lost with the larger screen, while still having the same dimensions as the K810. Obviously Sony Ericsson is listening to customer feedback.
Under the three soft keys is the Quick Menu/Call button and the End/Clear button, both of which improve handling greatly. Yes, the Call and End keys and the D-pad are departures from Sony Ericsson, but they do bring the K850 design more mainstream and closer to the mass-market. The keypad has the T650 styling, only with larger buttons. The extreme right-hand set of alphanumeric keys have two functions: in the camera mode they are used to change the self-timer, the flash options, the shooting mode and the scene mode. Blue backed icons explain the purpose of each key. You can also use the D-pad to zoom in or out, to scroll up or down and to change the exposure settings. The Joystick is gone, much to the relief of many dedicated Sony Ericsson users and has been replaced with the D-pad. It is built within the keypad, a bold design but one that should contribute to the user-experience.
The left side of the Sony Ericsson K850 has no keys, no buttons; nothing but the stripe of color trim that runs along the edge of the phone.
On the bottom of the K850 is a digicam like battery cover, which hides the phone’s battery, the SIM card and the memory card slot. This marks Sony Ericsson’s first attempt at dual card support. This slot is compatible with either the microSD or the M2 card. One is face down, the other face up and yes, they are hot swappable. The bottom of the phone also has the usual suspects: the Fast port, the mouthpiece and the wrist strap eyelet. Should you pull the SIM card out while the phone is in active phone mode, the phone will restart (after a delay) in demo mode. I was a bit disappointed to see the phone was unable to work in flight mode, without a SIM inserted. Even so, changing the SIM, memory card and battery is near effortless due to a push button eject device, similar to what you see on digicams these days.
On the top of the phone you find the Off/On key, which can also be used to quickly change your ring profile.
When you look at the right side of the Sony Ericsson K850, it strongly resembles a regular digicam. Next to the end key is a three position button that allows you to switch camera modes-recorder, camera and preview. Just above it are the shutter key and a smaller off/on key for the camera. Other than the LG KU990 Viewty, no other mobile phone comes with so many dedicated camera keys. One thing I like is that the off/on key is separate from the key lock. On the upper right side is the volume rocker switch, which also serves for zooming when taking pictures.
When you turn the phone over you see a very flat surface, broken only by the camera lens ring and the xenon flash and the loudspeaker grill. All are beneath the surface of the panel, so no bulges or dimples in the back panel. Beside the lens cover are the Cyber-shot logo and the %.0 megapixel sign. Just below the lens one finds the Sony Ericsson logo. Two gentle curves slightly lift the phone, providing a sort of sound screen for the loudspeaker and it also helps keep the back from scratches and dust.
A Li-Poly BST-38 battery with a capacity of 930mah powers the Sony Ericsson K850, a departure from the BST-33 Li-Poly used in the other Cyber-shots, such as the K800, K810 and K550. The manufacturer claims 400 hours of standby mode and 9 hours of talk time; with me gaming, shooting pictures and Bluetooth always on I got about 36 hours. A more moderate, normal use should last for 3-4 days.
For the most part, the Sony Ericsson K850 has great ergonomics. It fits nicely in your hand and perfectly fits the palm when held. The three soft keys are nice and the D-pad does take the phone up a level; however, the phone is not without its faults. You probably would not notice how stiff and hard to use the D-pad is, were the sensor like soft keys such a joy to use. I wish the center soft key were not so close to the up key on the D-pad, because it leads to fat-fingering the keys often, leading to mistakes.
Messaging is better
There are all sorts of enhancements to be found regarding messages. For one thing, all messages other than email now use one inbox. Email gets its own inbox.
If you just have your heart set on it, however, you can sort your messages to categories. Six categories come preinstalled; Business, Follow Up, Favorites, Holiday, Fun and Important but if you do not like these, the categories are completely customizable. When you sort by category, a different icon is used; under it you will see the categories, but only those with messages. You can also delete all messages in a given category. In an open message, the applied category can be viewed or changed by pressing options > category.
One other new feature is the Manage Messages application in the Messaging section. It has three tabs: All Items, On Mem. And In Phone. Each tab has Inbox, Outbox, Drafts Saved and Sent folders. The Options menu allows you to move messages to memory card or phone memory and lets you sort by a variety of criteria. Overall, the Manage Messages feature has a ton of customization options and greatly improves how messages are handled.
There is a character counter to alert you when you get close to your 160 character limit and of course, there is a T9 dictionary. Email has its own separate application to Manage Mail, with essentially the same structure and features used for SMS.
Going Portable
Included in the box is a LG USB cable to use with the USB high speed storage feature on the phone. When plugged in to a PC, the KU990 shows only the memory card and not the internal memory, unlike the Prada phone which made both drives available.
As far as connectivity goes, the phone has Bluetooth 1.2 with A2DP stereo support and triband GSM/GPRS/EDGE plus HSDPA 3.6 Mbps.
5 megapixel powerhouse
The Sony Ericsson K850 houses a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, a xenon flash and an automatic lens cover. The K850 has serious upgrades over previous efforts, in both ergonomics and interface. Yes, it is nice to have the Cyber-shot logo, the 5 megapixels and the digicam like functions and keys, but what I really want is quality optics. Of course, this is a drawback common to nearly all camera phones. Over time, with increasing megapixel counts, this will have to be addressed by manufactures to compete against bottom end digicams.
The Sony Ericsson K850 is the first of Sony Ericsson’s line to have the Cyber-shot Sony Ericsson v2.0, as seen on Sony’s T series digital cameras. The big additions are pop-up submenus, enhanced with color photos and icons, and the Multi Menu. When you select a close-up object, autofocus automatically shifts to macro.
Built in to the camera is a toolbar with many options, such as scenes, shooting modes, flash, timer and more.
I won’t bother with all the options that have been standard since the K810, but worth mentioning are a few unique items, namely the settings multi-menu and the ISO sensitivity setting. This marks the first time a Cyber-shot has had the ISO setting. The user has four light settings: ISO 100, 200, 400 and Auto.
The second new feature is the Settings Multi-Menu. Honestly, it looks like any standard digicam menu, with all the settings displayed in two columns. The column on the left has the features, the right shows which one you are using. Pressing the down button on the D-pad will show all options in a given feature. I was happy to see you could take pictures on the K850 with the shutter sound turned off. Regrettably, autofocus will still beep, but this is muted on silent mode.
Standard with the Sony Ericsson K850 is the Photo Fix application, a simple editor to quick fix problems with your pictures. It is built into the interface, so pictures can be edited immediately after being taken.
I was shocked to see that videos are taken in QVGA at 30fps, which was a bit under whelming. Honestly, I expected at least VGA at 30fps. The Video options are, for the most part, the same as those of r the still camera. It is time Sony Ericsson did an upgrade on their video capabilities in their mobile phones.
The second VGA camera is adequate, but not exciting. You view the video feed in a large frame at center screen, while your image is in a small frame at lower left. You have the option of 2X digital zoom and you can actually do it during a video call, which is nice. The phone offers three different video quality modes; Normal, Sharp and Smooth. Smooth gives a smoother picture, but sharp gives more detail.
Surfing
The K850 offers the standard connectivity options like USB and Bluetooth, as well as 3G, EDGE and GPRS and HSDPA for ultra-fast data transfers and video calls.
The NetFront Internet browser is adequate and does a fine job. There are all sorts of option- full screen with no menus or browse the Net in landscape mode. It will support content in HTML 4.01, xHTML 1.0, CSS and Java script, WAP 2.0. It offers SSL/TLS security protocols. One new option is pan/zoom mode for browsing sites; it works much like zooming photos. Included in the browser is an RSS reader.
For the most part, the Smart-fit function works well, fitting the content on the browser screen. Once the page loads, scrolling is rapid; I think that Smart-fit does a better job this time than in previous Sony Ericsson models. Maybe they performed an upgrade.
The Sony Ericsson K850has full Bluetooth 2.0 support and a HID (Human Interface Device) profile, so you can use the phone as a remote control for PC and other Bluetooth devices. In addition, you could use the phone as a Bluetooth modem for getting on the internet on a laptop computer. The phone has three USB connectivity modes: one for transfers, one for the internet and a media transfer, which connects directly to Windows Media Player and lets you have full access to tracks, lets you synchronize or play or sort your play lists.
Task Management
The Sony Ericsson K850 has many features for Time Management. On the main menu is the Organizer Icon. Under it fall several applications such as File Manager, Video Call, Applications, Calendar, Tasks Timer, Stopwatch and more. The calendar offers standard daily, monthly and weekly views. Should you ad a birth date in the phonebook, the phone prompts you to add it to the calendar.
There are two sorts of tasks: ordinary tasks and phone calls. You can write notes similar to how messages are written, including the using the T9 dictionary. You can use the LED video light as a flashlight with the Light application.
The Alarm clock is part of the main menu, with 5 slots available. Each slot has options, including what to do if on silent mode, which days of the week to go off and more. You can assign text and a picture to an alarm slot as well.
The phone’s voice recorder is limited only by the free memory available, and the calculator is the standard Sony Ericsson version. Nothing fancy here. Also included are the expected stopwatch and countdown timer.
The Sony Ericsson K850 comes with HP Print preinstalled.
Games
The Sony Ericsson K850 only came with one game installed, a quite fun game called Marble Madness 3D, where you navigate a maze with a ball by tilting the phone, using the handsets motion sensor. I liked it.
In summary…
The SE K850 certainly lives up to the hype and meets the high hopes placed upon it. The rich camera settings place it almost side by side with stand alone cameras. The navigation upgrades show a commitment beyond the brand loyal consumer and into the mass market. However, the first 5 megapixel Cyber-shot has a lot of pressure to bear, being up against such other entrants as the LG KU990, the Samsung G600 and the Nokia N95 8GB. The expected price tag of 430 Euro will cause some users to hold off a while before committing. If the previously mentioned phones are released at the same time, it could cause serious challenges to the dominance of the Sony Ericsson K850.
  
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