As mentioned a couple of weeks back, I got myself a very spanky new mobile phone. My previous phone, the K810i, died from what I can only assume was much over-use, but thankfully, when it died, my contract was
just up for renewal.
Of course, I was stuck with a crappy lump of metal & plastic marked "nokia" for a couple of weeks, but we won't go into that dark chapter of my life.
*shudder*
Now, I
was going to post this a couple of weeks back when I first got it, but decided to hold fire. Not because there was something wrong with it, not because I wasn't sure about it, but because there is so much you can do with it!
Like most phones today, it's multi-function. It's a phone, yes that's a given. But it's also an 8.1megapixal camera, it's a "W" version, which means it's a Walkman too, it's a modem, it's an internet-accessing device, it's a GPS device, you can watch movies on it, access Wi-Fi on it, subscribe to RSS feeds on it - and that's not counting the various applications on it for exercising, musicians, or gamers.
Call quality is top-notch, even with less than half a full bar of signal. Battery life is getting better - to start with, it needed charging every night, but now it's going three days before I need to charge it - and that's not just leaving it sat on the side. That's using it to phone, text, play music, check my email...
It's got lots of knobs and whistles and funky features on it too, little things that make a difference in using it. The text-messages come in as usual, or you can view them in Conversation mode, which is sort of like seeing it in an MSN screen, so you can follow conversations without having to sift through untold amounts of messages - including what you said previously, so no more flicking between Inbox and Sent folders.
As with most things like this, it DOES come with lots of random pictures, music files, videos and stuff on there that you probably don't want, and
most of it you can delete - there are a couple of items that are protected, but they are not big enough that you'll notice a loss of memory.
Not that you will notice at all - the internal memory is a fairly decent 118Mb, but it comes packaged with an 8Gb memory card - plenty of room for all your music, pictures and everything else.
Being that it counts as an "entertainment" phone, it has stereo speakers built in - which means ringtones will scare you to death when you're sitting in the quiet. It also comes with the rather excellent Sony Ericsson ear-bud style headphones that remove ALL traces of sound of the outside world. Plus, it comes with a bass-tube speaker that it sits on and that is bloody loud too. And if you're feeling really flash, it has a built in stand so you can stand it up on your desk and play music or watch video without getting fingerprints all over it ;)
The Wi-Fi is good too, and if you were unscrupulous, you could get it to scan for open wireless points and connect where ever you are and check your mail using someone elses internet connection if you so wished... Not that I would condone such actions of course... It has YouTube and iPlayer built in too, which is good quality, and the streaming seems flawless too - though that might be the internet connection and router too.
You also get access to the PlayNow Arena, which lets you download movies - for free, I should add - to watch on the phone. They are compacted so they don't take up loads of space - 150-200Mb each - but the sound and video quality is spot on. You get the SenseMe feature on the phone and PC Software too, which lets you play the songs depending on your mood. Sad and Quiet? Happy and Fast? Excellent. It takes a while to scan your entire music library if you have a lot - it took two days to go through my 3000+ tracks, but I leave my computer on so I didn't really notice.
Other fancy features - Picture and Video editors, sound recorder, various SatNav/GPS stuff including Google Maps, Video Calling, Applications (plus more to download if you wish!), various Organiser tools, Games, Radio, Track ID, Bluetooth, Email, Instant Messenger... I seem to keep finding things when sitting and fiddling about with it.
I love this phone - it is certainly the best one I have ever owned, and if you're up for a new one and, like me, aren't into the whole Touch Screen craze that seems to be catching everyone, this phone is great.
Edit: I wonder why my spellchecker is telling me "movies" isn't a word... Strange...
Name: Dan English
