A few weeks ago PureMobile sent us in the Sony Ericsson K850i, one of the most high-end non-smartphones in the market today. The device sports a 5MP camera and triband 3G, features that are highly admirable for the price. Read on for more.
The Sony Ericsson K850i is a GSM 850/900/1800/1900 feature phone with support for GPRS/EDGE and HSDPA at 3.6 Mbps at 850/1900/2100 Mhz. It is 118 grams, it has a 2.2″ QVGA TFT bright screen, an M2 slot that also doubles as a microSDHC slot, 40 MB internal free memory, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP/AVRCP support, 5 MP camera with autofocus, xenon flash, a secondary light used for SOS or flashlight, videocall camera and FM radio. In the box we found the phone, the 930 mAh battery, an EU charger with a US adapter, a USB cable using Sony Ericsson’s proprietary Fast Port, one hand strap, one handsfree, a CD, and a manual.
The design of the K850i is quite unique. It uses small buttons as a numpad, while the joystick is a rigid surface around the numeric buttons “2” and “5”. The soft keys are not real keys, but touch-sensitive surfaces. Unfortunately, while it looks cool, these touch-based surfaces don’t always work. Sometimes I have to press 3 and 4 times to get the phone to recognize the touch. This is a good example of form over usability, Sony Ericsson went for the looks rather than the proven functionality of normal buttons.
Other than that, the phone is quite thick, but it’s overall pretty small, so the size is compensated this way. It feels good on the hand, strong and well-manufactured. There is an on/off button on the top of the phone, volume up/down buttons on the right side, along with a camera button and a media selector slider button that lets you define the camera button: still camera, video camera, media files. On the bottom you will find the wrist-wrap hole, and the battery compartment that also holds the SIM card and the flash card. You can open the battery compartment without the phone rebooting while doing so, and change your flash card at that time, if required.
The reception of the phone is very good and battery life is even better: 12 days of standby and over 7 hours of talk time. Voice quality is also pretty good. Other features we liked on the phone are the neon lights that flash when there’s a new phone call, the speedy Bluetooth transfer rate (120 kb/sec), and the ability to find out which song is that you currently hear on the FM radio (via the “TrackID” application that recognizes music patterns).
The software has not changed much over previous incarnations of Sony Ericsson’s phones that we reviewed in the past here at OSAlert so I won’t get much into it (if you need screenshots check the article at GSMArena). I’d just say that all the software you would expect to find on a modern feature phone is here: alarm, calendar, email, Java 2.0, mpeg4/AAC support, games, voice memo, speed dial, organizer, IM, and more. The K850i comes with the Netfront browser and RSS feed reader, with reworked fonts that look better than on previous models. I like SE’s implementation of Java that let’s you run multiple J2ME applications in the background. In this model you will also find blogging support, an HP application that lets you print via Bluetooth, ability to acquire an internet connection from a PC via Bluetooth as well as sharing 3G via Bluetooth to a PC (both ways), and a motion sensor that will work with the media applications on the phone: each time you rotate the phone, these media apps will automatically rotate their UI too.
Sony Ericsson wrote a brand new media application that does video, music and pictures. It has a black and white icon theme and it looks pretty good, if it wasn’t for the fact that its text renders below the soft key text sometimes and it makes it look amateurish. The music application has support for podcasts, audiobooks, playlists, equalizer and album art. The video application automatically rotates and goes full screen when you rotate the phone. Overall, it’s a nice media application, but a far cry from Apple’s wheel-based iPod offerings.
The picture and video Cybershot camera application is very good. It has a multitude of features, ranging from flash light on/off/auto, night mode, self-timer, mic on/off, white balance presets, exposure support, effects, scene mode, macro support, autofocus support, red-eye reduction, ISO 100 to 400 and digital image stabilization. The only things missing is some optical zoom, ability to use the videocall camera to record and VGA video recording (it only goes up to QVGA at 30fps, sample 1 and 2). Also, while the camera is protected by glass, this glass acquires sweat pretty easily… A nice touch is the VideoDJ application that lets you add clips, images and music in a mobile video editor that it’s able to export as a new clips — with transitions applied and effects.
Overall, the K850i is a heavyweight in the feature-phone market right now, but it’s not revolutionary. If anything, its non-responsive soft keys sour the milk quite a lot. However, other features shine. What we really need is Sony Ericsson to get a clear head as to where they are going, because seeing all their latest models, it doesn’t seem like they have a solid plan: their non-smartphone OS doesn’t evolve fast enough and their UIQ smartphone platform is less than pleasing in the usability/looks department. Regardless, if you need a good camera phone with good media abilities, the K850i definitely a good candidate of a phone.
Rating: 8/10
Thanks for this review. There’s no substitute for going along to a store and testing things out in your hands, imho. I was tempted by another phone in the range using the same form factor and key arrangement. A few goes with it soon showed me that these tiny keys and my fingers don’t make a happy match. Too bad, as there’s a lot else to like here.
Does this phone come with software for your PC or Mac? I don’t think you mention this. But I like to back-up the stuff in my phone on a regular basis and a good PC suite is important for this. Nokia’s is pretty naff-looking imho, but at least it works OK. Still doesn’t come across as much more than a token effort, though. I don’t like their rudeness in dropping a hook into your Windows startup ini. Good programs should always ask before doing this, and give users the choice of having a program always on or run and closed when it suits.
I have the predecessor to this, the k800i. Plug it in through USB and it shows up as removable storage. I’ve loaded photos and a couple of GB of music by drag and drop. A ringtone can be any audio file you put on it.
But if you want to do more sophisticated syncing of stuff I guess you have to use the software that comes with it. I’ve never tried it, but there’s nothing on the packaging about supporting Macs. Maybe the k850 does though.
The manual only mentions Windows XP and Vista. So no Mac OS support for the synchronization. But you can use the Mass Storage function.
I just got this phone and so far I really like it. The resolution is beautiful and the camera functions are brilliant. I did BTW got it to record of the videocall cam though, I did it while trying to make a video call, which didn’t work and I was asked if I wanted to record a video message. This clip then showed up in my Media folder.
I really like the motion sensor in the phone, when you’re in Media mode and flip the phone it changes the view! There is even a weird kind of ball game in there which uses the sensor to roll the ball.
The touch keys do need a little getting used to but when you got the hang of it it’s really weird to use a phone where you really have to push the buttons. Some people using the phone think the whole screen is touchscreen because they have to touch the softkeys, which is a bit confusing at first.
The phone feels solid and looks tough, perfect for me, I don’t like those slimline-superthin phones.
It’s an almost perfect phone and I would give it a 9/10, being a SE it already scores 7/10 in my opinion and the Media and Camera functions make it a 9.
I’m a big fan of the K-series SE phones however I do have a couple of niggles I wish they’d address:
* The PC sync has got progressively worse (both the Windows software and the way the the phone can’t recieve calls / texts while plugged into the PC)
* The camera picture quality is poor (yes I know it’s a phone and not a digital camera, but I’d much rather have a 2 mega-pixel camera with a sharp clear image quality than a 5mpx camera that’s grainy
* The camera image capture is impracticably slow. Again I’d happily settle for a lower mpx camera if the capture speed was quicker.
These are only relatively minor points for what is an excelent series of phones so there’s a likely chance my next upgrade (due in a couple of months) will this phone.
For some nice pictures of the device:
http://www.mobilecowboys.nl/toestellen/5055/fromfeed
How was the actual volume on the phone? Maybe i’m going deaf young, but my last few phones seem to be way too quiet.
It was good for my ears.
Hi,
Nice phone, but the photo quality seems bad to me, the noise is less important that on my k750i by far, but it’s like if the picture had an ‘impressionist’ filter applied on it., For instance the face of Kojak is not smooth.
They’ve just replaced one problem with another.
Of course, this is not really important with a phone, other functions are really great.
At least theres no joystick anymore. All the K750’s joysticks break in the first 1 or 2 years.
Oh God, the joysticks. Who the hell thought that was a good design?
Oups, mine is still in a correct state.
According to my current luck, I guess it should break within a few weeks