Mobile Phones

[sidneylopsides]

Review your new phones here, I might be here quite a bit.

Just an idea, a bit of a feature guide:

Form Factor

Bar: your standard phone with no moving parts, screen above keypad. EG, T610, C65, 6230

Clamshell: Screen in top half, keypad in bottom, close over each other covering the screen, usually have a second outer screen. Often mistakenly referred to as flip. Eg E700, V600.

Flip: Has a flip to cover the keypad but leaves all or part of the screen visable. Eg T29, Z7, P910. Less common now.

Slider: Screen on outsides, usually buttons under screen. Keypad slides out from underneath. Eg E800, 7650, SL55/65

Swivel: Outer screen over keypad, swivels out. Tend to be fasion phones as it is not too pratical. Eg V70, V80, S700i, SO505is.

Screen:

STN LCD screens are cheaper, but have poorer colour reproduction and are slow to respond, this causes fast movement to blur. Tends to be used on cheaper phones now, eg nearly any Nokia series 40a and Sony Ericsson T610. Also used alot as external colour displays on clamshell phones. They tend to range from 4096 to 65,536 colours. These also fade in strong light, making them hard to see.

TFT LCD screens have better colour reproduction and response times, better for video and games. These are more expensive, but can be found in phones from around £100 upwards now, such as the Sony Ericsson K500i or LG C2200. They usually come in 65,536 or 262,144 colours, mostly 65K. These fare better than STN in strong light, you an usually make out everything with some loos of colour and contrast. These use more power than a STN as they are active displays, STN are passive.

Monochrome/Grayscale LCD, just black on a coloured backlight. Very easy to read in any light. Not very common other than external displays on clamshells.

OLED: Organic LED, mainly used for external displays like the Samsung E700. Usually very few colours (4-16) but are bright and easy to read in nearly all light. Samsung have made one handset with a 65,536 colour OLED display, but it is not up to the standards of a TFT LCD yet.

Screen resolution. This is the amount of pixels and colours the screen displays. Standard sizes are 128*128, 128*160, 176*220 and 240*320 but models do vary. The size of the screen compared to the number of pixels gives an idea of how good the picture will be, the Siemens S65 has a large display, that is 128*160@65K whereas the Sony Ericsson S700i and Sharp GX30 have similar sized displays of 240*320@262K, the S65 screen looks terrible in comparison.

Camera:

Mobile phone cameras come in two types, CMOS and CCD. This is the sensor technology used to capture the image, CMOS sensors are low power and very compact, ideal for mobile devices, but they have poorer image quality. ?Nearly all camera phones are CMOS.
CCD cameras use more power, and are a bit bigger but have higher image quality, these are the same sensors as used in compact digital cameras. The Sony Ericsson S700i and Sharp GX30 use CCD cameras.
Camera resolution ranges from QVGA(320*240, ~.1Mp), CIF (352*288, ~.01Mp), VGA (640*480, 0.3Mp) to SXGA (1280*960, 1.3Mp) Some cameras are out there at 1 and 1.1 Mp.
All tend to offer digital zoom, but it's generally not worth using it as you just lose detail.

User Interface (UI)

Most are getting pretty similar now, moving towards the PC style desktop menus as introduced by Ericsson with the T68. Everyone finds a certain UI better than the rest, Nokia tend to be very simple, needing no effort to work out but severly limited for extra features, Motorola allow massive customisation but can be overly complicated, Sony Ericsson are somewhere inbetween.

Storage

All phones now have some sort of storage space for custom files, ringtones, pictures, videos etc. This can be fixed (1MB for pictures, 1MB for sounds etc) or dynamic,sharing a total memory pool between everything. Storage ranges from 2MB (T610) to 80MB (Samsung D500).
More phones are starting to allow external memory, in the form of memory cards often used in digital cameras and mp3 players.

MMC (Multimedia Card): Cheap and common, about the size of a postage stamp. Up to 1GB
RS-MMC (Reduced size MMC): Not quite as cheap and common but half the size of MMC. There are now 3.3v and 1.7v versions, the Nokia 7610 uses 3.3v (more common) and the Nokia 6630 uses 1.7v, they are not compatible. Up to 512MB/128MB
SD (Secure Digital): Same as MMC but with security features. Up to 8GB
TF (Transflash): Tiny versions of SD, about 1.4 the size Up to 128MB
Memory Stick Duo: Half sized Memory Sticks, about 3/4the size of an MMC. Up to 128MB, 1GB for Duo PRO.

Nokia use MMC/SD/RS-MMC
Siemens use MMC
Motorola use TF
Sony Ericsson use MS Duo

No one seems to be able to agree a standard. :p

Network

GSM- Global Standard for Mobile phones I belive it stands for, comes in 850, 900, 1800 and 1900MHz frequncies. 850 is for North America, UK uses 900 and 1800. A Tri-band phone is 900, 1800 and 1900 a Quad band will have 850 too. Look for Quad if you are planning on using the phone in NA. This is second generation (2G)

CSD(Circuit Switched Data) is data over a GSM connection, like dial up, GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) is similar to mobile broadband, giving speeds up to 86Kb/s. These are just data standards to work on a GSM network.

UMTS: 3G to you and me, uses 2100MHz in th UK and 1900MHZ in NA. Allows faster data.

Connectivity
Infrared- On alot of phones, line of sight communication between devices, not too fast and a bit of a pain. Lots of phones (ie Nokia, Samsung) can only use this for data connections, not for sending files (ringtones, wallpapers etc)

Bluetooth- A short range (10m) radio communication system, allows wireles headsets, data transfer and even radio controlled toys for phones. Again, some manufacturers (even networks) cripple this feature so you can't send ringtones etc over it.

Cable- A cable to connect to a pc. Simple.

Sound

Ringtones can be polyphonic midi files, with phones capable of playing up to 80 simultanious voices. These are synthesised in the phone and tend to sound articficial, the best ones have on board samples of intrusments to improve the quality. Lots of phones can use mp3 files as ringtones, giving a real music ringtone.

[sidneylopsides]

Sony Ericsson k700i

This is the latest handset from SE, the replacement for the T610/630.

Appearance
http://premium.uploadit.org/sidneylopsides/DSCF0014front.jpg
The style of the phone is very nice, with two parts to it. The front has an aluminiun screen surround and silver plastic front of the body. the keys are quite large and are made of clear plastice with the print under them, this is good for long nails, as you cant scratch this off! Above the keypad is the joystick, back, clear and two softkeys. There is a change of texture to the back of the keys that follows the cirlce formed be the joystick and softkeys, this looks very nice when coupled with the right theme.
http://premium.uploadit.org/sidneylopsides/DSCF0012key.jpg

The screen is large for the size of the phone. The Power button is on top with the IR window, and the connector is at the bottom, covered with a rubber flap. This connector is the same as all other SE/Ericsson handsets so all previous accesories work fine.
The left side of the phone has the volume and camera buttons, and the right side the browser launch button.
The back of the phone looks like a digital camera, with a circular design around the lens, this has a light built in to it. The speaker is just next to this ring, and there is a mirror opposite it. The rest of the back is the battery cover, this is brushed aluminium, which is very nice. The battery cover is held on by 4 rails, each about 1/2 an inch long, this holds it very securely.
http://premium.uploadit.org/sidneylopsides/DSCF0015back.jpg

The battery itself is a Li-Polymer of 700mAh which is supposed to last up to 7 hours talktime and 300 hours standby.
On powering up the phone you start to see the quality of the screen, very bright and even white. The screen is one of the best out there, it has a resolution of 176*220 at 65,000 colours. Images are very sharp and colourful, and it is very good in strong sunlight. It is closest to the Motorola Vxxx phones, just not quite as bright outdoors.

Use

The menu system is the latest version of the Sony Ericsson style, very easy to use. The wallpaper can be animated, and this can look superb. On the standby screen you press the left softkey to access the calls list, or the right to bring up a quick menu to Bluetooth, Ir, silent, shone status and shortcuts. If you press the side up/down keys you get the status screen, this tells you the date, current profile, phone model (why?) and free memory. You can use the camera button to start that, or the browser button to start wap. It will go straight to your home page.
The joystick can have a shortcut set for each direction, i have left for mew message, up for media player, right for radio and down for phonebook.
Press the joystick in and you get the SE menu, in the style of a pc desktop. Icons are arranged in a 3*4 grid. Moving Icons is animated nicely, the icons "boing" up at you when selected, and a little spotlight follows your movements, this just looks nice :)
The menu speed on previous SE menu systems were quite slow, and this has been fixed. the response is excellent, very quick, and so it typing messages. The T9 keeps up with you even when you go very fast, on the T610 you could have a message finished and it would still be trying to diplay the second word.
There is a file manager, this has folders for pictures, sounds, videos, games, applications and other. Files sent to the phone are automatically sorted into the correct filder. sub folders can be added and files moved around.
The handset has 40MB of free space to play with, it can play MP3 files and MP4 videos. There is a media player for listening to music and watching video. If you want to listen to music you have an equaliser that you can set manually and has a bass boost. The player can also be minimised while you do other things on the phone, it will automatically pause for anything else that uses sound, calls etc. The music can be played through the loudspeaker with suprising volume and clarity.
There is an FM radio too, you have to have the supplied stereo headset plugged in to use this, as it works as the aerial. It has 10 presets, and tunes instantly. The reception strength is not brilliant, in Edinburgh airport I couldnt get any stations, and in Leeds I can't pick up local stations well. this also can play through the speaker.
The camera is VGA, and has a choice of settings. Resolutions are 160*120, 320*240, 640*480, andinterpolated 1280*960, and choice of normal or fine quality. The top end isnt that bad for a phone. It has normal effects, black and white, seipia, negative and solarise, but also does a panoramic and frames. The panoramic stitches three pictures together, you take the first and it shows the right hand edge of it on the left side of the screen, transparent so you can line up for the next and then the last. These shots look pretty good.
The frames just puts a frame round the picture, like a wanted poster of prison bars. There is a night mode, but also a light which is good for near shots. In the lowest resolution you get a 4x digital zoom.
http://premium.uploadit.org/sidneylopsides/Picture32.jpg
When in the camera mode, a flick of the koystick to the right take you to video recorder mode. You get two resolutions, B&W, sepia, negative and solarise effects, and can use the light.
http://premium.uploadit.org/sidneylopsides/DSCF0020light.jpg

The recording is not bad for a phone, but if things move to quick it can break up. You can limit the files to 100KB for MMS or keep going till you run out of memory.

Video Clip (http://premium.uploadit.org/sidneylopsides/clip3.mp4)

There are java games, and this phone supports the Mascot Capsule 3D engine. The games are pretty impressive, Super Real Tennis is really good. The characters are full 3D models, the action is very smooth and it plays full screen. It will also play Java games designed for series 60 Nokia phones.

http://premium.uploadit.org/sidneylopsides/DSCF0021tennis.jpg

The ringtones can be midi, wav or mp3. These are very loud through the rear speaker, and easy to hear. The midi playback seems to have had the treble toned down abit, but the bass is louder than most.
The call quality is excellent, very clear and loud, and the reception very good too, lots better than the T610, it holds onto a signal very well. You have a speakerphone option for calls too.
The connectivity, as usual for SE, is excellent, Bluetooth, IR, cable, GPRS.
Everything works perfectly, the BT supports HID, so you can connect to your pc and control everything you want. There are three profiles on the phone, desktop, media player and presenter. These files can be sent to your pc and edited very easily for any application, just change the key commands with a text editor.
Overall this is an excellent phone, the only drawback is the lack of expandavle memory, there should be a version out soon with this added, and it is rumoured to have a 1.3MP camera.

Video of animated wallpaper (http://premium.uploadit.org/sidneylopsides/DSCF0018.AVI)


edit: There is a new firmware out for the phone, version R2L, you can download and install it yourself from the SE website, but you need a DSS-20/25 to do it. It improves the battery life alot!

[sidneylopsides]

Posting the Panoramic shot here because is made the review harder to read :)

http://premium.uploadit.org/sidneylopsides/Picture31.jpg

[Gin&Tonic]

My review is of the Siemens MC60

Appearance

Being a lay-dee the looks mean a lot, I mean this has to live in my handbag, right?! So I was very pleased at how attractive it is - it has the sexy 'X' keypad and an attractive-yet-hardwearing camera on the back. The screen colours are bright and the font is good looking. You can now get it in tons of colours but I only had the choice of silver as I got mine ages ago. But silver is nice :D

10/10


Usability

Well; the menu system is easy to use; but the phone lost major points by being MMS able but setting it up for MMS is a near impossibility. After an hour on the phone to O2, with them telling me to press buttons that didn't exist :rolleyes: I gave up. Not strictly the phone's fault; but a point loser nevertheless.
The X keypad sure is sexy, too, but after a few days the novelty wears off and you realise they sacrificed comfort; since sending a text causes pain to the soft pads of my female fingers. They might as well have made the keys from stone, after a few days it made little difference!! Lots of space on the phone for pics and numbers; GPRS worked well (but as ever was useless lol, apart from hotmail), battery life a respectable 250h standby and 300min talktime. Fast charging, too, but who wants to use the phone of pain for this long!!!? The built in games blew, and downloading JAVA games on PAYG?? No thanks :)

6/10


Camera

A decent enough camera, with variable resolutions saved in JPEG format. No flash, but adjustable brightness control meant you could take pics in all but the darkest of environments. Probably the saving grace of the phone.

8/10


Overall

The phone sells itself on looks, having a built in camera, and a colour screen all for £100. You can get better phones for this price; if not secondhand. The problem with the hard as rock keys meant texting was an utter chore, and the MMS setup problems made the phone feel like it could offer so much more, and it failed. In all, this phone looks far better than it is.

6/10 (And I can't give you an actual pic of my phone as I traded it for my trusty Sony phone - you can't get a better review than that! ;) )

[Lewiji]

My review is of the Nokia 6600

Appearance

It's a pretty standard looking phone to be honest. Well, nothing special anyway-It's got the basic nokia layout and a joystick and it's nicely symmetrical. You can change the covers from a titaniumish colour to a light silver colour. The back with the camera looks stylish, and the camera is embedded in a circle with the nokia logo. It's fairly large but this is because of the biiiig screen. You can't scratch/rub off the key print as it isn't print, it's see through, meaning it's black usually and when the backlight comes on it's a nice bright blue.

The screen as mentioned is pretty big, one of the biggest mobile screens around-the colours are crisp and the built in themes are very smooth and attractive. The signal/battery meter fit into the theme and there is a nice (optional) analogue clock next to the date and operator logo. A little fady status bar is underneath reporting things such as bluetooth on/off, incoming/outgoing connections, message queues, infa red etc. A nice touch is the backlight, instead of switching on and off it fades. The screensaver is plain, just the date and time in a randomly changing horizontal bar. You can download and even make your own themes using pictures, so it's fully customizable (I've made a rollerblading theme and it looks GREAT.)

7/10


Usability

The 6600 uses the Symbian OS, meaning it's fairly easy to get around with it's icon based menu. A new feature for nokia, it has seperate hang up/answer buttons to the menu buttons, meaning you can talk on loudspeaker and play games/use the camera at the same time.

It has GPRS and WAP, and has the Opera browser built in, meaning you can watch W+B on the phone ;)

The contact book is nicely organized, and you can add unlimited details such as email address, home phone, mobile, mobile 2 etc. You can also add a picture thumbnail which shows up when browsing the address book and when the said person phones-useful for that night when you got that girls number but just can't remember her name :p

You can record sounds too, and use the sounds as ringtones-no more polyphonics, proper mp3 now :p (I get a few odd looks when my pocket starts shouting AAAAAANSWER'T PHOOOOOOONE anyway :p)
The speaker isn't brilliant, nothing on a 3 Phone speaker, but it's fairly loud and not half bad for this size.
Bluetooth is about 10m range, and fairly easy to use and set up.

Games are nice as it's powerful and it comes with a 32mb MMC card as well as 6mb inbuilt memory, so plenty there. It can play some NGage games too.

My only complaint is all the crap that comes installed on it, it's all stuff you have to pay for before you use and uses about 22mb of precious space, which takes a while to delete. Also the battery life is a little low if you use it a lot, but you can get the firmware updated which increases the battery life (apparently) or even just upgrade the battery itself.

9/10


Camera

The camera has a 2x digital zoom which isn't great but it's usable. The pictures are fairly crisp (can't post any right now but will update) and it has 3 modes-normal, just normal snap a picture, portrait, small pictures useful for faces and take up less memory, and night which has slightly longer capture time for less light conditions. It saves in JPG. With the crap (see above) installed, it takes about 250 pictures in normal/night mode and 1500 in portrait mode. The capture time seems to be quite long so you have to hold it pretty still to get a good picture.

It also has a video recorder, however it limits the (uncompressed) files to 1mb meaning you can't record over about 15 seconds :( It includes sound in the video and has a decent refresh rate. It saves as 3gp.

You can download applications to do more things such as better zoom, brightness controls, and unlimited video.

8/10

Overall

Although it's pretty bulky it's a very light phone, and the screen is huge. I got mine on a £16 contract from o2 for free, however sim free it's 300-400 quids. The speaker for the sounds could be better but what do you expect from a phone?
It has a feature I've not seen, you can lock the keypad normally or you can lock it with a code-meaning if you're playing sport with it, it won't unlock itself (a problem that's wasted much credit in the past) as it''s unlikely to be able to type the code in in your pocket.
It seems to take forever to boot up because of the immense power of it-however the battery lasts a long time on standby so I think it's designed to be left on, so not too much of a problem.

I love this phone, it's pretty much the best phone out now in my opinion. The only thing it lacks is a microwave :p

8/10 Overall, loses out on the speaker and battery

[sidneylopsides]

I first saw this phone a couple of months ago, and it looked interesting, now it is down to £59.95 (on Virgin) I thought I would get one to try out. I recommended it to Comrade Penguin when he was looking for a new one.

What you get
Philips 355
Battery (Li-Ion 720mAh)
Handsfree kit
Neck lanyard
Charger

Appearance

The phone itself is very distinctive, with almost semi circular ends, and the keypad is made of large hexagons. I find it quite atractive, but some people hate the style.
It is made of all plastic, with two tones, light and dark grey. The build seems good, but the design of the battery cover means that it does creak a bit near the bottom. The cover over the handsfree and charger connectors is a solid feeling piece of rubber. One odd thing about it is that it has holes for the lanyard at each corner, not just at the bottom like most phones.

Features

Specs wise this phones is pretty good, 65k colour screen, built in camera, polyphonic and real sound ring tones, email support and the BeDJ ringtone creator.
The screen is not the best I have seen, but better than most around this price. It is and STN type, so there is some lag with screen updates, the colours are not very strong, but pictures do look pretty nice on screen. It even works well outdoors in sunlight, which suprised me.
The camera has a maximum resolution of 320*240, and does 160*120 and 128*128. I has a 2x zoom which drops you from 320*240 to 160*120. The only other things on it are night mode and a self timer, which is scary first time you use it! I'll post a vid of it couting down. Picture quality is not great, but will do for snaps on the phone.
The ringtones are ok, nothing really special, the best thing is that some midi files play partly through the vibrator motor, makes receiving calls more interesting and noticable (not that way ;) ).

I'll add to this in a bit after more playing. :)

[sidneylopsides]

This is a double review, not exactly mobiles, the Sony Ericsson HBH-600 and Motorola HS810 Bluetooth headsets.

http://premium.uploadit.org/sidneylopsides/headsets.jpg

Sony Ericsson HBH-600

What's in the Box
HBH-600
Red Style Up cover
Grey Style Up cover
Neckstrap
Charger
Instructions

The headset is very simply styled, with only three buttons, power and volume.
The power button is edged by the indicator LED, this flashes differently for different events, slow green is on, green/red is pairing mode and red is low battery.
Sound quality is excellent, it sounds just the same as talking on the handset itself, no distortions at all. Very comfortable to wear, after a few minutes you forget it is there. Battery life is around 4hours talktime, which I find plenty.
The charger is the same as ant other SE phone. One good idea is the neck strap, this clips into the charger socket.
You do get the options to change the colour of the outside, red and a purpley-grey are supplied but you can buy more if you really want, but they will probably be too expensive.

I give this one 9/10
Easily the best headset I have used, some people might like longer battery life.

Motorola HS810

What's in the box

HS810
Charger
No instructions....

This headset is very compact, a folding boom type. The style is more flashy than the SE, lots of chrome effect and a large blue LED lit area. It is a bit smaller than the SE, and feels nice and solid. It charges from a standard Motorola charger. The boom flips out to turn the headset on, the flip has a very positive action. Without any instructions it took a minute or two to work out pairing, you hold down the call button until a the LED stays on, then open the boom. Luckily I have an older and very similar Motorola heaset, so this is similar. Once paired I had no problems, opening the boom acticates the headset and connects it to the phone. Press the chrome button on the side to make or end a call, and the volume buttons on the top and bottom. With the older moto headset when you changed the ear hook for the left, a small switch was left open and the volume buttons switched to match, this one doesn't seem to do that, which is a shame.
It is just as light and comfortable to wear as the SE but suffers from poorer sounds quality, lots of distortion.

I give this one 7/10
Looks kinda cool, but sounds a bit naff.

I do have to admit to liking the more reserved styling of the SE, you look a bit less like a reject from some Sci-fi set with it on :p

[sidneylopsides]

Sony Ericsson S700i

What's in the box:
Sony Ericsson S700i
CD with sync software and Adobe Photo Album 2.0
32MB Memorystick Duo + MS adaptor
Charger
Manual



First Impressions

The S700i is Sony Ericssons latest "imaging" phone, a 1.3Megapixel CCD camera, 262,144 colour QVGA (320x240 pixel) screen and MS Duo support in a stylish swivel design. It is basically the European version of the Japanese NTT DoCoMo SO505is by Sony Ericsson.

http://premium.uploadit.org/sidneylopsides/s700cam.jpg
On first seeing the phone from the back you could easily mistake it for a real digital camera, or from the front a PDA. Holding it gives a great feeling of quality, it feels very solid, but not heavy. When you open it the hinge is very nice, good firm movement and it locks into position, it seems like you couldn't even start to bend the hinge. Again, a feeling of quality, even the battery cover has a very solid fit.
The buttons under the screen are metalised, which feels nice, like they are made to last.

http://premium.uploadit.org/sidneylopsides/S700open.jpg

The main keypad is in the "japanese" style, transparent with the characters printed underneath, so you can't wear anything off. The colouring of the keys is slightly odd, under daylight it looks solid, but in low light it goes all sparkly, it's just a bit strange. The key pad is large with well spaced buttons, but they are slightly recessed which is odd at first, the spacing stops this causing any problems once you get used to it.
It has a few controls on the sides, a slide keylock/light button(a nice sliding one, I really like this bit, it should be use more often), a pair of volume buttons and a shutter button for the camera. At the bottom is the connector port, for charging, headsets and data cables, this is covered by a rubber flap similar to the K700i, but with more play when open. The back has the camera, this is a a chromed metal circle with the lens cover in it, there is a small switch that opens the cover, revealing the camera and mirror, that action of opening the lens also activates the camera. Above the circle is the LED lamp, under it is the speaker and external aerial socket.

On powering up you start to get an idea of the quality of the screen, it is simply amazing. I haven't seen a phone with a screen this good, it is bright, colourful and so sharp and crisp. I belive this and the Sharp GX30 are the only ones to sport this level of display, and the Sharp may be slightly better, but I haven't used one recently to compare.
The UI is the same as the K700i, just redrawn to fit the larger screen. The menu animations are less fancy than it's little brothers, but seems more responsive.
The menus all respond quickly, but it does try to play all the animations if you are moving very quickly, which gives some lag. Navigating the phone's memory is done through a file manager, split into folders for Pictures, Sounds, Videos etc. You get control over using internal or external memory, creating and moving folders, moving and copying files around. This can go slow sometimes when you are selecting loats of pictures to move, but the actual moving of the files is done as a background task and is suprisingly fast. Both internal and external memory are pooled together, so a file structure in either memory is built on the other, and files in one folder can be held in either memory. Browsing pictures can be odd, take loads of pictures at 1.3MP and it flys through the thumbnails, but even small pictures transfered to the phone can slow it down, but I don't know why, this looks like a bug to me.
The rest of the phone moves very speedily, it seems to have a faster processor than the K700i, writing a text messsage etc is very responsive. It also has a couple of 3D games on it, Darts and Super Real Tennis, the tennis one looks very impressive and is good for showing it off!
The FM radio and media player both have very good sound, and can be minimised as background taks while you use the phone. If you make/get a call while they are on they mute/pause and resume after you hang up. The mediaplayer supports mp3, aac, wav, 3gp and mp4 videos. The medi player ony plays videos pu to 176*144 which looks tiny on this screen, but oddly if you encode a video correctly it will play in portrait up to 240pixels wide, so it looks like the video playback s a software issue and may be changed.
The dpad can be used for four shortcuts, which are customisable.
Themes are still present, and animated, these look excellent.
Other features are: music DJ, WAP browser(this could have been html with a screen this big :( ), organsier functions with calender, calculator, stopwatch, task list and notes.
There is a speaker phone that can be used during calls, and can also be used to listen to music or the radio, but for the radio you still need the headset plugged in as this is the aerial.

The Camera

The camera uses a CCD sensor, this is better than the CMOS found in nearly all camera phones, the sensor is a Sony one, with a F4 4.35mm lens (looks to be equivilent to a 35mm on a 35mm) which is fixed focus. The aperture of F4 means the depth of focus is quite good, most things are in focus from 50cm to infinity.
The camera has an ISO range of 160-4000 and shutter sppeds of 1/2-1/1683(?) of a second.
When you activate the camera, by opening the lens cover, the software starts on the phone. It switches to landscape so you hold it like a proper camera, with the shutter button on the top to the right, and the menu controls under your right thumb. The full screen is used as a viewfinder, with the two softkeys used to access funtions.
If you press the lower one you get the main settings, these are:

Shoot mode: Normal, Burst 4, With Frame
Picture size: 1280x960, 640x480, 320x240, 160x120
Night mode: On, Off
Self Timer: On, Off
Effects: Off, Negative, Solarize, Sepia, Black and White
Light: On, Off
White Balance: Auto, Incandescent, Flourescent, Daylight, Cloudy
Spot Photometry: On, Off
Shutter Sound: Choice of three sounds
Auto Camera off: 30s, 1, 2 or 3 minutes
Reset File Number
Save to: internal or external memory

The center button on the dpad turns of all the info on the screen, so you just see what you are shooting.

The top button takes you to the view mode, this shows you the last picture you took and you can scroll through all of the ones you have stored. If you press the center button again it turns off all the info on screen so you just have the picture. If you press the 4 way pad up it brings up a selection rectangle in red, you can move this around the picture and zelect to zoom in, then pan around. It also allows you to save the zoomed section as a seperate image, this only works in VGA or 1.3MP modes. The saved section is 320x240.

The volume buttons adjust exposure compensation, moving from + to - 2EV in 0.3 steps.

While in shooting mode, pressing right changes to video. This is the same as the K700i, the resolution is low which is dissapointing, as a full VGA video mode would make more sense. You get the same controls, with the addition of video length limiting for MMS. Videos are 176*144 or 128*96
The captured video is better than the K700i, but only just, mainly smoother looking.


Call quality is excellent, signal is always full round here, clarity and tonal quality are very good. It has no problems holding on to a signal and can make usable calls with one or even no bars on the meter.



http://premium.uploadit.org/sidneylopsides/s700closedlit.jpg

Heres a shot from it:

Clicky (http://premium.uploadit.org/sidneylopsides/DSC00086.JPG)

I just saw one on the gadget show :D

[hamsternator]

I welcome you all to see my review of the Sony Ericsson T610.
http://img102.exs.cx/img102/6400/sonyericssont610big6wg.gif
What's in the box:
Actual phone
Headset (Not Bluetooth)
USB Cable
Charger

A nice phone with quite a few gadgets. Looks good, has a nice menu system and comes with a good minigolf game.

Call Quality:
Quite good. Although for me sometimes when I've finished talking on it, my ear's hot. Don't know if it happens with all mobiles.
Camera:
Not a good quality. Only 0.1 megapixels. Night mode is bad as well. But you do get a self timer. Don't know why as it never seems to stand up long enough.

Keypad:
Nice. The keys are spaced out so it's easy to find the right button when you're texting.

Games: There are quite a few Java ones that are crap and will keep you entertained for about two seconds. But there is a non-java game called minigolf. Quite challenging and its better than most of the stuff I've downloaded.
You can also play minigolf against a friend by Bluetooth or Infrared.

Overall mark: 8/10
Nice phone, particulary one to show off. Camera could be better and no video options make it a bit worse.

[Ant2oo4]

Here's my review of the NEC e313...
http://img112.exs.cx/img112/4331/nec313front7ar.jpg

What's in the box:
Phone
Charger
Instructions Manuals, insurance information etc...

Appearance
Doesn't look too bad, nice design, but very basic. The actual size of the phone is quite large, it's hard to fit in a normal sized trouser pocket.
The phone is silver with metallic blue strips down either side with rubber flaps covering headphone, charger and memory card ports. The actual flaps aren't very good unless you have long nails, they can be quite hard to open and it takes quite a while to finally pick them open.
The keypad is decent, basic number layout, menu and browser launch buttons and a strange blue circle pad in the middle which is actually rarely used.
The speaker is located at the bottom of the back of the phone.
Screen is quite nice, very large for a good resolution.
One of the best things about the appearance of the phone is camera, it's a small camera located at the top of the phone which can be turned to face towards or away from you front of the phone and has riveted edges for a good grip when turning.

Usability:
The onscreen layout can be quite confusing, there's a lot of different buttons for different actions which could really be put in one easy to use menu.
Customization of the phone is also quite hard to figure out and gets very confusing, it does take a while to get used to this phone.
Texting average and easy to do, though the T9 option is very hard to use and gets confusing.
When actually talking on the phone, it does get quite hot very quickly, after around 30 minutes of speaking it is near impossible to keep the phone near your face. The phone also comes with a few lame ringtones and no games/java applications at all.


Camera
Picture quality is decent and the photo's don't look half bad but the video option isn't brilliant. Video length is very short and the audio and visual quality isn't great.
As for the video calling option this phone has, I haven't had much experience with it but from what I have done I can tell that it certainly drains your credit, the quality isn't great and the frame rate sucks, making movement almost robot-like.

Overall
Well, the appearance of the phone is very basic, slightly boring whereas the actual phone is very complicated and hard to get used to, especially after owning a nokia.
The camera is decent for picutres, but not brilliant for videos/video calling.

Score: 4/10

Personal opinion/recommendation: Probably the worst phone I've ever had and i wouldn't recommend anyone buying it unless you're running a tight budget and won't be using it much :/

[DevilDevlin]

Motorola V3:
Included are some pictures of said mobile and my Habitat-wannabe duvet.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v31/LennySmithOrr/phone2.bmp

What’s in the Box:
Handset
Leather case for handset
Charger
Manual
Hands-free headphones + mic.
USB Cable
‘Phone Tools Lite 3.1’ CD
Some little Motorola branded item which I assume is some sort of keyring ?

First Impressions:
I must admit, the initial reason I was interested in this phone was because of its appearance. It’s sleek design is like no other phone on the market. It’s main selling point is it’s size. The dimensions are (h x w x d) 3.86 x 2.08 x .54 inches making it perfect for any pocket or handbag. Although it doesn’t have equally jaw dropping features, it’s style makes up for it.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v31/LennySmithOrr/phone1.bmp

[I]Features:
The one disappointment I have found in this phone is that it is unable to shoot videos unlike cheaper alternative phones available. On the plus side it does have a very good camera with x4 zoom options. Other features it has include Bluetooth, polyphonic ringtones, MIDI ringer software, 3D picture show MPEG4 video playback, voice recognition phone book, speakerphone, phonebook capacity = 1000 entries, MMS, email, quad band, GPRS, WAP browser, 5MB memory & two display screens.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v31/LennySmithOrr/phone3.bmp

Usability:
It took me quite a while to get into the swing of this phone, first and foremost because of the confusing way it decides to change the button functions. Neither the top left nor the right button is a designated ‘yes’ or ‘no’ key, and they seem to differ in different menu screens. The keypad itself is a joy to use due to it being soft-key and not individual raised buttons. The sound quality on this model is crystal clear – it wins hands down compared to other phones i have owned. The battery life is also pretty long, so you don’t need to worry about charging it up all the time.

Overall:
I only bought this phone about three weeks ago, so I can’t really write a full review as I am yet to fiddle with many of the features. Other than the disappointment about not being able to take videos, I am a very happy, but very poor customer. I bought a new contract [as the big chiefs at 02 were getting my goat as far as my old contract was concerned] with Orange and the handset still cost me £200. I’ve also had to take out insurance due to the handset being worth more than double that amount, so it’s a bit pricey. If I’m being brutally honest, I think it’s a bit of a poser’s phone. The makers at Motorola evidently saw me coming a mile off.

Overall rating: 9/10

[Sonny Jim]

Today I will be reviewing the Nokia 3220 phone.
http://img133.exs.cx/img133/6962/nokia32205iq.gif

First Impression
Looks nice, stylish, small and thin.
Looks more of a casual phone rather than a business phone, probably more suited to a teenager than an adult.

What's in the box?
Phone
Charger
Manuals
Cut-out cover template
Quite a disapointment really, not the usual Nokia Hands free kit, in-car charger or data cable, but that may be because I didn't buy it sim-free (orange).

Main Features
Integrated camera.
Cut-out covers.
Flashing lights on sides.

The camera is good, just as nice as the next nokia camera, decent quality pictures, several picture modes.
The cut-out covers is a nice idea, you just place the (included) template onto a picture and cut round and voila, a nice new (back) cover for free.
The flashing lights are ok, slightly annoying, but decent. They flash when someone is ringing, you recieve a text or are playing games and look pretty cool in the dark, may not be suited to a businessman though :p

Other features
All the usual nokia features;
MIDI Ringtones
XHTML Browser
JAVA games
MMS Messaging
Hands free speaker

Decent features, does everything you want it to really. There are a decent amount of games, many ringtones (though slightly dodgy) to choose from.
Not really much to write about here, just decent all round.

Usability
The phone is very user compatible, it's comfortable to hold, small and weighs only 86g (including battery).
The rubber panels help for extra grip and have saved me from dropping it many times while wearing gloves :p
Button layout is simple and easy to get used to, thougth the middle button of the scroll wheel is a bit tricky to push sometimes, it does require fingernails.
The menu layout on the phone is easy to use, very simple and looks great, the colour schemes look very good.

Appearance
Slightly different design, definately stands out from other phones.
Some may describe it as a girly phone, because... it kinda does look girly :p

Overall
Overall the phone is a great phone, very user friendly but slightly girly and definately not for a the business type person.

Score
8/10

[Twiz]

The Sony Ericsson K500i is a slightly different (and cheaper) version of Sidneylopsides K700i. I'm not sure what the differences are, and I'm sure someone will tell me that the K700i is alot better for many reasons. The phone is light at only 88g, and is stylish.
http://www.sonyericsson.com/images/spgc/CWS31AFW_11047high_28_0_4000.jpg http://www.sonyericsson.com/images/spgc/CWS31AFW_11048high_28_0_4000.jpg
it has a really nice 3D menu, not unlike the T610/T630 menus(seen above). The screen is slightly bigger than the K700's screen, but the resolution is slightly smaller (128x160)
http://www.twisleton.com/compare.jpg
The phone has 12MB of memory, which isn't any good for MP3s and the like, but for pictures and short videos it's ideal. MP3s are limited to ringtone length(let's face it, no one is really going to use 12MB of memory to play MP3s all the time, get an mp3 player!!)but realtones will play perfectly as long as they're not 10 minutes long. like Sidneylopsides said, the K500i/700 have some purty 3D games. The tennis game is fun, when I can find a good site I'm going to try getting other 3D games on(like N-Gage ones). The camera on the phone is better quality than the T610/T630 cameras. The extended picture size is 1280x960, very big for a mobile. Also the camera takes quicker pictures. On the T610/T630, you had to hold the phone in place for a few seconds or the thing you were photographing would come out blurry. the K500i just snaps the picture and doesn't need to be held in place for a length of time. The phone has a loudspeaker on the back for louder calls. One more thing...this phone appears to be able to send real postcards to street addresses! There is a "postcard" option in the message thing on the phone, I selected it and it asked me for a street address, country and postcode! Can't wait to try that! Does anyone know if O2 UK supports this feature?


In all, I think this phone is an overall great phone. It has every feature you'd ever need(no Bluetooth, but Infrared will do)and has a snazzy design. It's not quite a smartphone, but for only £100 on o2? Surely you can see that's a match made in heaven.

Rating:8/10, no Bluetooth, mp3 usage is limited, but apart from that, a great phone.

[basstard]

I'm going to do a review of my Siemens CX65.

So, to start on a vaugely related note - I think that Nokia are becoming a bit like the Microsoft of the mobile world - here in Britain, up to this year, the majority of phones I saw people with were Nokias [the 3310 did it, I think]. Thus I have sworn never to buy a Nokia mobile, and help a Norwegian Bill Gates swim in his money, à la Scrooge McDuck. But I think that this's changed slightly, and this was due to the Sony Ericcson T610 [reviewed here (http://www.weebls-stuff.com/forums/showpost.php?p=620019&postcount=9).

So, I'm considering the T610 [cheapest price from Carphone Warehouse - £99.99 on Pay As You Go] as the benchmark for a fairly cheap chocolate-bar style camera phone here, though I know there're other options. This is what I'll compare the CX65 to [£79.99 on PAYG from Orange, as it's not available through CPWH]

The phone

Here's one now!
http://www.hilfe-forum.info/BILDER_INTERNET/siemens-cx65.jpg

It's much smaller than I expected [my last phone was a NEC e228, which - while 3G capable - was a brick]. It's roughly the same size as the T610, but not as square. So, if the T610 was an old Volvo, the CX65 is as curvy as a Renault. If we were talking in car metaphors.

Anywho, it has a large 176 by 132 pixel TFT screen, which is bright and always easy to use. Above the screen are two small seethrough sections of fascia, behind which are two flashing lights, which can be set on or off. They have settings like 'strobe', 'lighthouse', 'disco' etc. The keypad is a bit plasticky, but is easy to use. One note - Siemens swaps the space button and full stop, as compared to Nokia and NEC phones. The joystick is easy to use, with four-way control and central click-down. There's an infrared port on the side, but no Bluetooth [unfortunately]. It is -supposedly- compliable with Clip-it changable covers which have to be gotten from Siemens direct, and the fascia is hard to remove [in the box is a special removal tool!]. Talking of hard-to-remove things, this phone features the SIMCARD-Holder-From-Hell!

Camera

It has one, that takes nice 640x480 shots and short videos. The camera is useful, but not as noticeable and as much of a feature as compared to some of Sony's cameraphones.

Menuing

Click the joystick, up comes the usual 9-way selection. After that, joystick-only to navigate menus. Intuitive and easy, but you don't really expect any less from modern mobiles.

Storage

The phone has 16MB of internal storage, with 12MB available to use once all the apps/games are taken care of. Plenty for most people's needs. Note the phone can't play/hold mp3s as some Sony's and my old NEC can.

Apps and Usefulness

The phone has something called a 'download assistant' - essentially a cartoon bird that redirects you, via GPRS, to a Siemens-sponsored website and asks hideous amounts of money for screensavers, pics and ringtones. Do not use this. More useful is the 'photo editor' - a cut-down, phone-style mix of MSPaint and Photoshop, in that it can resize, emboss, and do effects to photos. Nice, as I haven't seen this on similar-standard/priced phones. But an extra. More of a gimmick is the 'morpher' - you supply a photo of yoruself and another, and it morphs the two - ever wanted to see a cross between you and Britney, to see what your babies'd look like? Now's your chance.

Gameswise, it comes with StackAttackAdvance, which is essentially phone-portable dogturd. Well worth deleting. Better is BattleArena, a side-to-side scrolling shoot-'em-up with deathmatches and missions.

Generally, the phone takes longer than expected to load up apps and games, but still fairly prompt, and so only will annoy the hugely impatient.

Network

Dunno, but I usually find I have good signal [and GPRS connection allowing 56k internet] in most areas, except rural Perthshire where everyone's vaugely inbred and has 3 ears. Not that I was lingering there, understandably...

Overall

I like my new phone, let me say that. And if you're planning on buying a cheap cameraphone, I'd recommend it. It's easily worth the slight extra to upgrade from a Siemens C65, and £20 cheaper than the basic Sony cameraphone.

But it is hampered by the plasticky keypad and lack of Bluetooth. With the Bluetooth this phone could have been fantastic. Instead, it's just great.

And I'm off to stare at my phone doing 'strobe' lighting a bit more...*epileptic fit*



[update after a month. I happen to like the keypad now, it works well once it grows on you. The joystick in the middle is fantastic, I feel, compared to, say, a Sony T610. ON the downside, my joystick has broken off, but it's off to Siemens to be fixed free under warranty. THis is admittedly my fault dropping the phone as opposed to dodgy build.

Oh, and just in case you think you want one, Orange is providing free 'net access on all Pay As You Go phones 'til the end of April. This saves me a load of £ as I spend quite a lot reading fanfiction online using WAP.]

Another update
I still like my phone but still find myself longing for my e228, especially if it was unlocked and on a non-3 network. However, I've found many useful things for my CX65 - for example, a program that lets me go on the weebl IRC channel with it.

In summary, it's nice but slightly plasticky.

[sidneylopsides]

What's in the box:
P900
Battery
Charger
Memory Stick Duo (usually 32MB) with adaptor
DSS-25 Sync-station
Stylus
Keypad flip
Tiny screw driver
Alternate front panel for use without flip
Software CD

The P900 is a PDA style smartphone, with a 320*208 65k colour touchscreen, MS Duo slot, integrated VGA camera, Bluetooth and IR. It runs Symbian 7 with the UIQ 2.0 interface, it has a built in video and mp3 player, handwriting recognition, video recorder and even a phone.
To look at it's very businesslike, two toe grey and grey-blue, without the keypad attached it looks just like a PDA really. With it on it looks like a strange phone, which I suppose is about right.
It has two ways of working, flip open and flip closed, I'll treat them seperatly.
Flip closed gives you access to most functions, just smaller. You have a 5 way jog wheel (it rolls up and down, clicks in and tilts towards and away from you) that allows you to select from the main menu, this is very like the old Sony ones before the days of SE. When you create a message you have a choice of multitap text input or T9.

[Piemaster3000]

Ok, I need a REALLY heavy duty phone, for as cheap as possible, with as many features as possible. Any recommendations? By heavy duty, I mean, it won't break when tossed off roofs onto the ground. (I do a lot of rafter work in theatres)

[faragher]

Ok, I need a REALLY heavy duty phone, for as cheap as possible, with as many features as possible. Any recommendations? By heavy duty, I mean, it won't break when tossed off roofs onto the ground. (I do a lot of rafter work in theatres)

Have look at this (http://www.retrofone.com/product_info.php?products_id=82&osCsid=bac7363792d2616072fb0ea2f2d12ce2) , this (http://www.retrofone.com/product_info.php?products_id=105&osCsid=a6061846b81d51aaedcf620ef826f42e) and this (http://www.retrofone.com/product_info.php?products_id=98&osCsid=a6061846b81d51aaedcf620ef826f42e) .

All have decent features (but no phones - this would be a problem, because drops would knacker lens alignments), and rugged, and all available cheap as sim free.

[sidneylopsides]

If you want tough, go for the R310. The Nokias are just toys in comparison.
Basic phone but built to withstand nearly anything, I've heard of them being dropped from a first floor window onto conctrete with no damage, people going swimming with them, it's basically the toughest phone that was ever built. The body is GoreTex, the LCD is shock proof, everything is water proof. Not water resistant, water proof. It was the only phone Ericsson covered for water damage in their guarrentee.

[Piemaster3000]

Umm...
That'll be difficult to get, seeing as I'm American.
Got any ideas for me then?
:P

[sidneylopsides]

What network?

[Piemaster3000]

Verizon....

[freddiestarfish]

I have a nokia 3300, which is surprisingly tough, I have thrown it of my roof onto concerete (by accident), its fallen out of my pocket when cycling at 25mph multiple times with no damage, been thrown in a paddling pool, jumped on and thrown about repatedly with only scratches to the case.

[Piemaster3000]

What's that one look like?

[freddiestarfish]

It looks like this http://www.mforum.ru/phones/images/nokia3300_415.jpg
And thats bigger than actual size.
(I meant 3300, not 3330 as I said above)
It does look silly, but has a 64mb mp3 player built in, and you can get them cheap 2nd hand.

[Stringy Pete]

Today I received my Orange SPV C550.

This is just a small first impressions, I will review it once I've used it for a few days.

http://www.3dnews.ru/documents/news5/20050227_orangespvc550_01.jpg

My first impression is that it is a very solid feeling phone. It feels almost metallic, and quite weighty. Definitely not like it is going to fall apart on me. I was quite impressed with the build and then...

...I TURNED IT ON. The screen is a QVGA 320x240 screen (well, technically it's 240x320), and everything looks ridiculously crisp. This is the same resolution of screen that Pocket PCs used to have.

It appears to have a lot of applications (understandable as it runs Windows Mobile 2003 SE), and it has Windows Media Player 10, which has proved good so far for the music and videos I've chucked at it on my 1GB Mini-SD card.

So far I'd give it a very strong 9 out of 10. There are some things I will need to get used to, but I'm loving the phone a lot already.

Stay glued to this spot for a full review in the near future.

[basstard]

Today, as a part-impulse buy, I got one of these :

http://www.onlinekosten.de/news/bilder/sony_ericsson_w850i.jpg

It's a Sony Ericsson W850i.

Usually I've stayed away from Sony Ericsson mobiles, as their first camera phones were clunky and unwieldy, but this one is really quite nice. It's a slide-open phone.

I've only had it half a day but it's already proved nice. The camera is a big improvement on my last phone's [a Siemens S65], I've moved up from 1 to 2 megapixels, and this one actually takes pictures indoors [the S65 just refused to do that with any decorum]. I'm loading music tracks on to it at the moment - it comes with a 1 gig memory stick - and, unlike what I've heard about Sony's music player software, I'm having no problems at all. Only thing is music bought off the iTunes store won't go across.

It has an inbuilt radio, which is nice, 3G, and video calling. I'll post more once I get to know it better.

I got mine from the Carphone Warehouse, which is offering an immediate £50 cashback if you sign up and are a student to a contract on Orange with that phone, along with 50% off all Sony memory sticks at purchase time [so £45 for a 2 gig stick].

[Soapie]

I have a Nokia 6280. It looks like this (http://mobiset.ru/photos/march/27/nokia_6280_part1/11b.jpg).

[A_Marshmellow]

Deos Any 1 Know If I Can Download The Toons: Crab Song So I Can Put It My Phone??? :) Thx

[Pie-Badger-Man]

Deos Any 1 Know If I Can Download The Toons: Crab Song So I Can Put It My Phone??? :) Thx

Yeah its alittle thing called piechoons :] you gotta pay and i'm pretty sure doing it any other way breaks some copyright rule or another.

[gathius]

i have a razr v3 on contract

looks like this:

http://asia.cnet.com/i/r/2005/hp/39093940/sc001.jpg

[katt]

i like the candy bar phones. have a basic little nokia