Sony CMD-J5 WAP phone (Sony CMD-J5)

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Product:	Sony CMD-J5
Date:	23/05/01 (13 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: slim and lightweight, stylish, loads of features

Disadvantages: feels slightly cheap

Sony's J5 lets you record your own ring tone from any source you want. My brother tears himself away from recording some belching noises to tell you about it
Picture the scene: You're sat on the bus on your way to work, when someone's mobile starts ringing. Five or six people all reach into their pockets at the same time, thinking it's probably their phone that's piercing the silence. The whole thing immediately turns into a popularity contest, but only one of them actually has the phone in question. One by one, the contestants are eliminated until only one remains. He reaches into his jacket pocket and plucks a chiming handset from its depths, presses the call answer button, and for the duration of the two-minute call, this man becomes a Q-list celebrity. But what about the other fellas? How must they be feeling having just made the biggest phone faux pas possible? It's an embarrassing situation for all concerned, and one that's been the inspiration to Sony's R&D department in bringing the all-new CMD-J5 to the market place.
You see, the J5, unlike Sony's previous efforts, has a killer gimmick and that's the ability to record any sound you darn well please and use it as a ring tone. It's a nice touch and, although not ground-breaking (Panasonic's GD92 and GD93 already have this feature), it's cool enough to swing a split-decision in Sony's favour. You can cram up to ten seconds of audio into each ring tone and the J5 has five memory spaces allocated to the recording of alerts, so you don't have to delete one every time you think 'Wow, wouldn't it be great to have the sound of me evacuating my stomach after 15 pints of lager as my ring tone.'
Of course, this recording-ring-tone-thing isn't the most important element of the J5's functional arsenal, but it's certainly cool and since Sony seems to be hanging its entire ad campaign on the feature, they must think it's wor
th shouting about too. WAP's where the J5's talents really lie, of course, and its six-line (minus top and bottom menu bars), 96x92-pixel display is certainly up to the task, displaying a generous four shades of that perennially fashionable hue: grey. The J5 employs Microsoft's Mobile Explorer software for browsing purposes, which enables you to access both WML and HTML Web pages, although few HTML pages are small enough to fit into the phone's cache.
MME also includes a built-in e-mail client, meaning not only can you access your existing POP3 e-mail account, but you can also compose messages off-line and then go on-line to send them, saving you valuable coinage in the process. The J5's SMS abilities don't suffer as a result of all this e-mail trickery, though, as it features T9 Predictive Text input and gives you the option of attaching sound and pictures to your messages, although these can only be heard or viewed by fellow J5 users, so their use is limited.
As with the Z5, Sony has decided not to include an IR port, which is something that comes as a bit of a surprise. It's a serious omission for those wanting to connect to laptops or handhelds while on the move. The J5 will, however, connect via USB to your laptop or desktop machine and allows you to synchronise your mail and contacts by using Microsoft Outlook.
Sony quotes a maximum standby time of around 150 hours. Realistically, on the Orange network, I got a figure of roughly 90 hours between charges, making about six or seven, five-to-ten minute calls over that period. Mostly to my mum.
The CMD-J5 isn't one of those outstanding phones that'll have people debating its aesthetic qualities over a glass of vintage red, neither is it one that people will instantly start ribbing you about. It's basically indifferent-looking. If features rather than great looks are your bag, though, you'd have a hard job improving on the impressive list that the J5 boast
s and as a WAP browsing tool, it's up there with the best of them. And if the thought of being able to record your girlfriend snoring and have it play back every time she rings appeals, then the J5 could well be the phone for you.

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