Small Object of Desire (Sony CMD-J70)

Member Name: The Operator

Product:	Sony CMD-J70
Date:	03/04/02 (1736 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small

Disadvantages: Can't really say

Quiet at the back, I'm going to do a consumer review. That means no crowns if it doesn't really cover the subject. OK? By all means if you feel that I've dealt with it in a witty, amusing AND informative manner, then go ahead, I'll have your £1.50 but there is a disturbing tendency of late for Dooyoo to award crowns just because the author is popular and turns a good phrase. Might be Jackbumpoo about the subject in it, even. A bad sign because we're all getting better and the money won't last!
Got that off my chest so eyes down and read on...

Anybody who's been reading me recently will know I've suffered some mobile hell courtesy of the good folk at BT/Genie and latterly Virgin. About the only positive aspect of the whole sorry affair was the fact that I got a new 'phone out of it and what's more it was free! Come on, I'm as mercenary as the next person, I'll have it if you're giving it away. As long as it's good that is. I'm all for maximum return for little effort in most things, mobiles being no exception. Although I will draw the line at being given a Nokia. Please, I have a soul. I write this on a Mac and I read the Independent. I even drive an English car. Sad aren't I?

The CMD-J70 is among the latest offerings from the masters of all things small and shiny at Sony Corp. Or rather Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB. And it's a fine and dandy little lump of plastic and silicon too. Now, most 'phones do roughly the same things now so rather than minutely examine every single function, I'm going to concentrate on where the Sony design scores and misses and on those functions which I, as a fairly basic 'phone user find either innovative or useful.
First impressions when I took it out of its tiny little box for its inaugural fondle was that I was going to break it. I mean my last phone was a Philips C12 and while no housebrick, wasn't exactly a para
digm in minature technology either. The Sony could hide totally behind the C12, it's vitals being 133 x 44 x 21 mm and it weighs in at 92g (about 3.5 oz for those who can't cope with a system of measurement that's been around for longer than they have). Actually it has a nice solid compact feel to it; it's not small enough to lose easily and it has a presence in your breast pocket due to its weight. It's silver and grey in colour but if you want to change that, get your nail varnish out and paint on it. This is a functional gadget and not a pose. For those with average sized hands such as myself it fits snugly across your palm. There is no virtue in something being the smallest - they're only easier to lose - I'd rather the design was rendered so as to facilitate ease of use and here I think the Sony scores well.

The 'phone is split equally in two - the top half being the earpiece/speaker and display plus the handsfree socket on the top right hand side (covered by a rubber flap) and the bottom the keypad and microphone. There are only 15 keys including the the call and receive buttons and they are evenly spaced out to enable even those with Cumberland sausage fingers to key effectively. This is made possible by the navigator key being on the side of the 'phone in the form of a jog/shuttle dial. This has been used by Sony before and I was initially a bit sceptical but it works and it works well. It just takes a bit of getting used to like every new thing. Count yourself very lucky if you can get something new and instantly feel as though you've had it for years. You can use this dial to do just about anything on the 'phone; it's the select and confirm key as well as the navigator and is nicely positioned to be just on the right index finger tip.
The keys themselves are a sensible size, are nicely proud of the surface of the 'phone and click satisfyingly when pressed. I do have one small gripe with them
though. They are lit by virtue of the characters being cutaways and this sometimes makes them difficult to see under certain conditions as the backlight is a vivid green when enabled. Tip - in daylight, disable the backlight and save talktime.
The display is a 4 grey scale hi-resolution graphic one of 92x92 pixels in 4 levels of contrast. This can work 6 lines of text which is handy WAP mode when browsing. Which I've only done once so don't expect a lot of guff on that as this op's about the 'phone, not Microsoft Mobile Explorer. Mobile internet services are accessed via the centre key on the keypad but be warned, power is eaten up at an alarming rate if you do access the WAP features because of the constant send required. Apparently also you can download different wallpaper but I've yet to find out how. It's not readily apparent from the website at www.sony-europe.com/J70 but I suspect you may need to have PC access. The display also includes a handy little graphic when you are accessing lists. A tiny marker scrolls down a column in the right hand frame indicating how much more of the list is to view. Can be useful if you can remember roughly where in the list you wish to go

I'm not one for sounds and pictures; I'm not into wasting time and money downloading smutty pics and the theme from Star Wars. Anyway, you can only trade pictures with other J70 users and although there are a few graphics installed they are a bit daft and won't get any use from this quarter. There are more than enough sounds or tunes for normal everyday use and they come in nice mellow polyphonic tones and not that horrid Nokia startled screech-owl tone. You can assign different ringers for groups of numbers although you can't assign one tone to a single number. Well you can if you put a single number into a group such as "girlfriend" with its own tone such as "trance". It doesn't matter how many numbers are in a gro
up you see.
What you can do rather well is record your own ringer sounds via the microphone. A colleague of mine recorded the two-tones from one of our company vehicles onto his 'phone and it was a startlingly good reproduction. Demonstrating this to a friend wasn't quite so successful as all I could think to record was Jimmy Nail singing "Crocodile Shoes" off the radio. Not exactly a true test of its capabilities. As for the vibrating ringer - don't expect any big thrills from a cunningly located J70. The vibrate alert does rather take some getting used to being as it resembles a Jew's Harp going off in your pocket or wherever. That's all you'll get though. Don't expect the accompanying bluegrass band - it's a tiny wimper of an alert and you'll probably miss it unless you've got it pressed up against your bare flesh. Quite frankly it's next to useless and I've missed several calls because of it. My old C12 in comparison used to make me physically jump sometimes with the ferocity of its vibrations.

Sound quality is excellent. Quite the best I've ever encountered. The microphone is very sensitive and the earpiece is very clear. Volume control is via the dial. The speaker which is oddly enough located in the back and accessed by the centre key during a call, does not however have enough grunt to overcome loud background noise although it's adequate and may be audible in a quiet car if you turn the phone over onto its face.

Got a lot of friends? 500 numbers can be stored on the 'phone memory and goodness knows how many more on your sim card. I'm on genie (shortly to be O2) and my sim card has enough space for 150 numbers. Jog the dial once from the home page and you're into the 'phone book. Hit S and you're into the esses. Scroll down with the dial press it in and you're connected. It's easy peasy. Or to dial the last number hit the call button twice.
Even easier. There is a handy little graphic which pops up whenever you store a name or number which tells you how much memory there is left. This can also be accessed from the "Settings" option from the main menu.

T9 predictive text input is standard and will provide hours me duo. Sorry, of fun. The dictionary is huge and already includes common names and uncommon surnames as standard. It doesn't include alternatives for words such as "dual" (try it) either, so If you want to add to the dictionary, just come out of T9 via the star key, type in the word manually, re-enter T9 and the dictionary is automatically updated. No menu - up yours Nokia again! The text memory is equally as impressive. 20 in and 20 out. The inbox you'll have to manually edit but the outbox seems to edit itself. Deleting messages is almost failsafe as you get asked several times before you junk stuff whether you really do want to delete it. The yes option always involves an extra jog of the dial too so it's difficult to do by accident.

You are able to send and receive emails as well as text although, again I've not set this up. You can access your own main email account as it were webmail if necessary or if on genie for instance, your account there. POP3 and SMTP are both supported and you will need the same parameters supplied by your ISP as you do when you configure your home or office email accounts. I'm not sure how this affects the phone's memory because as I said, I've not tried it, although it says mails of up to 2kb can be sent and received, including the header. Which is pretty large. You can only access unread emails from your own account and remember to log your PC out of your email account or you'll be unable to get anything. You can still read mails on your PC if they've been opened via the 'phone. You cannot though delete from the 'phone which would seem sensible enough although it means you have t
o go and access all that spam again at home before you dump it.

I 've also used the alarm quite a few times but unlike I believe some Nokias, you have to leave the phone on. You also have to remember to set the sounds to on and not leave the vibrate function active - a gentle humming will arouse only the most sensitive sleeper. Alarm does not override any other setting, it just uses your default ringer if activated. Switching on the ringer is simple - an extended press of the answer key will enable you to toggle between silent, vibrate, single ring or continuous ring.

For the anal, there are 4 games, Bananas - fruit wielding aggressive monkeys; Mindblaster - a code breaking game; PicPuz - one of those (to some) infuriatingly difficult sliding puzzles and Sand Art - a moving nozzle drops different colour sand into piles. I've tried that one and bored the pants off people.

Last but not least, battery time. You've got up to 200 hours standby and up to 6 hours talk time depending on your network. These are pretty impressive figures and outperform many of the popular 'phones on the market and was one of the reasons I opted for this model. A full charge takes only a couple of hours.

I've not covered everything here; I'd be here for hours. There's a 64 page manual for goodness' sakes and anyhow most functions are now pretty standard. I do have one minor worry though. Although the 'phone appears solid enough, I am slightly concerned about the strength of the casing around the jog dial. You depress the dial to select and you can hear a definite creak now and again when you do. Will it snap or part? I don't know. I've a few scratches on the silver casing from where I dropped it once and it survived that ok so I'm assuming it's pretty strong.

All in all, I'm well pleased with it. It's a nice looking gizmo with some handy functions. It's certainly got some admiring
looks from colleagues and friends and appears to perform well, even in the depths of Sainsbury's. It's most definitely not a toy and to me this matters a lot. I really don't like being one of the herd so big up for Sony for creating a worthwhile small object of desire.
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Specification:

4-greyscale high resolution graphical display
Alarm
Built-in modem
Calculator with currency converter
Data Communication via RS232/USB cable
E-mail
Games with sound
Graphic world time clock
Harmony ringer tones with polyphonic sound
High quality speech codec EFR (+ FR/HR codec support)
Integrated handsfree speakerphone
Jog Dial
Li-Ion battery technology
Organiser
Patch antenna
Phone book with 500 entries
Recordable ringer tones
Screen Size: 96 x 92 pixels
SMS with sound and pictures
Standby Time: 200h (dependent on network and usage)
T9? Text Input (T9? Text Input is a registered trademark of Tegic Communications, Inc.)
Talk Time: 3h 20m - 6h (dependent on network and usage)
Volume: 82cc
WAP 1.1 browser
Vibrating alarm  
Network:
GSM 900
GSM 1800

Available colours:
Silver
Sizes:
133x44.4x21.5mm

Summary: