Cool, classy, sexy - SMART! (Sony CMD-Z5)

Member Name: leeroy

Product:	Sony CMD-Z5
Date:	29/07/00 (949 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Loads

Disadvantages: Tricky to use at first, but only because of all its features

I have just revised this opinion after having owned the phone for a short while - yes, I am one of the lucky people to have actually aquired one!

The Sony CMD-Z5 (To give it its full name) is the most nicely designed, well thought out, feature packed phones I've ever used or even seen. It is literally credit card sized, with a nice neat flip design covering the keys and half of the screen. The flip is active, so it starts and ends calls when you open it.

The phone weighs in at about 90 grams, the rough equivalent of a Motorola v3688/v3690 of a Nokia 8210/8850/8890. On first look, the sleek silver design looks lovely and the only concern is that the screen is too small. This is not true - when the flip is closed - in the standby position, half of the screen is covered. (I'm not sure how versatile this flip is going to be - but my phone's insured so I'm not too bothered. This is another thing - the phone's current offline retail value ie. without a connection is about £400 so if you break it, you're stuck.)

When you turn the phone on, you are met with the usual pin-check (if you've enabled it) and then a lovely animation of your choice - flowing water, a city or pool balls breaking up. This is just one of many little touches which make this phone so refined and special. The buttons on the phone feel nice and responsive and (for the size of the phone) are well spaced and sized. I suspect, as many people have complained about the other aforementioned phones from Motorola and Nokia, they will complain that the buttons on this are too small and too close together.

The phone includes a jog dial on the left-hand side of the screen - which is an exclusive Sony idea, which is used to control all of the menus, scrolling through them etc. It can be used as a scrolling device by rolling it, as a button by pressing it, and also for going into extra information in menus and skipping back through menu opt
ions by pushing it backwards or forwards.

The Z5 also includes some lovely unique features - a built in answer phone for one. I really don't know why no-one's done this before, you can record voice memos on it or use it as a voice mail machine, so you don't have to pay for your voice mail. Brilliant. The phone also has full WAP (wireless application protocol) functionality which is useful because more people are starting to look for this in a phone. The email facilities on it are also excellent because you can use your own POP3/SMTP account from whichever provider you like. (PS. This is a fantastic facility which is unique but is a bugger to get to work initially because BT won't help you - call Sony for help). The best thing about this is that you don't have to get another email address to give out to other people.

Ringtones can be composed (3 to be stored on phone, 30 included on phone). It can store 500 names and numbers which can be grouped and different ring tones assigned to different groups. It's fab.

This is the best phone I've ever used - it's currently only available on BT Cellnet and Vodaphone for about £130 pounds which isn't too bad. Highly recommended for anyone who wants a top class phone. I'd recomend insuring it though, because it's worth £400.

If you're wondering how to get POP3 email to work if you have this phone - here's how. BT Cellnet are very unhelpful if you want to use your own existing email account rather than one provided by Freeserve for example. Sony are very helpful, but they can't tell you all the details you need to know to make it work, you'll need to get these from your ISP (Internet Service Provider).

1. Go to the Internet section by pushing the jog dial "back" and then go into the email section. Once there enter "Settings".

2. Enter the following details:
Provider/Dial Up N
umber: this is the number your PC normally dials to connect to the internet.
Provider/User Name: your user name to connect to the internet, usually the same as your email user name.
Provider/Password: your password to connect to the internet, usually the same as your email password. Ps. the preset securit code is 0000.
Provider/POP 3 Server: this is the trickiest one, I reccomend that you get this off of your ISP - you'll need an IP address, for example 194.87.83.99, not an address like post.myisp.co.uk because this doesn't work in most cases. It will be xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx where xxx is a number between 0 and 255.
Provider/SMTP Server: same as above.
Provider/Data Call Type: This should be set to Analogue.
E-mail/User Name: your username to collect email, usually the same as your user name to connect to the internet.
E-mail/Password: your password to collect email, usually the same as your password to connect to the internet. Ps. the preset securit code is 0000.
E-mail/Email Address: your email address. In full.
Detail/...: You don't need to change anything in the detail section, and as long as you have an IP address for your ISP, you don't need a DNS server. It is much easier and more reliable to do it in this fashion.

I hope this is helpful.

UPDATE: I've had this phone for quite sometime now (over six months) and I'm still really really happy with it! I'm still trying to break the flap, but hey, it just won't die!

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