Great Expectations (Sony CMD-Z7)

Member Name: tonybone

Product:	Sony CMD-Z7
Date:	18/02/02 (1879 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good Looks , Games

Disadvantages: No GPRS

Last year Sony took the mobile phone market by storm with two of the years best handsets the award winning CMD-Z5 and the CMD-J5.

This was reflected in the awards for best phone of the year from Mobile Choice with the Sony Z5 running away with the award. With Sony J5 also snatched the prize in the most innovative Phone category.

So I was of course very excited at the prospect of getting my hands on the new CMD-Z7.

The first difference I noticed was that the aerial had been removed this of course means the phone will fit much more easily in your pocket.

As you would expect from a Sony product the CMD-Z7 exudes class. The phone is finished in a smart metallic silver, while the backlight display glows a satisfyingly sophisticated orange. Frankly the Z7 is very difficult to put down. But where Sony really excels is with the little touches.

For example, with the flip open the network logo sits very flush in the middle of the screen. Yet when you close the flip it shift up a fraction so all the information is on display.

To get around the menus you have to use the jog dial which can be difficult to get the hang of at first. But once you get used to its very easy as you just rotate clockwise or anti clockwise to move swiftly through the menus.

Surfing the mobile internet works fine, the Sony Z7 employs the Microsoft Mobile Explorer I set mine up with the genie portal which takes only about 5 mins to set up using the Sony instruction book.

It is a little slow due to the fact the phone is not GPRS but overall it’s an enjoyable experience as the screen size is a nice size to display a lot of information.

The Sony also come with a few decent games to keep you busy on those lonely train journeys etc. The games are Blackjack and Table football.

The phone also has recordable ringtones which will please many people.

Another feature is predictive text messaging which
is now standard on most handsets it also has email function and the ability to let u book appointments etc.

The battery performance is around 480mins on talktime and standby is around 220 hours. The weight of the phone is only 95g.

When I was out and about with the phone I found nor problems with signal so the aerial works fine

After thought

I wrote this last week and have been waiting for dooyoo to put the phone on the site. In this time I have ahd a few problems getting another model Sony repaired and it now turns out the reapir centre have lost the phone. This could be a one off incident but then again I did have to wait about two weeks for them to pick the phone up, and in that time had to make many phone calls. So it might be worth bearing this in mind before purchasing

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