Doesn't live up to its looks. (Sony CMD-Z7)

Member Name: hawx

Product:	Sony CMD-Z7
Date:	28/10/02 (1474 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Attractive design with active flip, Memory for phone numbers and SMS messages, That's about it. Sorry.

Disadvantages: Short battery life, flimsy charger connector, Poor ringtones and vibrate alert, Shortcomings with software

I bought one of these offline for £150 from Carphone Warehouse to replace my ageing Nokia 8210, and I have to say after nearly a week I am disappointed.

I bought it initially because I trust the Sony brand and I was impressed with the design. It is a very attractive phone, with an internal aerial and active flip that only partially covers up the screen so you can see who's calling you, and it's all wrapped up in a tasteful brushed silver colour plastic. However it does seem to be that type of tasteful brushed silver colouring that will wear off with time and leave you with nasty worn patches.

Unfortunately I have little to say about this phone in its favour, but I will try! For a start, the call quality seems very good, even in the gale force winds we had today I turned around so the flip could block the wind and it helped a lot. The speaker could be a little louder though. Apparently there is a speakerphone option built in but I have had no need to use it, and obviously it will then be too loud to have up to your ear! The active flip is a very useful feature with this model though, and there's nothing more satisfying than clapping it shut to terminate a call.

I am very disappointed with power consumption. Despite having a lithium polymer battery, I've had to charge it up twice in six days so far, and I haven't even made that many calls with it. However I have a sneaky suspicion that it is partly (but only partly) caused by my playing with the jog dial whilst the phone is in my pocket. Ridiculously, the backlight comes on even when the flip is closed! I have also found that I have accidentally changed the ring type (silent/ring/loud ring/bleep/vibrate) whilst it's in my pocket, as you can do this with the jog dial whilst the flip is closed. This is another part of the phone I am not fond of - the four-way jog dial. It's just too complex for its own good. The jog dial can be dialled up or down, and p
ressed i
n, down, or up. So five functions, basically, on one tiny little control. Not good design, Sony; the amount of times I've pressed the dial down rather than in accidentally and got a different function is uncountable.

Another thing is; this phone is pretty unreliable. The software has crashed twice on me already, once when I was setting the clock, and once when it was just in my pocket on standby. Moving the jog dial, opening the flip, pressing buttons, even trying to turn it off; nothing. I had to pull the battery out in order to reset it. Very irritating.

What else.... ah. This is great, you'll love this. I used to use my Nokia 8210 as an alarm clock. With the Nokia, you could set the alarm, turn the phone off (so I didn't have any calls or messages waking me in the night), and it would wake you up in the morning and then turn itself on after you turned the alarm off. Brilliant! I presumed the same sort of thing with this Sony, but oh no. I set the alarm, turned the phone off... and it completely failed to wake me up in the morning. So, the next night, I left the phone turned on, only to be woken with a start at four in the morning by the "battery low" noise. The alarm did succeed in waking me up later at 9 o'clock but I still wasn't very happy. The following night I set the phone to Silent mode so I wouldn't be awoken by any calls, messages, or any more impeding "battery low" messages. The following morning the phone did not make any noise when the alarm was scheduled. This is simply stupid programming on Sony's behalf, it doesn't take that much common sense to realise that when you set an alarm it means you want to be woken at that time and at no time previous.

Talking about noise, the ringtones on this phone are appalling! They are all terrible melodies, all of which sound horribly distorted when you crank the volume up to maximum so you can actually hear them, ex
cept for the sta
ndard "ringing" tone, which is distorted at any volume you pick. Don't bother thinking about using the vibrate alert to tell you when you get a call either; it has all the power of a flatulent gnat. Although you can record your own ringtones on this phone, they always, always sound distorted.

Other minor criticisms include the games. They're pants. Now, I didn't buy the phone to play games with, but they are pretty much a standard feature on mobile phones now. You have a choice of Blackjack (the 21 Pontoon card game) or... table football. Blackjack isn't bad, truth be told, if you like gambling card games, however Sony have evidently never heard of winning by getting 21 in five cards if the dealer gets a 10 and an Ace. Don't bother with the table football game. Just...don't. You have to control everything with the jog dial.

Text messaging is spoiled by the necessity to use the jog dial in order to select special characters (eg " :;,.!?(@)#/ " etc) . This phone is not easy to use with one hand. Other than that it's not so bad as it has the T9 predictive messaging that other manufacturers like Samsung and Siemens have in their phones which is pretty easy to pick up.

All in all, it could be worse. But it's such a disappointment that it's not so much better.

Summary: