The media equivilent of the Swiss army knife (Sony Ericsson K510i)

Member Name: Monophobia

Product:	Sony Ericsson K510i
Date:	06/03/07 (260 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good phone, decent enough camera, easy connectivity with PC, lots of features

Disadvantages: No headphone socket for the mp3 player, many features drain battery very fast.

I have had a mobile phone since 1996 but only because I was living in places where I was unable to have a landline installed. I got a good contract in 1997 and am still on the same contract 10 years later because it is so cheap (an old One-2-One tariff that T-Mobile would love me to ditch)! But beyond the wondrous convenience of cheap mobile digital telephony I have never been terribly bothered about all the extra stuff that they keep packing into the phones and wondered how people could get so wrapped up in their phones and spend ages on their phones just talking about their phones. (As Marshal McCluhan said: the medium is the message... never more true.) And every year I get sent a new phone free of charge on my contract and every year I am less and less bothered. The K510i was still in its box 3 months after I received it because I just couldn't be bothered opening it. But I was very surprised when I finally did!

The first thing I liked about the phone was its easy connectivity with my PC. Many of the novelty features of my previous phones (such as the camera) have been fairly limited in their use by the phone's inability to hook up with my computer, despite wasting money on USB leads, infra-red dongles and bluetooth. The K510i connected up effortlessly via the supplied lead and software and in no time I was transferring images and sounds between my PC and the phone, and I suddenly understood the geeky pleasure of being able to customise my phone. Bits of TV themes and sound effects have now become ringtones and message alerts, screen grabs from DVDs have gone via photoshop to become high quality wallpaper and screensavers.

The next thing I was impressed by was the quality of the camera on the phone. I have had two phones with cameras in them and the quality has been terrible. The k510i takes beautiful shots in full size mode. Despite having only 1.3 megapixels the pics are very smooth and don't suffer from the terrible compression artifacts of its predecessors' images. I have printed a couple of the pictures onto A4 paper and apart from being a little soft the colour is vivid and the image undistorted. This is a very handy tool for capturing the moment, the media equivilent of the Swiss army knife. There is a video mode but the pixelated picture quality and the low frame rate is fairly horrendous. Having said that, it is still perfect for capturing the moment if you are stuck without a proper video camera, and is perfect for doing little family clips for YouTube. I am very glad of it when my little daughter is doing something cute and I want to upload it for my relatives to see. (What an incredible age we live in!)

There are many other features that have come in useful such as the sound recorder which I use for humming song ideas when I get them, the Flash games that help to pass the time, mp3 player (which I'll get to later),VideoDJ which I will probably never, ever even look at, internet connectivity which I refuse to use and a programme that allows you to arrange your own tunes using basic MIDI templates with the phone's internal sounds. It's time-consuming nonsense but I'm sure someone out there has turned it into an art form.

The battery lasts for many days without recharging, even if you've made a few calls. The things that really drain the battery are the Flash games, the picture editor, the video camera (and video playback) and keeping it in camera mode for too long. Fortunately the phone charges up very quickly.

One gripe that I have with this phone is that although it is an mp3 player there is no standard headphone socket. Presumably the manufacturers want you to buy their own headphones, which are nasty poor quality things and an insult at any price. The phone comes with a mono hands free earpiece which I have never used.

Summary: This phone is cheap (or free for contracts) but surprisingly satisfying to own.

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