Industry standard with the Sony Ericsson K750i (Sony Ericsson K750i)

Member Name: tomshanks

Product:	Sony Ericsson K750i
Date:	05/05/07 (243 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Brilliant 2 Megapixel camera with autofocus, good menu system, incredible feature set for the price

Disadvantages: Joystick not always reliable, basic MP3 player, keypad is on the small side, not much else

Upon its release in June 2005, the Sony Ericsson K750i was one of the most eagerly anticipated phones ever to appear on the market. On paper, it seemed to have everything short of 3G, and even then that did not seem to matter. Its main rivals, the Nokia 6230i and Samsung D500 (later the Samsung D600) looked similar on paper, but they all missed out in key areas. Granted, the Nokia was probably a better business phone than the K750i, and the Samsung D600 had a much better screen, but neither quite match up to what has become an industry-standard phone.

People are still buying the K750i new now, almost two years after it came out, and it seems as popular as ever. The only two other phones which have had such a lasting effect on the market have been the Motorola RAZR and the Nokia 3310, and both were severely dated in terms of features by this time in their life cycle. The K750i still is not. The camera is still better than any Motorola seem to be putting out, the FM radio with RDS has been copied, but not improved on, and many phones do not even come with the same level of accessories which were standard with the K750i. Many people at the time dismissed the tasteful understated looks and over-familiar joystick, but what they did not realise was the phenomenal success the K750i would have.

The K700i was a very good phone, but the market had moved on quite considerably in the year since its release. However, it was the K750i which moved it on a little bit further, and many other manufacturers took to playing catch up. Nokia seemed to have been caught out with the 6230i, which was a little bit too conservative, both in terms of features and design, and Samsung had yet to release the D600 for another few months. Panasonic and Siemens had undergone fundamental changes in their ideology, and were thus no longer direct rivals as they had been in the past, and Sharp still continued to make high-end 3G handsets as they had done so successfully up until that point. In short, there was nothing quite to match the K750i on its release, apart from, perhaps, the W800i which was a Sony Ericsson in any case. Let us start examining the reasons for the K750i's success by looking closer at the feature that everyone was talking about: the camera.

The K750i included a 2 Megapixel autofocus digital camera, which had a sliding lens cover, and this in turn activated the camera when opened. The only phone to have reached this sort of resolution by the time that it was released was the phenomenally more expensive Sharp 902, which actually went one better on the K750i by having a 2x optical focus on the lens. However, considering the size of the 902 compared with the K750i (like comparing a full size digital SLR camera with a compact digital in some sense), it is easy to see why the Sony Ericsson became more popular. The back of the K750i even looks like a compact camera, and, no doubt, for some people it replaced a separate dedicated camera. The thoughfulness in the design even extended to the proper shutter button, which was in the same place it would have been on one of Sony's own Cybershot cameras, and the flash was bright enough to be used as a torch on many occasions when I had a K750i (I went through three of the phones in total). The video recording function was ludicrously bad in comparison, but then it is on most phones. The next outstanding feature was the FM radio and MP3 player.

Whilst no one was pretending that the K750i was a full substitute for a portable music player, it did extremely well in those times that it was called upon to fulfil that role. In wanting to distance itself slightly from the soon to be released W800i (which was more expensive initially too), the MP3 player had an option for playlists, but not one to sort music out by album or artist, as the Walkman phones do. However, it did still have Sony's Megabass function and could be minimised whilst still playing so that text messages, for example, could be composed whilst still listening to music. The other function which was noteworthy was the FM radio, which even had an RDS function on it, so it would automatically retune itself, in a similar way to a car radio, when signal strength was getting low. However, the included stereo handsfree kit would have to be used in order to access the radio, whether played through the excellent loudspeaker on the back of the phone or the equally good headset. Customisability was also the order of the day with the K750i.

Whilst having almost exactly the same dimensions as its predecessor, the K700i (and incidentally almost the same as the T68i launched three years earlier), the K750i certainly packed a lot into a small form factor. The screen, although not having the same resolution as a Samsung D600 at 176x220 pixels, whereas the D600 had 240x320 pixels, is still relatively large and bright for what is, after all, a small phone. Images can be displayed both horizontally and vertically on the screen, which is very handy when viewing photographs taken with the camera in particular. File browsing is equally pleasant, with the pictures being displayed on a 2x2 grid, which shows a thumbnail of the picture in question, rather than just a lengthy list. However, this is employed with the list of sounds, since some people do fill up the memory card with MP3s quicker than others! Helpfully, the phone also sorts the pictures taken with the camera from those which were from other sources. The included accessories with the phone were also something of a revelation.

The standard K750i pack included the stereo headset, a 64MB memory card (128MB on the red version), a USB data cable, software CD and all the usual manuals and charger. There was nothing that had been left out at all, apart from maybe a Bluetooth headset, which was not standard for 95% of phones in any case, and O2 Online actually included it with all K750is in any case at the time of release. Data transfer was by any one of three methods, Bluetooth (with which the phone was the first to use the new standard of the system, version 2.0), infra-red and via the standard data cable. Bluetooth 2.0 is a real plus if both devices support it, as it means that everything happens more quickly, and indeed all three K750is I had worked flawlessly with my Siemens HHB-600 headset, but the big story was the data cable. This was a USB cable which could be used for file transfer, phonebook synchronisation, and even software updates. Sony Ericsson provided a little tool which could be downloaded from their web site at periodic intervals so that users could ensure that the latest version of the software was always on their phones, and this did not affect the warranty either, which is great. The memory card was not left out either, as with the software properly installed, it would show up as an external drive on the computer, and files could simply be dragged and dropped onto it, which was, and still is, quite impressive. No one else quite does this sort of thing like Sony Ericsson. However, most people still use the day to day functions of a phone more than the fancy ones, so let us now look at how the K750i functions as a phone.

Like the K700i before it, the K750i is easy to use for calling, with a downward press on the joystick opening the phonebook, which in accordance with more recent Sony Ericsson practice had separate lists for the SIM card and phone entries, and another function opening the list of calls directly, although the phone lacks separate 'send' and 'hang up' keys for calling. The sound quality is first-class, and there is a speakerphone, which is very loud. The phone also seems to hold a perfectly adequate signal, unlike the old T610, which was notorious in this respect. Text messaging is also very good, with very little lag, and a decent character counter and also a function for counting the number of text messages written before sending it. The text still may be a little small for some, however, and I have not found a way of changing it. Nor is there a text message memory status function, which can be irritating, although messages can be copied to and from the SIM card without much trouble.

The phone is, in general, very fast going through its myriad functions, and with new software versions, this does just get better and better. The battery life is also superb, and there is an even more accurate way of assessing this by pressing the volume rocker key during the standby screen of the phone. This gives a battery percentage, along with a lot of other useful information.

There are two downsides with the K750i, however, which in the whole scheme of things is not very many. The first concerns the joystick, which was the single biggest reason why the phone would go off for repair. These used to go all the time, although the third K750i I had, a silver Vodafone variant which was only just still under warranty, had seen nine or so months' usage and the joystick was still relatively fine. There was quite a bit of dust in it, however. The second disadvantage is the keypad, which is a little bit on the small side (especially the 2 key) with no spaces at all between the keys. However, this is still not as bad as many other phones these days.

Whether in the original black, the Vodafone silver or the latest brick red, the K750i is the industry standard phone. It has almost all the features that anyone could ever want, and has an air of sophistication about everything it does, including excellent build quality. As long as they watch the joystick, I would not hesitate to recommend a K750i to anyone, even if the model is almost two years old. I always run a Sony Ericsson phone as one of the two or three that I have thanks to the K750i, and I would not change it for anything else other than the same make. Many other people are like me too, and for good reason.

Summary: A phone that deserves every accolade ever lavished upon it, and the reason I keep a Sony Ericsson

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