Heavyweight phone. Suffers from glass jaw. (Sony Ericsson K800i)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Sony Ericsson K800i
Date:	31/05/07 (905 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Tonnes of features that are helpful. Phone usefulness expanded by PC connection.

Disadvantages: Doubts about durability.

Having used Nokia phones since I first joined the mobile phone world, I found that with each subsequent phone, I was becoming less and less impressed with Nokias. Yes, they were robust, but I found the software was just getting sluggish and I was under-whelmed by the battery life of my last phone, the Nokia 6230i.

As someone who spends quite a few weekends per year travelling around the UK to visit friends and family and with a three year old nephew who visits regularly, I take an awful lot of snaps. I'm not a serious photographer, but I'm a serious snapper. I had decided that my next phone would have a decent digital camera on it and that would mean I wouldn't have to carry my separate camera on journeys.

Weighing up the pros and cons of the other phones on the market and taking into consideration my own preferences (e.g. monoblock phones rather than slide phones or clam shell phones), I eventually plumped for Sony Ericsson's K800i.

When I first opened the box, I was immediately impressed. Sony Ericsson had bundled a USB cable with the phone, enabling connection to my PC. This was something I had never encountered before and I'd always had to buy one for use with my Nokia.

Once the phone had charged (which only took a few hours), I set about connecting to the PC. The installation was extremely easy and the software was soon installed. My initial favourable impression of the phone package diminished a little here. I've always found that Sony's software is always easy on the eye, but fairly hard to use (or at least, it doesn't do what you'd like). For the K800i, this was no different. It's easy to set up your phone using the software, but beyond that, it offered little useful functionality whatsoever. I ended up using a free, third-party piece of software called MyPhoneExplorer for day to day use (e.g. phone management, sending SMSs from your PC etc.), which is simply magnificent. The ability of my PC to recognise the phone was also a lot better than I'd previously experienced with a Nokia.

With the phone set up and charged, I was ready to use it. Having been a Nokia user for six years, I had initial difficulties, but only due to a lack of familiarity. It only took a few days to get used to the various menu options and the slight differences in SMS messaging and before long, it was like I'd always been a Sony Ericsson user. Physically, the phone was just as easy to use. The keys are responsive and just about the right size (any smaller and they'd be unusable) with the right spacing and the little joystick. The phone's just the perfect size for me to use and carry about.

Most of the little pieces of software on the phone that I've used so far are easy to use and intuitive. Adding notes to the Calendar, for example, is a simple process. It's also possible to highlight a phone number within a text message and use it to make a call. Contact management on the K800i is excellent, allowing you to enter lots more data than just the phone number of a contact (and you can synchronise from programs such as Microsoft Outlook). This kind of feature is available on most modern phones, but on the K800i, it seemed a little more user friendly than the Nokia. Entering a contact's birthday, for example, prompted a question about whether I'd like the event added to the calendar. However, to take advantage of this, you have to store your contacts on the phone rather than the SIM card, which has obvious disadvantages.

The screen is large, bright and clear. The icons are clear as is the text of incoming or outgoing messages. All in all, it's excellent and you're not squinting at the screen. Videos, too, are displayed well. Battery life is a huge improvement on my old Nokia and the phone easily lasts four or five days on standby until it needs charged. Even on busy weekends away when I take or receive calls and text messages, it's still possible to leave the charger at home (or rather, it's not a disaster if you don't bring it). The internet facility is handy and does the job adequately in emergencies, but I wouldn't want to do a lot of surfing. It's not the lightest phone I've ever owned, but I did find the weight comforting, initially suggesting that the phone was quite robust.

The camera on the phone, so far, is excellent with a huge range of extra features to help you make your photography fun. The flash is bright and the red eye reduction tends to work most of the time. Picture quality is superb (2048 by 1536 resolution) and while it doesn't quite match my Sony DSC-T1, is still exceptional for a camera that's an add-on to a phone. I've taken quite a few snaps of friends and family and during various nights out and the only pictures that have disappointed me are those spoiled by "user error".

However, not everything was beer and roses in the garden of Sony Ericsson. Three months after I bought the phone, the internal LCD screen broke. This wasn't due to a clumsy accident or a drop kick across the room in a fit of rage, though. I had put the phone in my jeans pocket as I was leaving my sister's house. I had a five minute car journey, returning home and when I entered my house, I removed the phone from my pocket to see that the screen had cracked. The phone features no longer worked. As there had been no impact on the phone to cause such damage, my conclusion has always been a matter of durability.

[As an aside on this matter, both Sony Ericsson and O2 refused to do anything about this. They both claimed that because the damage was physical, that the phone was broken outside of the warranty, despite the warranty claiming that defects that resulted in poor durability were covered and that the Sales of Goods act also acts on the side of the consumer in this case. O2 eventually sent a replacement phone, two and a half months later.]

Now a fortnight after getting the replacement Sony Ericsson, it's also taken some time to learn the phone again. This is because I had reverted back to my old Nokia when the original K800i died and had readjusted to that. It was a mixed blessing. I was reminded how robust Nokias are; each of my previous Nokia phones were treated far rougher than anything that I had subjected to my original K800i and each of them worked for years. However, the superiority of the software on the K800i was even more apparent the second time around.

This is also apparent when you connect to the Sony Ericsson website. From here, it's possible to download a tool that lets you keep your phone up to date with firmware upgrades when they become available (mine's currently on R1KG001). Firmware upgrades can offer improvements to the phone's usage such as extended battery life, bug fixes to the software etc. so this feature can be invaluable.

The memory is upgradeable using Sony's fairly new MemoryStick M2 format. I bought a 1GB SanDisk branded memory card off eBay for about £25 which should be plenty to hold my photographs at approximately 700kb per picture and the odd mp3 tune should I desire. The memory card size is minute, less than the size of a postage stamp.

On the plus side, the K800i does exactly what I want of a phone these days. It's easy to use, it does the simple stuff like phone calls really well, has a camera that produces good quality pictures for what use it for and can be managed easily via my PC (albeit with third party software). It has a couple of handy tools in case of emergencies such as the internet and this all combines to make a phone that I do use quite a lot.

The downside is that I am now extremely wary about the durability of the phone in normal day-to-day use. The durability issue and Sony Ericsson's response to my concern is a huge negative point for me and potentially wipes out all the other positive stuff that the K800i has going for it, leaving me hard pushed to recommend the K800i completely positively and not include anything other than a huge warning.

When it's good, it's very, very good but when it is bad it's, well, broken. I just hope the replacement last longer.

Summary: A feature packed phone whose major flaw is a glass jaw.

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