Great Mobile (Sony Ericsson K800i)

Member Name: SmilingBuddha

Product:	Sony Ericsson K800i
Date:	12/07/09 (22 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great camera, Very durable, Adequate music player, Tonnes of features

Disadvantages: Flash not great, Outdated

I've had this phone for ages now. The first call I made on it was in June 2007 and I'm still using it now. Currently, this serves as my all-in-one mobile phone, mp3 player and camera.

This phone is indestructible. I've accidentally thrown it onto marble floors, its been dropped in water and all it has are a few scratches. This is really reassuring for me as I hate gadgets which break for no reason days after the warranty runs out.

I found the 3.2 megapixel camera did the job for me. The photos are always of a very good quality and the (optional) autofocus feature works really well. It's really easy to use and I can just flick it out in a couple of seconds if I wanted to take a fast photo.

However at night the camera is borderline useless, the flash seems to only brighten the nearer objects but ignores the light on location. So even when street lights are illuminating a large area, you will only see the nearby objects but the rest will largely be in darkness.

I was also very happy with the video camera. Since the phone is fairly old now, the quality, even on high, is a little pixelated but you can make everything out even little details and it's definitely good enough for Youtube. It also gives you to option to change the video quality settings from high, normal to low if you want to save memory.

There is another cam on the front of the phone so you can make video calls which is pretty handy, although I personally never use it.

The music player is pretty good, it's not exactly an iPod touch though. The player interface is very simple with no thrills. It's all text: no album covers or anything. There is a list of tracks, a list of artists, a list of playlists and that's it. You can create your own playlists, nothing complex just select the songs. You can play it through the speaker which is a little tinny but generally very good or through headphones.

I've only had speed issues while using the music player which is down to my huge collection of music which takes a while to shuffle.

You can download loads of games as well as those which come with the phone. My personal favourite is Quadrapop which is ridiculously addictive. You can also download applications which are just handy little tools and there are loads available online.

The phone comes backed with features. Inside the "Organizer", you can access a calendar, tasks, stopwatch, notes, alarm clock...

Memory wise the phone doesn't come with much, around 68mb but it allows you to insert your own M2 memory cards. So you can have pretty much as much memory as you so choose.

You can record sound on it as well but it's very basic one-button-deal where you just hit "Record sound", it starts recording straightaway, you can't pause or stop it and then hit "Save" when you want it to stop.

I found the battery life more than adequate. Although not exactly crystal clear, I've never had any problems will call quality either. Texting is simple and is done in the standard way (hit "1" twice for B...). The predictive text causes more problems than it solves however.

There are a few little issues. The plastic "Cybershot" camera cover flicks open too easily and there is no way to lock it. This usually results in me pulling it out of my pocket to find the cover open and the lens showing. It hasn't resulted in any damage but if you had say, a load of loose change in there as well and they got squashed together I could easily see the lens getting scratched or cracked. I'm a little confused how SE managed to make such an elementary mistake.

The blue light behind the keys gradually fades over time as tiny bits of dust get in, on my phone you can't see any at all unless you physically pull the keys apart. This is purely superficial though.

This is also quite an old phone now and people who like to "keep with the times" might prefer a newer model.

In summary, an awesome phone which has done the job for me for these past years, although a little out of date so I might have to say goodbye to it soon.

Summary: A good reason for me to keep buying Sony Ericsson

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