Sony Ericsson K850i - Not a bad phone, but not a great one either. (Sony Ericsson K850i)

Member Name: Tech9

Product:	Sony Ericsson K850i
Date:	16/05/09 (5 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good for listening to music/mp3s, email, texting and basic typical phone usage

Disadvantages: Poor quality photos from camera, battery is poor when bluetooth is left on

I deliberated for ages on whether to get this phone or the Nokia N96 - I am now really wishing I had gone for the Nokia.

The phone itself as a phone is ok I suppose, it looks quite cool and mine came with a whopping 8Gb memory card free (I haggled with the O2 rep - you gotta ask for something free when you upgrade don't you?).

***Functionality***
The functionality included in the phone is pretty good and includes, multimedia messaging, test messaging, email, MP3 player and internet access and more, you can also synchronise with your Outlook email on your PC if you want to (depending on your contract and network of course) and you can also connect it to your TV (using the cables supplied) to show any photos you have on the phone on your TV screen.

***Build Quality***
The build quality is very high, the phone is very sleek looking, the screen is crystal clear as is the sound quality when using as a phone or MP3 player, there is a set if wired earphones/mic that come supplied with the phone you can use for listening to music or for making/taking calls, the quality of these are also to Sony's high standard. The buttons are easy to use and not too small for texting/general use that you make too many mistakes, there is a central key navigational system that you will see in the picture as a sort of blue/silver rectangular shape that surrounds the 2 and 5 keys that is used for moving left, right, up and down in the menu systems of the phone, this can take a bit of getting used to as you can sometimes hit the nearby number keys by accident.

***Phone Useage***
The Multimedia messaging and texting facilities on this phone are good, you can easily text with predictable text on or off and send to multiple users simply by marking each person in your contact list. A few cool features are that you can set individual ringtones for different people and set a photo of the person who is ringing you to come up on screen, you can also have multiple phone numbers for a single contact such as their landline and mobile numbers or work numbers which saves having to create a separate one for each.

***Bluetooth***
Bluetooth is used for wirelessly connecting to devices such as laptops for file transfers and hands free kits for driving. The battery is pretty poor if you leave bluetooth on all the time, I switch it off and only back on when I need it otherwise the battery only last about a day and a half at the very most, even if you don't actually use bluetooth but have it switched on.

***The 5MP Camera***
The most disappointing thing I found with this phone was the camera. Like most mobiles, if not all (I don't think I've ever seen a camera with an optical zoom????) , it comes with a digital zoom function for zooming in on far away objects - this function is almost completely pointless, the quality of the photos even when resolution is set to 5MP is really bad and pixelated.

Even taking photos without zooming the quality I would say is very average, I have a 2MP "proper" Fuji camera and the images produced from it are stunning compared with this phones camera - don't expect the camera in this phone to replace your proper camera, you will be disappointed. I initially suspected that I had a faulty phone at first but I ordered the same one for my wife when I got mine and its not much better, it doesn't over-expose images as bad as mine does in natural light right enough.

***My Next Phone***
I've had this for 12 months now and as a phone and mp3 player I am relatively satisfied with it but as a camera it is very poor in my opinion. I used to work for Ericsson so I've had a few of their products in the past and I'm quite disappointed in this one as I was really looking forward to owning it and it turned out to be a bit of a let down. My brother got the Nokia N96 about 3 months after I got this and I think it is a far superior phone, I will be going for one of those or its equivalent when my contract is up for renewal in 6 months, either that it'll be a Blackberry.

***Summary***
If you are in the market for a phone just to make calls, text, multimedia messaging and listening to MP3s then this is a decent phone but I was looking for all of this plus a really good camera so I have had to mark it down for this and the battery lifespan being pretty poor.

Hope you found this review to be helpful.

Summary: Ok if you just want a phone but don't have big expectations from the camera

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