Sony Ericsson K700 review: A winner

Synchronization can be used only for a small directory

Data synchronization with a PC is another phone book related feature. The application you use is called Sync Station and you'll either get it on a CD or download it from the Internet. Beside phone book, it's possible to synchronize also a calendar, tasks and notes. Only Microsoft Outlook could be the opposite side but for phone book synchronization you can use Windows Address Book as well. By synchronization it transfers phone numbers, Internet and web address, title, company and address, also text notes get to the phone. Some fields in the directory are very short; for example the "Title" field can contain only 15 characters, 50 characters for the "Note" field. In this regard, data is reduced by synchronization. Well, that's not a big deal. Bigger problem is the phone book capacity because five hundred items will get lost.

I didn't catch how synchronization program selects, which names to be transferred to the phone and which to get lost. I don't see any sense; positively it's not by alphabetic order. Unfortunately, it's not possible to set what to synchronize - e. g. to select that only mobile phones numbers should be transferred.

Messaging

Sony Ericsson K700 supports SMS, EMS and MMS; it features also e-mail browser and My friends function, designed for instant messaging.

 Messaging menu

T9 dictionary helps with message writing and K700 supports also fast writing with the side rock switch button. When you hold its upper part, the second letter is written directly on the button, when you hold the bottom part, the third letter is written. This way of writing is well known from the former Ericsson models and is often faster than T9.

SMS writing • incoming text message at the display (this information switches with name or phone number of a sender) • reading a message

Text messages editor didn't change a lot; it displays five rows at once, in comparison with four rows by former models. Keypad is satisfactory, writes without delays - hence SMS writing is comfortable. Many users are curious about how complicated is to select a recipient name from the phone book and they'll surely appreciate that it is working faster now. If I have written an SMS and I want to send it, I:

• press function key Continue
• now I can immediately see a list of persons and numbers whom I've recently sent an SMS; I can just pick one of them, or select Search contact item to reach the phone book, where I can find the number and confirm my choice with the joystick.
• In both cases I continue by pressing Send and it's done.

Characters are not count down from the beginning of the message, but before the end of every part. It's possible to save about hundred text messages, as I have found by testing; there is no counter direct in the phone.

Three ways of displaying the incoming text messages: in brief form • with message header • with date and time

Besides text, Multimedia messages can contain random number of pictures, sounds and video files. The only limit is total size of inserted files, which can't exceed 100kB. MMS settings is quite complicated, I recommend you to use the configuration utility on Sony Ericsson website.

 Multimedia message

Email with attachments

The integrated email browser is a bit different from the clients featured in previous Sony Ericsson models. Some of the changes are more significant than others are. Via K700 you can access up to ten email boxes, but there is no possibility for SMTP verification anymore. The available browser is interconnected with remote email account, so deleted items on the mobile will be deleted from the server with next connection as well.

 
As with text messages, in email overview you can choose among different ways of representation

A really essential change is the support of attachments: you can send a picture, a ringing tone or any other file format via email; even if it's not supported by K700, it can be saved in the memory or forwarded, which is another innovation. But I experienced difficulties when sending TXT format attachments.

email with attachment • You can preview the pictures or save them

The maximum size of a written message has been increased to thousand of characters. Comparing to other e-mail mobiles that's nothing special - but it's three times more than former Sony Ericsson mobiles.