Sony Ericsson K750, W800: First look

We had an opportunity to try the new Sony Ericsson's mobile phones and you can read our first impressions about the two of the most expected models: a higher class model K750 and its musical version W800. Of course, with plenty of live pictures.

Sony Ericsson K750 is the most expected phone from all introduced by Sony Ericsson in the recent weeks. It's an improvement of the contemporary top class Sony Ericsson K700, so the high expectations are reasonable.

  
Official pictures of Sony Ericsson K750

If I have to pick a phone that is the most important from the latest announcements, I will possibly choose Sony Ericsson K600. That's because it's a phone of a totally new concept, while the K750 is a successor of an already popular model.

 
Sony Ericsson K600

Together with the K750 Sony Ericsson introduced also a related model W800 - a music phone, which will get the famous "Walkman" trade mark. Because these two phones are almost identical, it makes no sense to split their preview into two articles.

  
Official pictures of Sony Ericsson W800

Sony Ericsson K750

Sony Ericsson K750 is a high class mobile phone. It will be useful for business, but its entertaining functions are also very good - 2 MP camera, MP3 player and radio. It's an angular phone and only a dark version is officially confirmed, but we've got some unofficial information about a possible silver variant.

Even that the size of the phone is basically the same as the K700, I find it more compact. Everybody can have his own opinion on the design; I personally like it and disagree with some of my colleagues who find the K750 too "plastic". It's a solid phone.

The first visible change is the display, which was moved toward the upper edge. The apertures of the receiver and the Sony Ericsson sign are really squeezed on the remaining space. The display looks really good; it has the well known resolution of 176x220 pixels, but now it displays 262K colors. Of course it's active and very bright.

 
There is not much space left above the display • the display will be well visible even at direct light

New key

Below the display on its both sides there are two soft keys, which functions are changing according to the context. Between the two keys there is another key that wasn't present on the former Sony Ericsson mobiles. There is an unidentifiable legend on it so I tried what it does and now I know - the key invokes an overview of the most frequently used applications, it's fully configurable.

Just below you can find the traditional keys for return back and clear (C) and a joystick between them. The joystick is quite sensitive, but accurate. The numeric keypad is formed in exact matrix; the keys are big enough, typing will be comfortable.

 
Soft keys and fast selection key between them

We can find just one button on the left side of the phone. It took me a while to find its purpose: it switches on and off the music playback. In the bottom part of the left side a rubber plug protects the Memory Stick Pro Duo card slot. Sony Ericsson K750 will be delivered with a 64 MB memory card; it supports cards with capacity up to 1 GB. On the right side there is a rock switch button for volume control during calling and for digital zoom during shooting. A button at the bottom is used as a camera shutter. The forefinger touches the button comfortably when you turn the phone horizontally.

Button for audio player control • memory card slot

The K750 model uses a new type of system connector. Sony Ericsson changed the connector for the second time, but we can't criticize them for that. Who could knew five years ago that someday hundreds megabytes of data will be transferred between the phone and the PC? The new connector is not compatible with the old accessories.

Beside the connector there is a microphone aperture and in the corner you can find an eyelet for threading a strap to hang the phone on a neck or on a wrist.

 
New system connector • power button and infrared port

Camera

A sliding cover protects the camera lens on the back of the phone. A spring holds the slider in both positions. Sliding the plug directly activates the appropriate application, so you can start shooting immediately. In one of the corners of the silver plate there is a plug covering the external antenna connector. The lens and the self-portrait mirror appear after sliding the cover aside. Also there are the two lighting diodes which serve as a flash.

The camera features a 2 MP resolution and it takes pictures in 1632 x 1224 pixels format. It uses autofocus, so the best way to shoot is to half-press the shutter and wait for a while until the lens focuses. Camera environment is similar to the one at Sony Ericsson S700; it reminds of the Sony digital cameras.

I didn't manage to test the camera possibilities in detail; I could hardly take one sample picture.

EXIF header affirms that this picture was taken with Sony Ericsson V800 but it's not true. I took the picture with the K750 model

It's not possible to completely remove the back cover; you'll access the battery after removing the smaller bottom part. Then you have to slide out the battery and you'll see the place for the SIM card beneath.

A bit too much animation

Sony Ericsson K750 uses graphical themes with animated wallpapers. A new feature is the animated main menu and submenu items. After pressing the joystick a matrix of twelve icons smoothly slides down. It's not detaining really but regardless I hope it's possible to switch this feature off.

What do we find in the main menu:

• 2x access to WAP browser
• entertainment
• camera
• messages
• multimedia files player
• files manager
• contacts
• radio
• calls register
• organizer
• settings

By its functions Sony Ericsson K750 reminds of the previous models, mostly SE S700. The base is identical, only the details have changed. Some of them are important, for example the phonebook capacity for 500 contacts instead of the former 510 items. Now that's quite enough I think. Also now it's possible to assign a custom ringtone for a text message alert. Right in the phone it's still not possible to set a recurring event.

First impressions

Sony Ericsson K750 is a very nice phone. It adds some very useful improvements to the older model K700: a memory card, much better camera and some other features, but we are still missing EDGE. Even that this shortage won't probably have a big impact on the sales volumes, Sony Ericsson is losing its position with those users who consider SE being an unbeatable leader in technologies. When Sony Ericsson's EDGE phones will come, Nokia will have year and a half advantage, Motorola will have a year. But it's the same situation as it was before with Nokia and Bluetooth - the absence of EDGE will be a problem only for a smaller (read less important in terms of sales) group of users.