Sony Ericsson K750 review: Get excited!

A press on the joystick opens a menu, which is similar to the menus of the Sony CyberShot cameras. The annoying moment here is that the menu closes down every time a choice is confirmed, so it is necessary to open it again when a new setting is required. Fortunately, the most frequent functions like resolution setup, macro, the night mode or the flash have their correspondent key short-cuts and can be started outright.

Camera's menu

Among other functions we could mention the white color balance option, which is often necessary to use for the auto mode does not cope with more complicated light conditions.

A demonstration of the difference the manual balance of the white can make (right picture). I took about 10 photos using the manual balance and I wonder why each of them came out a little bit unfocused. Whereas all pictures taken with activated auto white-balance were beautifully clear, the ones I took using glow lamps were all somewhat worse.

The camera offers plenty of options for picture modifications: effects, frames, continuous shooting, panoramic photos divided into three parts. All details about the exposure and the settings are saved in the EXIF header of the JPEG file. For modifying the ready pictures use the PhotoDJ application.

According to unofficial information shortly before launching its new model Sony Ericsson replaced the sensor in the built-in camera. The chip that was supposed to be mounted in the place of the current CCD chip was of the CMOS type. The phone itself does not give any information about this, but certain signs point to the conclusion that the camera's sensor belongs to the CMOS type.

More sample photos:

Sony Ericsson K750 is equipped to record videos as well. The maximum resolution it can perform remains within the standard 176 × 144 pixels. The length of a video record depends on the free memory availability. While shooting, you can use a zoom, but you are not allowed to turn off the sound. In the end you can play your videos horizontally. Modifications like editing, combining etc. are possible thanks to the VideoDJ application.

Video records review • playing video record in a standard and a whole-screen mode

VideoDJ application for work with video records

Environment: animation everywhere you go

The graphics of the user's environment, which origin in the previous K700 model, have been innovated. Animation can be found literally at each step:

• Entrance to the main menu: the icons expand form the center to the margins of the display
• Moves in the main menu: the selected icon gets gradually bigger and starts pulsing together with its enclosing circle
• Next level menu: it unrolls down form the heading
• Moves in the next level menu: all cursor moves are animated
• Folders(in the settings, for example): when you pass over to the next folder, it zooms in from aside

Main menu • settings inside the folders

Consider also the animated wallpapers on the main display and the moving background behind the accentuated menus. At the very beginning I thought the animations were stunning, but after a couple of days they started to annoy me a bit. What a pity they are fixed in the phone with no chance to be skipped over.

Video: a demonstration of the main display and the menu, creating SMS (1.23 MB)

How fast is actually Sony Ericsson K750? There is no definite answer to this question. The phone would react instantly to my orders; well, perhaps with an imperceptible delay. Added the animation, however, it became a bit slower. Left alone the fact that in terms of speed Sony Ericsson K750 could hardly be considered a top-class phone, it is so fast that the majority of the customers will be fully satisfied. Yet, an option that would allow the user turn off the animation could have come in handy.

How to control the Sony Ericsson K750

The main display is decorated with wallpaper, which can be animated too. Texts occupy the top and the bottom part of the display only, so most of its surface is reserved for pictures. The wallpaper is often a part of the graphic theme, which modifies the background behind the menus as well as other details of the user's environment. The phone has four preinstalled graphic themes, which are both light and inverse. More themes of various qualities can be found and downloaded from Internet.

Main display

4 standard graphic themes

A screen saver in the form of a big digital clock gets activated after a few moments of inactivity. It also displays the icons of missed events. The only way to exit the screen saver is to press the arrow key.

Screen saver, backlighting goes out completely within moments

The icons in the main menu are grouped in a matrix, which consists of four lines and three columns. They are colorful and very well elaborated and are thus easy to recognize. The joystick helps you move inside the matrix. I.e., if you need to quickly go from the bottom to the first icon, simply press the arrow downwards. To fasten your work the phone offers you key shortcuts which correspond with the positions of the icons in the matrix - it is easy, because the number keypad also has four lines and three columns. The numeric shortcuts can also be used in other menu levels, but do not forget to count down from the first line for numbers are not displayed here.

The control system is remarkably consistent. You can be sure that a click on the arrow will take you a level back and that pressing and holding it will send you straight to the main display. The C key erases everything that is possible to erase.

What could we say about the memory?

The capacity of the internal memory of Sony Ericsson K750 is about 34 MB. The phone manager does not separate the files according to their position or tree structure, but sorts them according to their type. As a result, you will see files from both the internal memory and the memory card placed next to each other. The memory is divided into sections: pictures (placed in a subfolder), video files, and sounds, graphic themes, saved web pages, games and applications. The last folder is reserved for files of all types that do not fit anywhere else.

File manager

Once you have installed the PC Suite software package, an entry called Sony Ericsson File Manager pops up among the programs. It helps you get into both the phone's memory and the memory card - all that from your PC. The trip to the memory capacities can be simplified though: you can also get there from a common file manager using a cable. In this case the manager gets displayed as a disk. Yet, since Sony Ericsson does not support USB Mass Storage the File Manager does not appear as a disk right after a common connection through a cable has been established. To make it show up you will need to install special drivers. The process is a bit time-consuming for you have to install about five different services. As a result the phone is not capable of establishing a cable connection with any computer, so its use as a portable storage is limited.