Sony Ericsson K750 review: Get excited!

If the phone is connected through a cable, you are denied access to the memory card content. For example, you cannot get to the ringing melodies saved on the card. The cable connection also causes that the phone rings using its standard tone only. All functions and applications revert back to normality after the cable is disconnected.

How fast are data copied into the phone? A transfer of 38 MB of MP3 files took 115 seconds, which means that 1 MB is copied in 3 sec. or, in other words, 20 MB get transferred in a minute. The speed is not bad at all. Transfers get even faster if you use a memory card reader.

Looking through pictures

When you go through pictures in the phone, you can choose whether the views should be displayed in a 2 × 2 or 3 × 3 matrix scheme. All text views are not available. It takes some time to generate a view, so the view sequence is not utterly fluent. Still, it is faster than in K700.

Pictures in a 2 × 2 and 3 × 3 matrix scheme • viewing pictures

A click spreads the picture all over the display. If you work with standard horizontal photos, you may want to press the button for horizontal views, so that the photo fills up the entire display. The menu offers a zoom, which helps you enlarge a selected part of the photo. The phone, however, counts the zoom steps, in result of which the zooming process is not smooth. The cutout, which appears on the display, can be saved as an independent file that is basically the only way you could cut your pictures. As the zoom works in steps it is impossible to create a precisely defined cutout. In this menu you could also choose the size of the elaborated picture.

Horizontal views • zooming (Press Save to crop your picture)

Sony Ericsson offers a slideshow function that lets you present pictures on the display. The Remote Screen function does the same, but sends photos to a Bluetooth adapter, which can be attached to a TV. This adapter is not included in the box, it must be purchased separately.

Menu for a Remote control through Bluetooth

Thanks to the QuickShare concept, you can easily send emails as components of a MMS through Bluetooth or the infrared port. You can mark more than one file and then send them or delete them too. Files can be copied or moved from the inner memory onto the memory card and vice versa.

Phone calls: sound and other details

And here we are - finally in the section which makes any phone a real phone and where most characteristics never change. The sound of the phone calls made with Sony Ericsson K750 is of a very high quality, with pronounced bass elements. Loudness is also tolerable, but could have been even better. The built-in handsfree is activated from the context menu. Its sound is loud enough for a common environment, but is insufficient if the background is noisier. The phone is delivered together with a handsfree set and a set of stereophonic ear-phones. The sound performed by the ear-phones is louder than the one that comes out from the receiver. It is especially clear if both ear-phones are simultaneously used.

Dialing a phone number • calling

Calls can be recorded with the built-in sound recorder, which gets started from the context menu. The recorder is elementary: it offers no other functions but the Start and the Stop ones. Every 20 seconds a peep sound comes out in order to alert the person at the other end of the line that the conversation is being recorded. The duration of the record depends on the capacity of free memory only. The final result is a slightly indistinct AMR file.

Although the list with calls is mixed, you can check the groups of received, dialed and missed calls separately. The inconvenience here is that only the last of all calls, which were dialed, received or missed from or to the same phone number, is displayed. While you are talking a photo of the person, whose number you have dialed appears on the display - of course, provided you have assigned one to their contact details. The photo does not show up on the entire display, but uses its width only. The same thing happens when the call is incoming. In this case you could also turn down the ringing tone by pressing the side volume control button.

Calls list • filter for missed calls • picture of the calling person

Ringing melodies can be based on common MID (40 voices), MP3 or AMR files. They all can be saved into the phone or on the memory card. However, the quality of the MP3 ringing melodies is not good: the bass elements are missing while the heights are harsh and far from pleasant. It is strange because the sound of the MP3 files played by the built-in player is quite good, even if it comes out through the loud speaker. The difference becomes especially obvious if you first play a ringing melody in the MP3 player and then call your phone: it is as different as chalk and cheese. The ringing is loud enough, even though it depends on the characteristics of the original MP3 file.

A selection of ringing melodies, the corresponding icon marks location in the memory • MusicDJ application helps you create your own melodies

A proper phonebook - at last

The phonebook of the older Sony Ericsson models used to be the main reason why they were rarely recommend by the specialists. 500 numbers (but not names) were much too few, especially if you use synchronization with a computer. K750 is the first model from Sony Ericsson, which offers more: 500 names and an amount of numbers assigned to each of them. Even though it is not ideal yet (just consider: my phonebook from Outlook did not fit in the phone), 500 names surely make one breathe more easily. The address books on the SIM card and in the phone are displayed separately.

View at the phonebook • memory details

Searching contacts by entering the initial letters of the name is a new function for Sony Ericsson K750. The K700 model did not have it when it was first launched, but got it later, when the phone was already on the shelves. Yes, there is no doubt the phonebook is praiseworthy. As for the excellent mark, I prefer to keep it for the coming Sony Ericsson S600i, which is expected to offer a phonebook with 1000 name positions.