Sony Ericsson T650 review: T-Series refueled

Bulging 3 megapixels

The Sony Ericsson T650 comes with a 3 megapixel auto focus camera with a LED flash. The camera user interface is the same as the one we already saw in Sony Ericsson K550, W880 and K810. The camera is advertised as having 3.2 megapixel resolution, but as with some other Sony Ericsson products its effective megapixel count is exactly 3.15 megapixels.

Camera viewfinder • using the new camera keys • viewfinder interface

The camera offers night mode, self-timer, panorama, frames, and burst shooting modes. It also features white balance control and several scene-specific presets. Some color effects are available, too. The BestPic shoot mode is not present here, but then again, even the Cyber-shot cameraphone Sony Ericsson K550 didn't have it. However, the Burst shot mode almost makes up for that.

When it comes to focusing, there is a dedicated macro mode and of course you can turn off the auto focus should you need to.

In our firmware version of the handset the shutter sound couldn't be switched off via the camera interface; you can only change the sound type. The only way to deal with it is to switch the handset into Silent mode.

Some camera menu options

Judging the camera quality from a beta unit is a risky business, but we can safely assume that Sony Ericsson T650 will be inferior to the 3 megapixel Cyber-shot models K800 and K810. The resolution is about what we expected from the phone. The colors however are not quite right. You can see the strong red cast of the outdoor photos, but it will be probably fixed in the retail version. Interestingly enough out T650 performed excellent indoors – the color is right, the resolution is good and noise is under control. All in all – excellent results for a phone this slim.

Sample pictures taken with T650

T650 captures video at the low QCIF resolution. The options for the video camera are pretty much the same as those for the still camera with very minor differences. It's about time Sony Ericsson upgraded the video recording capabilities of their mobile phones. Until that happens, we'll stop publishing sample video clips taken by Sony Ericsson phones - there isn't that much to see really.

The camera user interface is the same as the one we already saw in Sony Ericsson K550, W880 and K810. The camera is advertised as having 3.2 megapixel resolution, but as with some other Sony Ericsson products its effective megapixel count is exactly 3.15 megapixels.

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As regards the functionality of the secondary VGA camera, we are more than happy with it. The other party's video feed is viewed in a large frame in the middle of the screen while you view your own image in a small frame in the lower left corner. There is also a possibility to view your own image mirror-like, meaning that it gets reversed and looks as if you are staring at yourself in a mirror. It's much more natural that way. You can also zoom digitally your image at a 2x degree or choose to replace your live video feed with a picture of your taste. You can also do that during an actual video call and it's handy when you want to show the other call party an interesting picture you have taken for example. The options don't end here. You can also control the exposure compensation of the camera or even switch it into a night mode. There are 3 different video quality modes: Smooth, Sharp and Normal. Smooth delivers a smoother picture flow while Sharp provides more detailed images.

Video calls camera

Browsing away

Besides 3G and GPRS for fast data transfers, video calls and content-streaming support, the handset offers the usual connectivity capabilities such as USB, Bluetooth and an Infrared port.

As we tested, the integrated HTML Access NetFront Internet browser is good enough and does more than an all-right job. It has plenty of options - you can view the pages fullscreen with no menus showing and you can even browse your Web pages in landscape mode. It has WAP and picture modes. It supports content created for HTML 4.01, xHTML 1.0, CSS and Java script, WAP 2.0. The supported security protocols are SSL/TLS.

Generally, the Smart-fit function of the browser does well fitting the web content onto the screen. Scrolling is fast once the page has loaded completely. Our impression is that the Smart-fit function has got an upgrade and does a better job than the one in previous Sony Ericsson models.

Browsing GSMArena.com

Now let's try browsing without the Smart-Fit function.

Browsing GSMArena.com with Smart-Fit off

The Sony Ericsson T650 supports Bluetooth 2.0 with the Human Interface Device (HID) profile, which allows the phone to be used as a remote control for PC and other Bluetooth-enabled devices. Furthermore, the phone could be used as a Bluetooth modem for accessing the Internet on a PC or notebook computer.

Bluetooth support also includes the A2DP profile, allowing listening to music on a stereo Bluetooth headset.

The T650 supports local and remote synchronization of contacts and calendar events. The local one is with Outlook and a PC, while the remote synchronization works with remote servers. The USB connectivity of the phone has two modes - one for file transfers and one for USB Internet - to put it simply, the second one is for using the phone as a modem.