Sony Ericsson K790i review

Every once in a while comes a phone that will want to make you throw or hide your own phone.The K790i is one such gem of a cell phone which will the send the expletives rolling from your mouth as you initially work your way around the phone.

Looks And Build Quality

Absolutely clean and uncluttered design. In hardware terms the K790i isn’t much to look at. Small (105 x 47 x 22 mm)and light (115g) with shades of slate grey and silver and white highlights. The front facing controls are dominated by a small joystick which is one of the better ones I’ve used. It is responsive and has plenty of travel. You can program its four directions for specific functions.

There are two absolutely tiny buttons to the far left and right of the joystick that need to be approached with a fingernail if you are to hit them accurately. One launches the web browser, the other is the Activity Menu key which contains four tabbed sections: these are more shortcuts to applications, web bookmarks, notifications about missed calls and new messages, and, helpfully the chance to close any running applications that might be slowing the handset down.

The hardware controls are very well thought through. Both softkey buttons and the joystick help you access features and settings quickly, and two further small buttons above the screen give access to more. One of these calls up thumbnail images regardless of what else you are doing with the handset at the time. If you have ever fumbled on a handset for a particular shot to show to a friend you will know how valuable this is. To the back of the handset is the USP of the phone, the camera, which is accessed by sliding a cover. Also present is a xenon flash which is nice and effective.

Screen and UI

Absolutely delicious. 262k at 240x320 pixels. And you can flip from landscape to portrait modes in a jiffy. The screen is pretty readable in bright sunlight too.

Performance

Nice and fast, is usually why people steer clear of Nokia’s and get Sony Ericsson’s. This one’s no exception. Everything usually loads up when you hit a key and there’s hardly any waiting period, except when you’re playing around with the images that have taken at the max resolution of 3.2MP’s.

Battery Life

Absolutely good(Li-Po 900 mAh ) .Talk time is a good 7hrs and you can play MP3’s continuously for around 11hrs. So looking at a real world scenario(around an hour of talking, 2 hours of music playback, and some shots with the camera), the battery should offer you juice for up to 2 days without the phone needing a dash to the mains.

Connectivity

A plethora of connectivity options greet you on the K790i, there’s GPRS Class 10, EDGE, HSCSD, Bluetooth v2, Infrared and USB 2.0. So you’re never probably gonna have a problem connecting to the world…

Music Playback

This is a SE phone, so you’d be forgiven to take for granted the fact that the phone is gonna be a good music player. And it does not disappoint. We plugged in the SE W810i’s earphones and I have to say, it has to be one of the best sounding phones around. Good enough whilst travelling anyway.

And oh, there is an FM player as well. Thank you very much.

Camera

When I wrote the article on the W800i sometime in 2005, I said it was the best camera at that time. Nothing new about this one, that it raises the bar for cell phone cameras to an all new high. I’ll just post the pictures taken from the phone and you can decide as to how good it really is. (Coming soon..)Video capture is in the ancient QCIF format which is not all that good, considering what the camera is really capable of.

Memory

The phone comes with 64MB of internal memory and comes with an expansion slot which accepts Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick Micro format. The size of the card is as big (or small rather) as the MicroSD cards, about as much as your fingernail. These cards are pretty expensive and a 2GB card can set you back by almost a Rs3-4000k.

Applications

The phone has so many applications that I can do little more than just list the highlights. You’ve got the usual ring tone composer, an excellent web browser, an RSS reader (God bless SE), video and image editors(quite effective, this one). Then there is the picture blogging fetaure. You take a picture, then you can choose ‘Blog this’. The picture is resized, and you give it a name and a description then send it to your photo blog. Et voila, the picture is now ready for the world to see!

Affiramtive!!

+Great Camera!

+Nice and fast interface

+Good large screen and resolution

+Good looks

+Good battery life

+Functional In built applications

Negative

-M2 memory expansion

-QCIF video capture

Price 16000-17000

Conclusion

A great buy at the current price. Its got just about everything you need and you should certainly be a happy soul buying it. Apart from the camera, there are loads of other nifty features that’ll seal the deal.

Rating 9/10

Apple iPod Shuffle Review

K.I.S.S. Before you jump to any conclusions, let me tell you that maybe this is Apple’s policy when it comes to iPods. It is “Keep It Simple Stupid". And more often than not this policy works. How about a little drift? Remember the BMW 7 Series that had the iDrive. It was absolutely horrid and required you to have the brain of someone out of the MIT. Joking of course, but you get the picture. Customers were very angry with all the complexity involved. This kills the brand value to quite an extent.

That’s where Apple steps in, not to simplify the iDrive in BMW’s but to revolutionize the way we listen to music. I held the iPod Shuffle in my hands and was just like an oversized piece of candy. Yet so majestic and clean and I just don’t believe how I can keep ranting about a thing that has just 3 buttons and a switch! That’s called Apple magic!

Design

Absolutely clean, simple and intuitive. (Duh, Apples always are!). Easily turns heads. Even Dad, who isn’t such a technophile (a technophobe if you will, hates inflation), could easily operate it. And this was the first time he operated a flash based music player. Speaks volumes about the guys at Apple who just wanna keep it simple. Very easy to make something complex and screw it all up. Not so easy to make it simple. That’s a job for the elites.

Build Quality

Feels nice to hold. Its feather light at just 22gms (!). And it snugly fits in your palm. Plus they have a neck string which also doubles up as a cover to the USB port. You can sling it on to your neck and you can hardly feel the weight. Ironic when you are playing “Heavy Metal��? on the Pod.

“The" Click wheel

It’s just like the ones on the bigger iPods and it has just been made smaller. Although it feels mildly tacky (that’s because you just don’t feel you have clicked on the larger ones) in this application, it’s very good and offers good tactile feedback. I’m loving it.

Sound Quality

Do you need me to tell you that the music qualities of iPods are just awesome? The earphones provided are better than anything I have ever heard before. Crisp and smooth. Close your eyes and you’d be mistaken that you are in the Sea of Tranquility. I tried listening to almost all sorts of genres and it is just unbelievable how you keep listening to new beats because other players just won’t play some minute sounds.

I was testing a 512MB iPod Shuffle so at around 4MB per song you should be able to add 100+ songs. So 200 of your favorites could go in the bigger 1GB model.

Features and performance

Er… it can play music. That’s all. Plus it’ll double up as your data companion. Oh, yes there are 2 play modes. “Serial" and “shuffle". Plus a LED that tells you about how much juice it’s left with until the next recharge, which is 6-8 hrs of non stop music btw.

On the downside, there is no screen! At this price I do expect it to also have goodies like an FM receiver and a voice recorder thrown in for good measure. A chewed apple logo and a cool design don’t keep everybody happy. Though my friend who loaned his Shuffle to me for some time, said the screen is not really necessary. Maybe he’s memorized the play list and worked out the algorithm to the shuffling thingy. Yeah, right.

Oi Apple, the next time you guys are on an update spree, remember to add a screen on this new fixation of mine.

Also iTunes sucks. Why didn’t they just allow us to drag and drop files from the computer?? But hell no, we choose, it converts, it sends and then and only then will I hear the song from the Shuffle.

Affirmative!

+Its an iPod!

+Light & Tiny!

+Very good sound quality

+Good battery life

Negative

-Expensive

-No screen

-1GB max capacity

-No FM radio, voice recorder

-iTunes (Friend calls it “suck age��?)

Price

7000 for the 512MB version (just missed a heartbeat)

Conclusion

Not exactly VFM and there are other players that have more than twice the features but having an iPod is great flaunt value. Awesome sound quality too. So it’s a wrap.

Tell me what you thought about the review. Anything I missed out on?