Sony Ericsson K850 User Reviews

Had this phone now for 2 years, this is my review. Good multimedia phone.Not for every day usage but nice. Eye cachy and stylish. Somehow slow software eaven with proper update. Ouuu figerprint magnet, but I love him, and i dont think of seeling him.

exellent that is all i have to say about this phone !!!!!!!the camera is very helpfull and preetie damn good !!!!            i've never had a phone like this before its just amazing !!!thank you sony ericsson

I just bought my K850i last December. Though at first I had issues with the "blue ring of death", but after the firmware upgrade the phone just became AMAZING!!! I love the updated cam driver, the media features, the photo editing package (Best Pic and Photo DJ). The radio and music player is also really good! The 5 mpx camera is just wonderful, my macro shots were stunning, the zoom / crop was very detailed. The xenon flash is very effective for shots in the dark, though the Twilight setting is also very good. I also love its phone features (which you sometimes forget it is one!), voice calls were clear, MMS, HSDPA, email. Just buy the phone and you will not regret it!!!

i don't want to insult this phone, because i'm having problems with it. i just want to alert people in montreal that a bunch of scammers that run a store called Electro super prix is ripping people off and making great companies like Motorola and Sony look bad. they sell you defective phones and say that's how the phone is it works like that with defects. well i know for sure that this phone is great because my friends have it and it produces not problems. there's a chinese guy there named Chao Zhang and he's full of s**t. he'll tell you lie upon lie. they refuse to do exchanges or refunds.
this phone is great. it produces wonderful 5mpx pictures and it's really realiable (unless you buy it from electro super prix then it's not reliable at all). the sound quality is amazing and the mp3 function will knock your sockx off. the battery is powerful and stands on its word of long battery life. this is a rock solid phone. i know i tested about 6 of them from my friends.

The camera is superb. good contrast. cheaper than N95, but the problem is the keypad because it is difficult to use with these small keys. I am using this phone but I think I could have been used a SE C902.

this is sooo nice. it's real easy to navigate around and the controls are so easy to get used to; although the 3 touch buttons prove to be a little hassle when you have a silicon case on em, but thats a mere drawback.
there are so many things you can do with the media on this phone, just can't get enough of it
the sound is very crisp and clear and the signal strength is pretty good as well, much better than a lot of my friends
it's a little pricey, but i got a good deal with it

best phone ever,i had to chose between nokia n82 and k850.i choose k850 for his desing and quality of phone

i used Jbenchmark to check the specification of my phone such as 3d graphics, texts, etc. I found out in the end that the k850i produces only 65,536 COLORS which is WAY BELOW their printed specs which is
262k colors! how true is it? try to download Jbenchmark JAVA APPLICATION.

note that i also used the Jbenchmark to my other phone which is Nokia 5610 XpressMusic and true enough, the phone speaks for itself. the result is 16million colors!

how accurate is the Jbenchmark? you decide.

this phone has a lot of great things about it that i just can't love enough
the camera works amazingly well, although constant usage of the 5mp doesn't give the best pictures
the music player is great as well, WITH 8GBS OF EXPANDABLE MEMORY, it's basically an ipod.
the keypad is very easy to get used to, and it feels nice to be pressing on some buttons that you can feel. the d-pad is also pretty easy to navigate; with all that space between the 2 and 5 key and the pad, it's pretty hard to hit the wrong button
also; very, very loud and crisp:)

this phone is just the best ever, the camera is just unreal; a must for those picture junkies

One of the greatest phones there is, the camera is amazing and the keypad sort of works, the intrenet browsing is great. Signal strength is great, looses to the n95 8gb because of wifi and the keypad, but still a superb phone

K850 is the best camera phone around the market.Excellent 5 megapixel camera with features such as bestpic,photofix scores high.
The battery backup is awesome and multi-media is yet another scoring point.

this phone is just amazing. everything is so well set up and with so much to offer also
The many different media applications are just perfect, along with it's editing applications such as video dj and such
the internet is really good on this phone, pretty quick response for a phone, although websites like youtube aren't so great on it
the overall setup of the phone is very easy to navigate throughout
the plastic buttons are very tactile and easy to press, although you don't use the xenon flash much, it's used in another way as your flashlight, which is such an intense light that when i've walked through the forest at night, i can see everything very clear
this phones music player is also very nice; loud and crisp
the radio is decent, but sometimes the connection could get a little iffy and pause sometimes.
overall it's a very attractive phone the only thing thats bad about it is that finger prints are very easy

hi my friend has got this phone and sometimes i also use it , its great when we need photos and my friend wants to sell it cus he is facing a strang e problem, whenever he takes a picture his eyes are red spoted. he tried every setting changed but no use, we we had nokia N82 then there was no red eye, even in night the images are accurate but little distortion, and sometimes it failed to capture true colours,where N82 succeded, this is what i know about this phone. The audio does o.k not as walkman

i am getting the se k850i soon. frankly speaking i was and is a great fan of se since my first t630. however, comparing the k850i with samsung g600, my individual feel is that there nothing much to rave about.
then why am i getting the k850i>>>>> b'cos of the non availability of HSPDA in the g600 series.
while my job requires a good camera, it also requires me to clear my mail as and when.
i brought the g600 first for its 5mp functionality and assuming that HSPDA is a built in.
however, i never regretted getting the g600 though. guys who are getting the k850i solely for its camera features might wanna consider the g600, u will be surprised at what it can offer.... cheers

I have had this phone since December, 2007 and rarely use it. Although the sound quality is fantastic and the display is beautiful, the overall design of the keypad make the K850 not worth the money for me.

The "keys" are TINY little squares and it's just not a good phone for entering text of any kind. Try clearing off a couple of missed entries and watch the whole thing go away. The "D" key in the center is also difficult to press, but not as much as the tiny keys.

The camera is great and my only complaint about it is the overly powerful Xenon flash. I find that taking a photo in semi-dark lighting situations tends to be overexposed with all of highlights washed out and no amount of editing can get them back.

Overall the K850 is a good phone. Rather expensive when it's basically a good camera with a built-in phone.

i just got this a while ago and i really like all the features that this phone offers
the only cons are the connectors, really need a jack instead, and the fingerprints i guess, but that's the price for having a really sleek, piano finish

I've had this phone for about 2 weeks and i'm really please with it. At first, it was confusing to navigate through and learn all the excellent features that this phone has. The 5 MP camera is a definite attraction point, and it works very well. The touch sensitive buttons respond easily and transition from the touch button to the square buttons, which makes it near impossible to press the wrong one, tremendously easy. The buttons light up well in the dark and the rugged style of them feel very well under the fingers. It's got a great size, big enough that you can feel it there, and not small enough that you'd lose hold of it. It also has a video and music DJ where you can basically put segments of videos or pictures together and form a larger video. The Music DJ is a neat little time killer; theres a bass, guitar, drums and piano where you can put different beats onto it to create your own song. And photo dj where you can basically fix the brightness, contrast, lightness ...that sort of stuff
there is also a radio recognition thing where when you are listening to a song on the radio that's in the phone, as long as you have web browsing, you can use it to search for the name of the song that is playing at the time
The battery life isn't very pleasing, i barely last 2 days without having to charge it again. Although this phone's design is very sleek and appealing, it attracts finger prints like no other, i often find myself using the glass towels to wipe the prints off. It could use some sort of GPS and lose those nasty sony proprietary connectors and get some 3.5 mm jacks instead, because really, those sony connectors are such a hassle, bulky, and break so easily. disregarding those few minor setbacks, this phone is phenomenal

Awesome phone.I have been using this since last 4 months and its working great.Its D shape navigator is the great difference from Sony's earlier phones and adds a lot in its design.In mot of the earlier phones
joystick creates problem after a time period.Now talk about one thing that could make this phone single choice to all and that is its screen size.
If its screen size would have slightly larger than the existing size,then there is no option other than this.
In the end superb phone and 100% value of money.
Go and get this.

nokia n82 is better camera!

i just got this phone today and from fiddling around with it, it's awesome!
what i need help on is....i have no clue what i can do with it
i don't know how to get my music onto it
get backgrounds and themes onto it
get pictures and videos from it

can someone please help me out here, because of my lack of hi-tech phones, i have no clue how to maximize my usage with this really neat phone

thank you

I have had this phone for about 2 weeks now, while my N95-3 has been in for repair. As it turns out, is not covered by warranty, nor "repairable"; so I am left with the choice of keeping the k850i, or returning it for a new N95 (probably the new N95 8GB NAM, aka. N95-4).

I am leaning toward the latter. Much as I despise the Nokia warranty/repair service, and much as the N95 build quality is really sub-par for a phone in this price range, and much as Nokia seems pretty arrogant w.r.t. releasing up-to-date models for the US market, there is really no match when it comes to the phone itself.

Keep in mind, despite all the annoucements at the MWC in February, the N95 and the k850i are STILL the ONLY TWO phone models with 5MP cameras available for the US market - they both have quad-band GSM radios as well as North American W-CDMA/3G (UMTS-850 and UMTS-1900) support.

Here are some of the things I liked about the k850 over the N95:
* Better industrial design (look & feel). (Small details such as a rubber edge on the back side that allows the device to sit more firmly on e.g. slanted surfaces..)
* More solid construction - better build quality
* Tri-band UMTS (supports 3G speeds worldwide; can be used in Japan, where there is no GSM/2G coverage, only UMTS-2100; with the N95, you have to choose between UMTS-850/UMTS-1900 for North America or UMTS-2100 for international use.).
* Keys are spaced out a bit more than on the N95 - easer to type.
* Details of the UI are better thought through - e.g. text typing key functions/feedback.
* Some nice bundled applications: Stopwatch/Timer (which are curiously missing from the N95), a built-in flashlight application (uses the autofocus LED), and a built-in "remote control" application that allows cursor/keyboard control of bluetooth-enabled computer (e.g. for presentations)
* Real XENON flash! (+++) While indoor pictures are not as good as with a real standalone pocket camera, they are definitely better than the N95.
* Quicker camera action (e.g. shutter lag).
* I quite liked the navigation pad w/center button on top - but see below.
* Slightly slimmer, while not adding too much to the length (like the Nokia N82, for instance).
* [When compared to the non-8GB models N95-1 and N95-3] The screen is flush with the frame, leaving no creacks where smudge builds up.


And here are some cons:
* Smaller screen (2.2" vs. 2.6" or 2.8").
* Not a smartphone - can only run J2ME/Java apps. (Since Java is a "secure" language, this leaves some of the phones capabilities out of reach for such applications; for instance, something like the "RotateMe" application for the N95 would not be possible, since it needs to access the phone's accelerometer).
* No built-in GPS (but navigation applications such as the free AmazeGPS will work fine with an external Bluetooth GPS adapter).
* No video out, no infrared, no WiFi.
* No standard 2.5mm or 3.5mm headset jack
* Uneven tactile feedback: The soft keys are touch sensitive, while the the numeric keys and the navigation pad are quite firm (strong tactile feedback).
* Various limits (e.g. 5-alarm limit, 1000-entry phonebook limit, limited fields per contact, etc).
* The surface attracts more smudge/fingerprints (in part due to the touch-sensitive buttons; but also on the back/camera-side)
* Battery life sucks!! (People diss the N95 - but I have never come across something as bad as the k850i...)
* Video streaming (e.g. from http://m.youtube.com/ or http://test.orb.com/) does not work on AT&T's network! This seems to be a bug/interoperability issue with all Sony Ericsson phones. Setting a streaming proxy in the connection profile does not help. On the other hand, it IS still possible to stream from another computer or device that is connected to the internet through the phone (via Bluetooth or USB). Thus, this may be related to UDP port number assignments.
* No easy way to quickly turn the device "offline" (ie. airplane mode) without restarting. (As to why, search google for "884 MHz GSM"). OTOH, alarms still ring if the device is turned off.
* Menu layout and idle screen soft keys are NOT customizable! (Why!?! Even the otherwise crappy MOTO RAZR/KRZR phones allow this!!)


Other thoughts:
* It is a little bit expensive for the feature set, when compared to the N95. I picked this up at Frys Electronics, a local store, for $499; it can be had online for about $420. In contrast, the N95-3 can be bought for about $550 now, and the N95-4 (NAM 8GB model) for about $650.
* People complain about the touch-buttons not registering all the time. The trick is to aim for the actual label on the screen, not the buttons themselves. Doing this, I have no issues.
* With either phone, get a custom dash mount/charging cradle (e.g. from proclipusa.com). Depending on your car, you might want to get the second part, the vehicle mount, from PanaVise instead (sold through Amazon.com).

For the amount of hype surrounding the phone, and the haggling i had to do with my service provider to get this phone as an upgrade, I was a bit disappointed. Im very brand loyal and owned a k750 which was fine. Although for someone who previously used quite a primitive handset handset, this may appear hugely hi-tech, and, lets be fair, it is... I find the buttons quite fiddly when texting and its quite bulky and heavy.

In overall, it doesn't disappointment me. A good camera, I use it for photo taking instead of digital cam. And one tip I just discovered, while playing videos, press the camera button and the capture will be stored in Picture folder!

My K850i has dust under the lens cover and take not so good pictures as my friend's N82.:( Touch buttons are not very responsible. Handsfree is crappy. Otherwise - a good phone.