Sony Ericsson Hazel Review

Introduction:

Sony Ericsson is one of the most environmentally-devoted manufacturers. The company has put together a nice green catalog now that even includes a smartphone, in the form of the Sony Ericsson Aspen. Some of the feature phones in the manufacturer's GreenHeart line though deserve some attention as well, and one such handset is the Sony Ericsson Hazel – an eco-friendly slider.

The Sony Ericsson Hazel is more of a traditional cell phone, as it lacks a touchscreen, but still offers some sweet goodies like a 5MP camera, Wi-Fi and social networking capabilities. What we should be more interested in here though is its outer shell, made of recycled plastics.

The compact box contains:

• Sony Ericsson Hazel
• User Manuals in several languages (strange, given those could be preloaded on the phone)
• Stereo handsfree
• Energy-efficient charger

Design:

The Hazel may have been executed from recycled plastics, but this has not left a negative impact on its feel whatsoever. To tell you the truth, we have not yet seen an eco phone made from such plastic that actually feels bad in the hand (see our Samsung Blue Earth Review, for example). The Hazel stays true to this tradition as it feels sturdy enough. Its sliding mechanism is also well-made as it snaps reassuringly into place every time you decide to open or close the handset.



You can compare the Sony Ericsson Hazel with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Sony Ericsson's Hazel actually sits in the upper range of non-touch feature phones, in terms of specs. It sports a 2.6-inch TFT screen with QVGA resolution and 16-million color support. Image quality is pretty good as long as you don't mind the 2.6-inch diagonal. It certainly gets the job done though, and presents you with a passable experience when outdoors, but you'll have to switch to a more contrasting theme if you want to be able to read those perky texts you receive without too much pressure on your eyes.


Below the screen is where you'll find the two soft keys, d-pad, send and end buttons, as well multitasking and delete keys. All of these are decently-sized and allow for a relatively handy use of the device.

Sliding the Hazel open of course reveals the standard 12-key numpad, which will also be your exclusive means of text input. Its keys are pretty much flush with the surface, but this doesn't mean that you won't be able to comfortably type with them, since they are of adequate size and can easily be distinguished by touch. Pressing them also feels nice, as their pronounced travel leaves no room for hesitation about whether or not the handset has registered your click.


Taking our usual trip around the sites of the phone, we find Sony Ericsson's proprietary charging port on the left, as well as the volume rocker and camera shutter on the right. We found those to be pretty usable too, except for the second stop of the camera key, which is quite stiff. Removing the plastic back cover will provide you access to the battery, SIM and microSD card slots. On the back sit the 5MP camera and LED flash, with the speaker grill found at the opposite end.




As we said, the Sony Ericsson Hazel feels pretty relaxing in the hand. It may not exude that premium level of craftsmanship that some high-end smartphones do, but it is still quite solid and good-looking.

Interface and Functionality:

The software running on the Sony Ericsson Hazel uses a straightforward and polished interface that would provide you with the tools needed to carry out day-to-day tasks such as calling, texting, using a calendar and even occasional social networking. Of course, navigating using the d-pad is not as enjoyable or intuitive as it is with a touchscreen, but it's not hard either.

We like this Sony Ericsson interface as it works quite snappy and you can even do a good deal of personalization to it through different themes. There are no interface novelties, compared to previous  models running this software, aside from the new widget system, which is here to ease users who would like to have access to their social networks when out and about.

The Sony Ericsson Hazel sports a standard organizer, identical to the versions running on previous models of the manufacturer, i.e. proper (for a feature phone) calendar, alarms, calculator, torch, etc... nothing coming out of left field here. The phone book can store up to 1,000 separate entries with 7 numbers per person, i.e. no more than 7,000 telephone numbers, which should be more than enough even for bubbly socializing paragons. Speaking of them, such people would be thrilled to know the handset features a Facebook application that is quite functional (status updates, messages, comments, uploading and browsing of pictures, be it your own or belonging to your buddies). There are five home-screen widgets, for Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Calendar and Walk Mate Eco and they are not just shortcuts, but dedicated applications. The three social networking widgets come with functionality that should be enough for people on the road. The calendar widget simply visualizes a list of upcoming events, while the Walk Mate Eco counts your steps and tells you the amount of CO2 saved by your choice to walk instead of drive. Finally, you can choose to activate any number of these at the same time, but only one is visible on the screen at a time and you need to scroll horizontally to switch between them.



The Sony Ericsson Hazel comes with standard messaging functionality with texts visualizing in threaded style. It´s a good thing the client handles multiple accounts, recognizes major email providers and sets everything up for you automatically. Of course, typing with the keypad cannot compare to a proper QWERTY layout, but is still comfortable and fast enough.

Camera and Multimedia:

The Sony Ericsson Hazel integrates a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus and flash. Its interface features a relatively rich set of options, like shooting modes, scene presets, focusing mode (including macro), timer, metering, white balance, effects, etc. The quality of snapshots taken outdoors and in proper lighting conditions is not halfway bad – with enough details and properly saturated colors. The overall quality of indoor snapshots is not bad as well, with the device failing to produce passable results in utter darkness only. The video capture capabilities of the handset are decent as well and you can take clips at a resolution of 640x480 pixels, 29 frames per second and with acceptable overall quality.




Sony Ericsson Hazel sample video at 640x480 pixels resolution.

The Media menu hosts all multimedia playback applications. The Photo Gallery allows for browsing of pictures, Facebook albums, your camera album, photo feeds, web albums, etc.

The Music player is Sony Ericsson´s standard application available on other feature phones of the company and delivers a number of filtering options (by artist, album, genre, year, individual tracks). It also integrates SenseMe functionality to sort tracks by mood tags. All told, the music player is capable enough for everyday use


Sound through the loudspeaker comes out with a decent power, although we can't help but mention that it's also a bit lifeless, so to speak. Plugging the earphones in the proprietary jack naturally makes the experience a lot better, but it is still rather inconvenient to not have a standard 3.5mm jack, thus making it a lot more difficult for you to use your own earphones.

Internet and Connectivity:

The Sony Ericsson Hazel is equipped with a basic Access Netfront browser, which can easily handle mobile sites, but fails miserably when it comes to complex webpages. Once successfully loaded, you can scroll a webpage fairly smoothly using the d-pad, which isn't as comfortable as using a touchscreen, but will to the job, if web browsing is not at a respectable position in your desired features list.


The Hazel boasts Wi-Fi, as well dual-band 3G support (900/2100 MHz), which is perfectly good to provide you with fast data connection in Europe and Asia. The phone also comes with built-in GPS that can be used with the preloaded navigation app Wisepilot, which uses NAVTEQ maps. It's a pretty decent navigational software, since it offers turn-by-turn voice guidance for drivers and pedestrians, 3D view of the route, and location-based POIs. The bad news? It comes as a 30-day trial version.

Performance:

As far as call quality goes on this eco-friendly handset, we can say that it does a pretty decent job. Both incoming and outgoing sound quality is above average, with strength being just enough. Voices sound more on the natural side, although we weren't exactly blown away by what we heard from the Sony Ericsson Hazel's earpiece.

Sony Ericsson has supplied the Hazel with a Li-Polymer battery that is rated for 10 hours of talk time or 18 days of standby. These numbers are satisfying, given the Hazel's feature-phone, but still feature-rich nature.

Conclusion:

We love eco-friendly phones. To know that your gadget is made with the environment in mind is nothing short of great, and we truly appreciate Sony Ericsson's efforts in this area. We love green gadgets especially when their eco-friendliness doesn't come at the expense of features, because we love features too. Lots of them! Although not yet a smartphone, the Sony Ericsson Hazel manages to combine those two aspects by being green and featuring stuff like 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS and a 5MP camera with flash.

Moreover, it does most of the things it is supposed to do in a pretty decent manner, with a usable 12-key numpad for texting, feature-rich social networking apps, as well as decent 5MP photos and VGA videos.

Already said this before, but it would be great if we see these green initiatives adopted by other big name phone manufacturers. Imagine HTC releasing an eco-friendly Android smartphone, or Apple replacing the gorilla glass from the iPhone 4 with recycled plastics! These times surely seem to be too far ahead, so until they come, it'll have to be up to Sony Ericsson to innovate in this area.

The Sony Ericsson Hazel is a capable handset that's perfectly suited for handling calls, texts, photos and even occasional social networking. That's what it's good for, and we can easily recommend it to you, if that's what you're looking for.

If you seek for similar features, but don't like this particular offering for one reason or another, you might be interested to check the manufacturer's other GreenHeart phones such as the Elm (identical to the Hazel, but candybar), C901 GreenHeart or the Naite.

If you are looking for something a bit more contemporary, you can take a look at the Samsung Blue Earth, which adds goodies like a 3-inch capacitive screen and solar panels as an alternative charging source. And just in case that you are into the environment but want to go smartphone, you only option seems to be Sony Ericsson's very own Aspen, which runs Windows Mobile 6.5.3 and packs a 2.4” touchscreen, as well as a full QWERTY keyboard.

Sony Ericsson Hazel Video Review: