Sony Ericsson K810 Review

After the merger 5 years ago, the Swedish-Japanese joint-venture Sony Ericsson started to launch phones in all segments, thus staking its claim to enter into the ‘big game’ and to be among the leaders on the mobile phones market. A few generations of phones, one after the other have demonstrated innovativeness and reinforced the manufacture’s advantages, becoming better and better year after year.

К800 was launched on the market in 2006 as a proud heir of К750 with a considerable upgrade of its multimedia features. К800 was largely assessed as a real cameraphone, and it was its manufacturer’s idea to take a share of the portable digital camera’s market, which it succeeded doing. К800 was evaluated as one of the top cameraphones in Europe and America and indisputably as the phone with the best flash, using the Xenon technology. К800 represented many innovations crammed in one.

Shortly before 3GSM in February 2007 its successor was launched in the face of К810. In this case, the manufacturer just applied one Nokia trick, to use the well-known basis, which they dress in new clothes (design) and launch it on the market just slightly changed. In order to make it definitely different, the design was almost drastically changed. Quite a pleasing difference is the slimmer silhouette, thanks to the redesigned camera cover. The rest is just cosmetic software modifications…

A standard candybar phone with an inbuilt camera, К810’s silhouette is reminiscent of К800. Although its design is totally different, the proportions and the size are the same, save for the thickness, which is 0.2 inches (5mm) less, which makes it more a contemporary phone. After all, all manufacturers are competing for slim phones and Sony Ericsson has to keep up the pace. The phone’s weight of 3.65 oz (103.5 grams) is well-balanced and the device is easily handled, but at the same time it is felt when it is kept in the pocket. Although they weigh almost the same, К810 is more convenient to carry, compared to К800, due to its slimness.

K810 is designed in two color options (Noble Blue and Golden Ivory). The one we tested was in the blue variation, which we find to be the classier of the two. The panel contains both matt parts (almost the whole back) and shiny details, which go together really well and, as a whole, the phone looks much trendier and classier than its predecessor. Unfortunately, it is easily soiled.

As was already mentioned, К810 contains a few novelties, compared to К800. When juxtaposed, it can be seen that their displays have absolutely the same character, the only difference being that К810 is just a little brighter, which might even be due to the different glass over the display. As a whole, it does a good job with high contrast and relatively saturated colors, the small size being its biggest shortcoming. However, this shortcoming has also its positive side, since, combined with the high resolution (240х320), it brings about a high Dots per Inch ratio and a detailed image without the pixels being evident. There are two small shortcuts above it for the camera, earpiece and the VGA camera for video conversations, which are much less visible than before due to the lack of the decorative grid that the former model used.

The remainder of the front is taken up by the keyboard. Unlike its predecessor, here the numeric keys are not located so close one next to the other, they are smaller and the space between them is bigger. They are not made of black plastic; the material is grey, shiny and metal-like. The keys are easy to feel and to press, with a very strong tactile responce. The navigation buttons are also smaller, but this time they are less handy than those of the predecessor. The joystick in the middle has an identical response, which is generally due to the space around it.

The keys are lit differently: the navigation keys are in blue, the numeric are in pale lilac. The keyboard is clearly seen in all conditions. One of the innovations is that, when the camera is on, there are small icons around the left-hand column of numeric keys, lit in blue, in order to show the function of the respective key in this landscape mode, and to highlight its current function. These buttons are shortcuts in the camera.

Apart from the keys on the front panel, К810 is equipped with a small play/pause button on the left-hand side, volume control rocker (just a little slimmer than those of К800) and camera shutter (in the style of the numeric keyboard, it is also round) on the right-hand side, as well as a power button on the front panel. The Sony Ericsson connector is on the back panel, and the memory cards slot is on the left-hand side.

On the back you will find, just like with К800, the loudspeaker, the camera, covered with the active lens cover and the battery lid with the logo „Cyber-shot” engraved over it, arranged from top to bottom. The active cover now is harder to open, since it is smaller, but this makes it more difficult for it to open of its own accord when carried in a pocket, which sometimes happened with К800. Thanks to the redesign you get a phone, with is 5 mm slimmer.

Just like the rest of the new phones of this manufacturer (including К800), which are not smartphones (Symbian OS), К810 uses the standard software without any serious innovations. Unlike the Walkman phones, the Flash-animated themes, which change the image drastically and are much cooler than the standard one, which change only their colors and pictures and not the icons, are not maintained here.

The Home screen shows standard service information, including the strength of coverage/battery, the name of the operator, the time and the date. Here logically there are icons, signaling of missed calls, unread messages, set alarm/Bluetooth, etc.

The four directions of the joystick are shortcuts, which you can arrange as you like from the settings menu. You can access the other shortcuts from the „Activity menu” button (right of the right soft button), by which you can see the currently set applications. The Sony Ericsson phones allow for multi-tasking, e.g. you can leave the musical player on, while you’re writing a text message.

The main menu is visualized as a grid of 3x4 icons, each of them corresponding to a button from the numeric keyboard for shortcut. The icons are not animated, but, when pointed at, they can be replaced with other, slightly bigger ones. Unlike К800, when you point at one of the icons of К810, it starts to ‘vibrate’: it increases and decreases. The submenus look like lists with horizontal tabs. There are no shortcuts here.

Phonebook:

As far as saving numbers to the phonebook is concerned, there's almost no difference with the previous models; you can save up to 1000 contacts, while each of them can store several numbers (up to 2500 numbers in total), e-mails and web addresses, as well as a personal picture and ring tone, or video-tone for indication when you have an incoming call. You can add contacts to groupsbut you cannot set a common ring tone or a caller ID to a given group. As a whole, this function is planned to be used only when you want to send a message to more than one contact for example. Finding a contact is done by directly entering letters from the keypad, but unfortunately only the first word of the name considered during the search. However, an option we really liked was to sort the names both by first and last name. Still, if you’ve sorted them by last name, you will not be able to search by First name, which now appears as second word.

A new number is dialed from the standard semi-transparent background on the homescreen. There are no options for personalizing the font, color or the background.

Organizer:

The organizer icon is in the main menu. Its options include calendar, tasks, notes, alarms, calculator, timer, stopwatch, code memo, applications links, and synchronization option.

The Calendar can be viewed for a month, week or a day; the latter option shows the events, set for the particular day, as well as the possibility to add new options. When you want to add appointments, you select the starting time, duration and the reminder’s time. You can add details about the venue of the event, as well as a description. You have the option of setting it as an All day event (all birth dates from the contacts list are added as such) and to include recurrence options (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly).

You can also save simple Tasks (reminder for Task or Phone Call) or write a plain note. The menu also houses a Calculator with basic functionality, a Countdown timer and a Stopwatch capable of storing up to nine results. We think that the Code Memo option is useless and we will prefer to have a “save” where we can save text information, LOCKED (not coded) by a password.

Voice commands:

The voice commands are activated by holding the Volume Down button, and you must hold the phone next to your head in order to use them - they do not utilize the loudspeaker. This makes them absolutely inconvenient to use and we even had a problem with only one contact saved. To sum it up - the system simply does not work and it's completely useless, there's no room for making a comparison with the one used in Symbian S60 phones that have speaker-independent voice commands for making calls and opening applications. The phone has about 70MB of internal memory that can be expanded through Memory Stick Micro (M2) cards, which are Sony's smallest dimension-wise cards at the moment.

Besides the standard and multimedia messages, the messaging menu also houses the e-mail client, which makes it easier for you to send and receive large files that are not suitable for MMS, like full-sized pictures for example. Entering text is aided by T9 but when it's turned off (when adjusting the e-mail settings for example), you realize how horrible the keyboard really is. The preloaded templates are intended to help you save time typing in often used phrases and sentences. What we found weird is that this menu houses a RSS Reader, which is convenient to quickly view the content of a given web site without loading it - we checked phoneArena's news in an instant.

Connectivity:

One of the handset's major drawbacks is the 3-band network support, as this means it is not fully global roaming capable. The K810 supports 900/1800/1900 GSM and 2100 MHz UMTS, and it has 2G version (for Asia) called the K818, where the UMTS is replaced with EDGE, which the K810 lacks. That means that you can take advantage of all of the phone's capabilities only if you use it on a 3G network in Europe or Asia. And even if you're in any of these areas, you will have to count on the slow GPRS when your network has no UMTS support, as your K810 has no EDGE (the step between GPRS and UMTS).

A connection with other devices can be established both through IrDA, which is located on the right side of the phone, and Bluetooth (the version is 2.0) while a great plus is that the trendy A2DP is featured. It allows you to stream stereo audio wirelessly from the phone's player to a compatible device like wireless headphones, mini stereo or car audio systems supporting that kind of transfer.

Internet:

For loading Internet pages there is a WAP 2.0 browser which can operate on the UMTS network for greater speed, where it is supported. Thanks to the high resolution (240x320), viewing web sites is very convenient, but still there's no room for comparison with the brilliant web browser that Symbian smartphones have.

Just like K800, K810 is dedicated to taking pictures and the camera is its main function. The camera’s functionality is not any different than that of its predecessor, and the same applies to its software. К810 uses absolutely the same hardware like that of К800 and, respectively, the pictures that the two phones take, should be similar. This is not a bad thing, keeping in mind К800’d good performance, compared to the other top-of-the-line phones, but nevertheless, if Sony Ericsson had used a 5-megapixel module, the results would have probably been much better. The strange thing is that they are not the same (see below).

The camera interface is turned on in about 4 seconds and then you are ready to take pictures. It is in a landscape mode and visualizes the number of photos you can take on the available memory, the set resolution and the mode you’re in (pictures/video). The left-hand digital keys column (1, 4, 7, *) now features lit icons, demonstrating their function (resolution, focus, self-shooter, flash). There are also descriptive icons (Shoot modes, Scenes) next to the two keys above the display, but they are lit in blue. With the left software button you open the settings, but since the icons feature abstract pictures, you have to point at them, in order to find out (from the headings) what they are for. You have the following options here:

We find it useless that options that have shortcuts are dubbed in this menu as well. The reason for this is that the software is identical with that of К800, where such shortcuts were not marked. If the six options were deleted, the menu would become shorter and neater.

BestPic is a mode, in which the phone takes 9 consecutive pictures in a very short period of time, and then you decide which of those pictures to save.



Panorama is a software that combines automatically three consecutive pictures and turns them into a broad-angle composition. When you’re taking the second and the third picture, the software shows you briefly where the previous picture ended, so that you can frame more precisely. Unfortunately, the final result is smaller than the three original pictures would have been, if they had been placed one next to the other, and the resolution is poorer.


Frames offers you fun frames that you can use for your pictures. We think that they are very good, but the problem here is that the resolution of the final image is much less than 3 megapixels.

A new option, which is not available in К800, is “photo fix” (it can be used for saved pictures as well). This option is useful, if you’re taking pictures that are not very well exposed, because it lights them additionally, but the effect is nothing much and it is a software effect, which means that you can do a better job by using a computer image processing software.

Although Sony Ericsson claims that K810 uses exactly the same hardware as the K800 for its camera and it should has absolutely identical performance, we tested it, capturing a few objects at the same time with the two cameraphones. We hoped that K810 will perform better, but  really disappointed us. It seems that K810 uses new software algorithm and its images are worse than K800’s. This doesn’t make sense, but is the reality.

Outdoor, all images produced by the K810 look as if they have a grey filter applied – lack contrast and the colors are unsaturated. Testing the quality indoors at different lightning conditions, K810 gives darker objects in its photos and way more noise can be seen.

We obtained this results with two test units, provided from different places (one directly from Sony Ericsson, and one a commercially available unit from a store). The results were the same. The software information shows Camera Software Version 2.5

The camcorder is kept from the K800 - it has the mediocre QCIF resolution which makes the captured videos usable only for MMS. If you want to preview them on a computer, they will have very small size.



The pictures can be viewed from the file manager; you can view them in a few modes: 5x5 thumbnails, 3x3 thumbnails, thumbnails list, and list. You can sort pictures by name, date, type and size. As a whole, the ‘gallery’ is comparatively fast and convenient.
Unlike W880, if you keep a thumb pressed down when viewing thumbnails on video files, they do not start to play. This is another extra, apart from the flash themes, which is obviously lacking in a cybershot phone, while it is available in Walkmans.

Multimedia:

K810 has exactly the same music playback functionality like the K800, but is not bad at all. The Audio player supports the most popular file types, including MP3, AAC and WAV, and lets you sort them by Artist (and then also by Album).You can also create your own playlists and organize your music the way you want. There are Loop and Shuffle options during Playback, as well as several preset equalizers which you can also fine-tune manually. The Playback interface is quite simplified but still displays all the information you need. However, the fact that FastForward/Rewind is done through the same buttons used for Next/Previous track, can be very inconvenient as you have to hold these buttons to use them this way, and once in a while you just change the song unintentionally.

When talking about music reproduction, a major disadvantage is that the headphones from the package do not have a 3.5mm jack as with the W(alkman)-series and you have to use the earbuds from the box - you cannot replace them with something better. The quality of the sound they produce does not impress at all: there's no air, everything sounds flat, and the high frequencies are distorted and instead of clear drum instruments you hear something quite different. The sound quality can be classified as average and coming close to good when compared to other phones, but there's no way to compare it to a good music player equipped with adequate headphones.

For testing the video player, we sent two video files via Bluetooth - a MP4 one encoded with the H.264 codec and the other was the same file but converted to .3GPP (the file size was reduced from 17 to 4 MB consequently). The first (high-quality) file was saved in the Music and the other in the Video folder, and thus only the latter could be viewed. The high-quality video could only be listened to, but there was no picture. The choppy 3GPP video could be viewed in fullscreen (landscape) and the sound could be heard via the headphones, but the quality of this file type is just much lower than the far better MP4/H.264. So we just cannot talk about watching high-quality video with the K810, which is a pity. You can only use MPEG4 with H.263 encoding, but the image quality in this case is still not good enough.



The FM Radio is an addition to the music player, and it offers a nice interface and RDS support for receiving information about the stations. You can save up to 20 of them with the option of storing their names too. Of course, as an antenna you have to use the headphones from the package and they must be plugged in even when you want to listen through the speaker of the phone.

Software:

K810 maintains a JAVA MIDP 2.0 and comes preloaded with a few games. Our version contained “Extreme Air Snowboarding” and “Tennis Multiplay”.




K810 adds TrackID application, which we met in W880 and are happy to see here. This is a program, which records a sample of sound, sends it to a server, and tells the user which song they belong to. The application operated faultlessly – it recognized 5 out of 5! After vocal performances we decided to encumber it with a guitar solo of Joe Satriani – it guessed the track unmistakably. Then we ‘tried’ it with a little-known song from a compilation of electronic music (Sounds of Asian Underground), which was also recognized easily. Within around 20 seconds (including recording, sending and analysis) the program achieves very good results.
It is rare to see a screen message that Track ID has not found any results for your music.



In the Entertainment menu one will also find Video DJ, Photo DJ, and Music DJ. Video DJ enables you to merge text, images, and video files in a short clip; Photo DJ makes ordinary editing of pictures saved in the telephone (like brightness and contrast control); and Music DJ is a melody composer.

In applications you will find FaceWrap (a funny image editor, usable for caller-ID images), PhotoMate (a tutorial for photo capturing) and HP Print.




The File Manager is in the main menu, and it sorts the media content by types (camera album, music, pictures, videos, themes..) You can browse the phone memory only, the memory card only, or both (combined).