Sony Ericsson has announced the Sony Ericsson K850i Cyber-Shot phone.

The K850 is another of the major phone announcements made by the company today, and is all set to be the top of the range Cyber-Shot phone when it’s released in a few months’ time.

The K850 comes with some excellent features:

5 megapixel camera complete with auto-focus and a xenon flash, Tri-band HSDPA for super-fast uploading and downloading of pictures and data, plus a unique Photo-Fix feature that optimizes the shot according to the available light.

Full details of the Sony Ericsson K850 after the jump.

Sony Ericsson K850 Cyber-Shot phone

The Sony Ericsson K850 has been an eagerly-awaited phone for some time now, with leaked pictures of the phone and sketchy details of its features being constantly talked about since late last year (when it was known by its codename of Sofia. Now it’s revealed in the flesh, and it looks as though it could be the most camera-like mobile phone yet made.

Sony Ericsson K850 camera and video

This being a Cyber-Shot phone, it’s natural to focus on its photo-taking abilities first. With a 5 megapixel camera, coupled with auto-focus and a xenon flash, the K850 has the potential to take photos that are better than any other on the market. Add to that Sony Ericsson’s new Photo Fix software, which adjusts the camera’s settings according to the light available, and it should be simplicity to take excellent quality photos that are superior to any other camera phone on the market today.

The video camera can shoot and playback video at up to 30 frames per second, which is DVD quality. All this picture work needs a decent screen to work with, of course, and the Sony Ericsson obliges with a 2.2″ QVGA TFT screen featuring what Sony Ericsson are calling Crystal Bright technology for enhanced viewing no matter how bright out it is.

This is all well and good, but a 2.2 inch screen with only 262,000 colours is a little disappointing on a high end camera phone, particularly when compared with some of Nokia’s models that are routinely supporting 16 million colours these days.

Another disappointment is the lack of optical zoom. If Nokia can squeeze in a 3x optical zoom into their high-end N-Series camera phones, why can’t Sony Ericsson with a phone that carries its prestigious Cyber-Shot brand? This severely limits the range of shots you can take with the K850, and could make it the less capable camera phone compared with, say, the Nokia N93 or N95. We’ll wait and see how the picture quality compares before passing judgment, but the lack of optical zoom on a high-end camera phone is a serious omission in my book.

Sony Ericsson K850 Connectivity

One are in which the K850 does shine is connectivity. The K750 offeres tri-band HSDPA, quad-band GSM plus EDGE, meaning that it should be able to connect to any network virtually anywhere in the world, at up to 3.6 Mbps per second (if using HSDPA).

With a 5 megapixel camera on board, HSDPA has kind of become a necessity, as the size of the images increases the more megapixels you cram in. Given that the K850i supports sending images via email as well as photoblogging, a fast data connection is an absolute must, so it’s good that Sony Ericsson have squeezed in so many connectivity options.

That said, one are where they have been a bit mean is with storage. Despite the W910 and W960 phones, which were also announced today, coming with 1GB and 8GB of storage respectively, Sony Ericsson have only bundled in a 512MB Memory Stick card wsith the K850, which will rapidly get filled up if the photos are taken at their highest level 9and let’s face it, if you’ve bought a camera phone becuase of its 5 megapixekl camera, why wouldn’t you take pics at their highests level?)

Sony Ericsson K850i Release Date

The Sony Ericsson K850i release date is scheduled for early Quarter 4 2007, and will be available in either Velvet Blue or Luminous Green (yuk!)

Sony Ericsson K850 Specification

The Sony Ericsson K850i specification is as follows:

• 5 megapixel Camera
• Auto focus
• 16x Digital zoom
• Xenon Flash
• PictBridge
• BestPic™
• Photo fix
• Automatic postcard creation
• Slideshow w music
• Pocket album – thumbnail
• Fast scroll
• Intelligent photo browsing
• Active lens cover
• 2.2″ 262,00 colour TFT Display
• External display
• Scratch resistant crystal bright display
• 30 frames per second Video recording
• 40MB User free memory (internal)
• Expandable Memory (comes with 512MB)
• Memory Card Combo slot (M2/MicroSD)
• Push e-mail
• Microsoft® Exchange ActiveSync® Support
• Web browser
• PlayNow™
• Podcasting
• New Media browser
• Flight Mode
• Bluetooth™ 2.0 Technology
• FM radio
• Streaming audio/video
• Video call
• Music tones
• WAP 2.0 XHTML
• Polyphonic ringtones
• Speakerphone
• Vibrating alert
• Picture messaging (MMS)
• Predictive text input
• Sound recorder
• Text messaging (SMS)
• Navigation key
• Picture wallpaper
• Style-Up™ covers
• Java
• Alarm clock
• Calculator
• Calendar
• Notes
• Phone book
• Stopwatch
• Tasks
• Timer
• USB mass storage
• USB support

Sony Ericsson K850 Summary

The Sony Ericsson K850 is the much-hyped 5 megapixel Cyber-Shot phone we used to know as Sofia. Now she’s here, and she offers most of the features we were expecting. I’m still a little disappointed at the lack of optical zoom and the relatively poor screen, but I guess it’s the photo-taking abilities of the phone that the K850 will be judged by, so we’ll have to be a little patient before we find out.

The K850 does have the potential to be the best camera phone in its class (i.e. the best camera phone, period!). Let’s just hope it doesn’t disappoint.