The following Sony Ericsson K800i review is a little different from other mobile phone reviews across the Web (and certainly different from other reviews we've done here at MobileMentalism). It's a long-term review, showing what the Sony Ericsson K800i has been like to use over the course of six months.
Things really are being all shook up in the mobile phone world. Hot on the heels of Motorola splitting itself in two comes news that Sony Ericsson has canned two of its eagerly awaited smartphones - the Sony Ericsson P5i, codenamed Paris, and the Sony Ericsson G702 (codenamed BeiBei). These phones have been talked about and debated for months now, with people split on whether the liked the design or not.
Clearly the same debate was happening within Sony Ericsson, too, and those people who decided that the phones were not up to scratch won out and killed them. Fevered debate around the blogosphere speculates that the P5i was killed off because its feature-list was already behind that of its competitors even before it was released. This would be bad enough for a low-end phone, but for a smartphone, it's techno-suicide!
However, that's not all - the blogosphere itself may have had something to do with their decision...
Things are looking pretty grim for Motorola. The US giant, which used to be the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, has decided to split itself in two, spinning off the loss-making mobile phone division as a separate company, and concentrating instead on cable-TV set-top boxes, walkie-talkies and handheld scanners.
The reason for this is that the mobile devices division is losing so much money ($1.6 billion in just 18 months) that it's in danger of dragging the company down with it. By spinning the division off as a separate company, it's hoped that it can refocus its energies onto the mobile phone market and turn itself around, while a separate Motorola that focuses on set top boxes and the like will not be hurt should the new mobile phone company ultimately fail.
Sounds simple, but Motorola really has its work cut out - the cost of splitting the company in two is estimated at $750 million, while the new mobile phone company may need up to $4 billion just to stay afloat for the next two years.
More details after the jump.
How's this fore a juicy piece of news? Sony are rumoured to be working on a PSP phone. Nothing new there, a PSP phone's been rumoured for years, ever since the first Sony brand (Walkman) was added to a mobile phone and people started wondering what other brands Sony might offer up.
But note that I didn't say Sony Ericsson are working on a PSP phone - I said Sony.
Amid what analysts are describing as "an increasingly frosty relationship" between Sony and Ericsson, Sony are apparently considering developing a PSP phone all by themselves, leaving Sony Ericsson to develop far-feebler gaming phones such as the F305 that was announced last week.
After over a year of rumours, leaked pictures and speculation, Motorola have finally announced the 5 megapixel camera phone they've been working on with Kodak. Called the Motorola MOTOZINE ZN5, the new camera phone was seen as a key element in Motorola's fight-back against its competitors, which have been eating up its market share for over a year now.
Is it too little too late, though? Given that most of the other manufacturers have had 5 megapixel camera phones on the market for over a year now, and Sony Ericsson are about to launch an 8 megapixel camera phone, can Motorola's first 5 megapixel camera phone really help the company stem its losses and help it regain the technological lead it once held?
Read on after the jump to find out.
Sony Ericsson have announced the new Sony Ericsson F305, a mobile phone with what the company calls "Motion Gaming." This feature is basically an accelerometer inside the phone, which lets you control the characters in your game by moving the phone around. For example, you can play bowling by making the appropriate bowling movements with the phone in your hand. Remind you of anything?!
Yes, despite rumours of a Sony Ericsson PSP phone, the company seems instead to have created its own Wii phone! The difference, though, is that with a Wii you get direct feedback from your actions by seeing your character respond to your movements on the screen in real time. With the Sony Ericsson F305, you can't see your character move, as of course the screen is attached to the phone. So you have to make the movement in isolation, and then look at the screen afterwards to see if your character did what it was meant to. Should make for an interesting set of games!
More details of the Sony Ericsson F305 game phone after the jump.
The Sony Ericsson C905 CyberShot phone has at last been made official. Sony Ericsson's latest super camera phone is a technological tour de force, designed to take on and beat the best that Nokia's N-Series can throw at it. Not for Sony Ericsson a measly 5 megapixels - the C905 comes with 8.1 megapixels. Connectivity? While the average Nokia N-Series can manage Wi-Fi, HSDPA, USB and Bluetooth 2.0, the C905 features all that and throws DLNA into the mix too, enabling your phone's pictures to be beamed directly to your (DLNA-compatible) TV wirelessly at the touch of a button.
You also get a-GPS, built-in Google Maps, and a tonne of fancy-ass camera-specific features, too, making any N-Series phone look like an iPhone (well, at least in the features stakes anyway!)
Full specification and many more pictures of the Sony Ericsson C905 camera phone after the jump.
Smasung have announced a new camera phone that sports a 5 megapixel camera and a 3x optical zoom. Nothing particularly innovative about that, you might think. The forthcoming Sony Ericsson C905 will be an 8 megapixel camera phone and camera phones with 3x optical zooms have been around for a while now.
However, although optical zoom is far better than digital zoom, it doesn't appear on that many phones. The reason (apart from cost) is size - whenever you zoom out, the lens of your camera moves out of the main body of the phone or camera in which it's situated, and all the gubbins required to do this adds significantly to the device's bulk. This is not what mobile phone manufacturers want, particularly when thin is most definitely in with mobile phones these days. Just take a look at one of Samsung's earlier attempts at a high-end camera phone with super-zooming lens. Not exactly what you'd call slim (or subtle, for that matter!)
So Samsung's latst phone, the Samsung W480, features what it calls an 'inner zoom' feature. Rather than the lens of the phone moving outwards, away from the phone's body, the lens actually remains fixed in place, and the zooming happens internally. By magic. I think!
Obviously, this being a Samsung phone, you get all manner of other technological goodies to play with as well. Read on after the jump for more details.
Nokia have finally announced the Nokia E71 (above) and E66 (below), two business-oriented smartphones that have been talked about in the mobile phone world for what seems like an age. Replacing the Blackberry-like E70 and E65 respectively, the two phones are designed primarily for business use, and so come with such business-oriented features as one touch access to calendars, notes, todo lists, etc., plus email software that enables these phones to connect to any of over 1,600 email services provided by ISPs across the globe.
There's even built-in support for Microsoft Exchange, so your boss can get you no matter where you are at work.
The E71 is the more distinct of the two, featuring a full-QWERTY keyboard that makes text entry a breeze. In contrast, the E66 looks like a standard mobile phone, so data entry is going to be more difficult, but equally you have an arguably more stylish phone in your pocket. Other than the keyboard, the two phones are largely the same, except for one small feature: the E66 has an accelerometer, allowing you to block calls simply by turning the phone over onto its front. I like that - kind of like turning your back on the caller! Rude, but satisfying!
The E71 and E66 aren't just fusty old business phones, though. Nokia appreciate that your average smart-phone touting business-person doesn't just want a mobile email client, they want some multimedia fun too. So the new phones have been packed with enough multimedia features to make an N-Series blush. The E71, for example, comes with an MP3 player and 3.2 megapixel camera, as well as HSDPA, Wi-Fi, a-GPS and Nokia Maps. All this in a phone that's just 10mm thin - hugely impressive.
In other words, it's what a top-end phone came with last year, all packaged into a business phone that will cost around 350 Euros.
More details and pictures of the Nokia E71 and E66 after the jump.
