“Nokia shamed by Sony Ericsson in battle for margins” is the title of a report of London-based consultant agency ARCchart in which the differences in philosophy of the eternal enemies Nokia and SE are summarized: while Nokia has veered towards share and shows a strong growth in low-end sales and moderate in high-end, Sony Ericsson has boomed high-end sales while keeping one of the best mid-range portfolios, thanks —in my opinion— key points like the interface, power of the music and camera functions, and the appeal of the Walkman and Cybershot brands.

But aside from the cameraphone sales, what’s interesting is to see how many people actually take photos with them and therefore to see which phones give a better “digital camera” experience. The graphic above made with Flickr stats shows a competition among several Sony Ericssons and Nokias as the most used to take serious shots. We see the K750 as the stable king of cameraphones and the K800 rapidly gaining popularity along with the also relatively nwe Nokia N73.

Which brings us to Quesabesde.com’s comparative (in Spanish) of these two contenders to the K750’s throne, focusing on the cameras, of which I translate some interesting conclusions after the jump:

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Straight out from the French Riviera, Noreve offers a series of high quality leather cases for almost all current mid-high Sony Ericssons, for those who don’t mind losing some portability in favor of protecting the precious device inside while adding a touch of style and personalization with the many leather colors available. I say losing portability because after trying these with my P990, it just won’t fit any comfortably in trousers any tighter than 50 Cent’s. It shouldn’t be a big problem for smaller models’ users though —the P990 itself isn’t very pocket-friendly anyway—, but it’s fair to say that these cases add considerable bulk to your phone, not to mention if you even attach the huge belt clip. This belt clip led McCoy, reviewer of the black M600/W950 and red P990 cases, to find a funny problem with the back screw, which you can check in the video (in all Superhandz style) after the jump, along with photos of those and my black and white P990 cases.

Go to Noreve’s Sony Ericsson leather cases product page

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I was going to title this entry “another scant recommended rating from Mobileburn” but let’s be fair, it’s getting tougher and tougher to keep up with the fierce competition, and if recent news about Sony Ericsson’s figures is any indicative, perhaps business isn’t always about making every single supermodel worth a Mobileburn’s “highly recommended” rating. And after all, it’s an “enthusiastic recommended rating”. Next, some notable extracts from the review, including a description of the W710’s interesting pedometer “for people who sweat” (I’m just quoting there!):

The slider key located on the right side of the W710i locks the rubber buttons [around the orange back lit, 4 shade grayscale external display] so that they won’t be triggered by accident when you aren’t playing music

Some long needed functionality [is that] email accounts can now be configured to download headers or only the first so many KB of a message. This system will let users see what an email message is about without having to download any huge attachments that were sent with.

The overall quality of the photos is not quite as good as we have come to expect from Sony Ericsson. The issue seems to be the lens, which takes photos that are not consistently focused

I was pleased with the quality of the sound overall when the W710i was used with both wired and Bluetooth wireless stereo headphones.

The pedometer function in the W710i works really well, and does a good job of organizing your past exercise efforts by distance, time, and calories burned. You can calibrate it by inputting your height, age, and weight and let it guess about stride length, or you can actually use it on a known distance (like a track) and have it calibrate itself from that. While in use, the pedometer will display the number of steps walked that day on both the internal and external displays. An included Java app actually lets you see graphs of your training, and offers the user virtual medals and other rewards as incentive. In short, the pedometer is a fun addition to a mobile phone.

Sony Ericsson’s user interface is both intuitive and entertaining. It makes good use of screen real estate as well as color and animation - without getting in its own way.

While I don’t consider it to be one of the better looking handsets the company has created, the Sony Ericsson W710i is still a very capable and fun handset to use. It might not have a best in class camera, but the music playback (with stereo Bluetooth support) and the built-in pedometer make it a great companion for commuters and athletically inclined people alike.

If not for some issues with audio quality on calls, I might have been convinced to give the W710i a higher rating, but as is, I instead give it an enthusiastic “Recommended” rating.

Read Mobileburn’s W710 Review

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And that isn’t exactly a good thing. From what I can recall, all reviews of Sony Ericsson phones by seriously serious review site Mobileburn have got a “Highly recommended rating”. But apparently the Z610 —one of past weeks’ newest models, all of which we will be covering little by little— is a bit too much on the stylish-not-so-functional side, and it’s a bit more expensive than usual aswell.

The curves and the color scheme give the device the look of a drop of mercury over a pebble (…). Of course, the bad thing is that the reflective surface attracts fingerprints like you have never seen before, and it is actually quite easy to scratch (…).

The screen is bright, but more pixilated than the K750i’s because of its larger size (…).

Sony Ericsson boasts one of the best, if not the best, looking user interface in the industry. The one on Z610 is similar to that of K610 and K800, which is a slight update from the K750i days. The biggest observable improvement would be its fonts: the letters are indeed much easier to read on small screens now. The company has also listened to market critics and decided to put the clock on the top bar at all times. Users also get to choose between a large or small clock on the standby screen (…).

The Z610 comes with a pretty big battery for such a small device. The 950mAh rating translates to approximately 3.5 days of what we consider average usage (…).

RSS feeds are also supported, but are grouped with your SMS, MMS, and email messages (…).

If you are looking strictly at functionality, the Z610 would not embarrass anyone either. With the excellent reception, full HTML browser, good battery life and multimedia capabilities, this device should be a reasonable companion during your day. The phone does everything reasonably well, but there really is not much that sets it apart other than the exterior design (…).

The Z610 is a mid-range uberglossy little 3G clamshell with an external hidden OLED 128x36pixel display, internal 2″ 176x220pixel, 262k color TFD screen, 2 megapixel camera without flash or autofocus, internal camera for videocalls, 16mb internal memory and Memory Stick Micro slot.

Go to the Z610 Review in Mobileburn
Go to the Z610 Official Page

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Another great review from the lovers of the Sony Ericsson interface —which being the best one available, keeps improving little details in almost every model— and yet another “Highly Recommended” rating. Enjoy these excerpts [Via Engadgetmobile]:

Overall build quality seems to be good, which is what we have come to expect from Sony Ericsson. But the device does seem to creak more when squeezed than the earlier models, and just doesn’t come across as rock solid as the W800 and K750 did. The look also seems to be a bit more plastic-like. Of course it is, indeed, made of plastic, but I just feel that the K750 and W800 made that less obvious. This is probably much a matter of taste, though, so judge for yourself. (…)

The Sony Ericsson W810 exhibits further refinements to its user interface. (…) One of the themes, Orbit, has not only a little fellow that orbits the selected icon and follows you as you navigate, but it changes colors each time you enter the menu. On top of that, the Orbit theme also blips the vibration alert lightly each time you navigate in the main menu, giving you physical as well as visual feedback for your actions. This is great. (…)

I’ve long been espousing the virtues of Sony Ericsson’s user interface here on MobileBurn, and now that the basics have been covered, it is nice to see the company focusing on the fine little details that really make a UI sing. The W810’s user interface is, simply put, the best available on the market today. (…)

The maximum number of contact records has been boosted to 1000 from the 500 limit imposed on the K750 and W800, which is a welcomed change. (…)

The Sony Ericsson W810 is simply one fantastic handset. While I found the speakerphone to be weak, and was disappointed by the lack of stereo Bluetooth support, it simply does everything else exquisitely well. (…) The W810 is my new favorite, currently available handset. I give it a “Highly Recommended” rating with no hesitations at all.

Read “Sony Ericsson’s Fabulous W810i” at Mobileburn

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From the website with the literal name and the guys who hate the orange color comes another in-depth review with gems like “In Sony Ericsson W950i sound quality is better than in Walkman series phones, and I have no idea how to explain it”. For the lazy readers, here’s a summary:

From the aesthetic point of view, the keyboard is interesting, though in practice it can give a lot of trouble. As to my opinion, the keyboard will start wearing off after a year or year and a half of intensive usage. (…) Though this only my guess rather than facts. (…)

Absence of standard keys for accepting and ending calls is caused by the desire of warding the keyboard against frequent presses. It will be extremely interesting to examine failure statistics of the touchkeyboard, incorporated into W950i as times goes by. (…)

The screen doesn’t fade in the sun and what is more, provides a vivid picture with good color rendering (up to 262 K colors); therefore the phone leaves a favorable impression. (…)

Non-stop playback of mp3 tracks with the default headset, which is included in the kit, plugged in (maximum volume) lasted for 13.5 hours. I will only note, that this test was carried out with the network capabilities turned on (Flight profile wasn’t used). (…)

Mood – there are five types of mood available (None, Happy, Sad, Relaxed, Energetic). This an additional parameter that can be manually set by user, so the sorting may be applied to both the general list or particular mood lists. (…)

I assure you that lack of camera doesn’t affects the handset’s capability of accepting video calls, since you can set any picture or video clip, which will be shown to your interlocutor. (…)

The model is expected to be released in July at the price of 550-650 Euros (depending on regions). (…)

Read “Review GSM smartphone Sony Ericsson W950i”

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They mention it twice in the review, and the sample photos are indeed 1280x1024 pixels resolution… but their EXIF data reveals they were taken with a K510. Caught! One thing that surprises and pretty much infuriates me is the little effort Sony Ericsson has put in making the icons in the monochrome external display look right. They’re just inverted versions of the positive ones. It just looks so cheap. Bad SE, bad!

The design of this clamshell is unusual – the pictures provoke the feeling of the handset’s disproportion, however in practice, the phone turns out to be a very attractive appearance, owing to its small size (…).

A small mirror, as well as an objective glass of a 1.3 Mpix camera, is placed right above the display. The camera module is made in a common way for Sony Ericsson and doesn’t bring anything new of any innovative solutions(…).

NetFront browser is applied as a standard in phones by Sony Ericsson (…). There is no work with html-pages containing complex formatting, or exceeding 500 Kb in size. In many respects the standard browser is optimum, but use of Opera Mini is more preferable, as it gives more capabilities(…).

Model Sony Ericsson Z530i looks poorer compared to Walkman-series phone, it has worse display [65k color STN-UBC versus 262k color TFT], the memory card is only 64mb, the headphones are similar to ones in Sony Ericsson K750i, which means that they are made of plastic, however it has exchangeable covers. This provides 40-50 euro difference in price(…).

The price of Sony Ericsson Z530i by the end of May and beginning of June will be around 175 Euro, meanwhile W300i will cost around 220-230 Euros.

Read Mobile-review’s W300/Z530 review

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After 2 months of daily usage, a mobile phone is reviewed the way it matters. And although Mr. Murtazin finds some ergonomy problems, in the end he can’t do but praise the future king of smartphones. Here are the most interesting quotes:

Could [you] use the dictaphone while making calling? (…) you won’t be allowed to use it in call mode, what you’ll be warned of. What was on the developers’ minds when they disabled this function is a mystery to me, since it works fine in any mode in the other handsets of the company (…).

In case you’ve declined an incoming call, the phone offers you to create a reminder of the missed call and a corresponding event. And at that it automatically fills in “Name” and “Number” fields (…).

Reject SMS. (…) you can make up an SMS template, that will be sent to the caller after you decline his call. A very useful feature – in order to send the message just presses the middle key and accept delivery (…).

One can effectively apply player of W950 to P990, as well as music cataloguer, the only sticking point here is when it becomes available separately from the device (…).

All applications are adjustable in terms of individual security settings, like file system access permission, message service usage, Internet and so on. (…)

The ergonomics of the device became worse, as compared to the previous models of the series, and giving JogDial up is an outrage upon humanity (…). Pros of the model are UIQ 3.0 software and pretty good realization of some functions – owing to these, it’s a pleasure to use P990 from day to day.

Read Mobile-reviews P990 review Part IV

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Now that we’ve added all the official photos to the W950 and K610, here’s the first batch of photos of our live coverage of Sony Ericsson’s party at the 3GSM Barcelona. A too-dark-for-great-photos event where 15-20 Sony Ericsson representatives wore W950’s around the neck, each, and where the music was played by a well known DJ Judge Jules from several Walkman Sony Ericssons! The new smatphone’s innovative keypads proved to be totally useable, with the M600’s actually having two presses per key (one for each letter, right press or left press) thus working as a proper Qwerty keyboard, and the W950’s being something not dissimilar to Motorola’s RAZR keypad, in a rubbery, more stylish way, yet very comfortable to use; whose color/graphic design they’re not all happy with, and might be changing before it goes on production, we were told. The negative point in the evening was to discover that only one P990 was hanging around with a really slow interface because the damn thing is still under development (smells like P800 spirit).

Here are other links to live galleries of the new phones:
- Phone Scoop live pics and W950 interface video, showing what lead the guys to the conclusion that the new Walkman “could be one of the most innovative mobile music experiences out there, even more so than the iPod”. [Thanks Eric]
- Mobile-review’s live pics, only in Russian for now, and showing the J100 we have not forgot about.
- Newmobile.nl’s live pictures gallery and videos.
- Mobileburn’s W950 live photos.

Discuss this in the W950, K610 or M600 forum threads

Continue reading… (more photos)

In contrast with Mobileburn’s review, in which the only negative point was the lack of EDGE, Mobique finds a few other problems in an otherwise excellent handset (especially price-per-features wise). The most crucial one seems to be a too sensitive camera button that keeps starting the camera application and taking photos while the phone is in the pocket or even just holding it with the hand. I have my doubts about this being a general problem: usually all SE’s camera buttons have to be pressed more than one second in order to start the camera application; maybe the button in Kinny’s unit got stuck on “pressed” possition. What’s your experience? Check out the review, they have a couple of videos of the cool light effects.

Discuss this in the Z520 Forum Thread

Ready for a busy day of swiveling Walkman love?

Threegmobile’s W900 review is more of a preview after just a couple of hours of testing, but there is a video of the automatic opening mechanism and two sample photos featuring the girl on the right. They also have a W600 p/review.

Mobile-review’s W900 review, besides the usual funny translation bits, is the first one to include comprehensive comparison with the S700, especially of the screen, which is indeed a bit smaller (just by a milimeter or two) but a lot brighter; actually too much according to their opinion. Sample photos of the W900 and K750 show that they may be using the same hardware, but the firmware differences don’t make the photos turn out exactly the same. An good benchmark comparing these two phones shows the W900 (enabled with an nVidia GoForce 4800 chip) being a lot faster in 3D operations but slower in everything else. The speed of the menus is extremely slow, probably (and hopefuly) due to the unit being an unfinished-firmware prototype. Lots of videos at the end.

NOTE: Both W900 reviews mention something about the absence of RDS in the Radio FM, but it’s not clear if they’re referring to the phone or just the handsfree’s remote screen.

Mobiledia’s W600 “review”, not even having live photos or impressions at first-hand, is not really a review but an extended explanation of all the features and uses. Typical perfect read for anyone impatiently waiting to buy one/have it shipped.

Sefanatics’ W600 vs S700 review is a very recommended read, just what a good review should be: brief and straight to the point.

Infosyncworld’s W600 review is also short but has a couple of interesting facts like the battery life being great even playing MP3’s: 15 hours they say, but was it with the phone off or on?

Discuss this in the W900 Forum Thread
Discuss this in the W600 Forum Thread

As advertised in its official product page and this photo, the Z300 retail package will come with diamond-looking stickers for you your girlfriend to decorate the faceplate. This and the lack of the single-icon menu interface seen in the also just unveiled J220 and J230 altogether feels like not sleeping for 24 hours. But I won’t object. It doesn’t even have integrated handsfree speaker like the mentioned J phones, but keeps the rest of “standard” features at 85.5 x 45 x 23 mm and 91 grams: GSM Dual, GPRS 4+1, 128x128 pixel 65k color STN screen, 64x64 pixel monochrome external screen, 650kb internal memory (150kb more than the others), 32-tone polyphonics, theme support and exchangeable faceplates (Granite Grey and Amethyst Purple). Mobile-review already has a review of the Z300 and seem very angry about the lack of innovation and other details like the claimed 65k color screen looking as unimpressive and unusuable under sunlight as the J300’s 4k color. They complain about the use of the old connector instead of the Fast Port, about the volume buttons, and the existance of the phone itself coming to demolish the company’s image. But us, in SE we trust. This cute clamshell will be in stores before Christmas in Z300i, Z300c and Z300a versions for EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific and Africa), China mainland and America respectively.

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Without any sign of the excitement I would show if I could have the chance of reviewing a precommercial P990, Mobile-review covers some of the aspects of the interface and basic applications in Part III of their review (previous parts’ comments). Oddly, almost half the screenshots are actually from a P800 and P910, apparently because the features of the shown applications haven’t changed. Or something… Well the last paragraph sounds like they’re going to update those with P990 screenshots soon. Whatever. To summarize the important stuff, first of all, the Nine Ninety supports the Bluetooth A2D profile!!! Awesome! (and you KNOW what that means, don’t you?). Secondly, they say it doesn’t support Voice over IP, but I’m gessing they mean it doesn’t support it out of the box: some third party developers must be working on that at the moment. And last but not least, the MP3 player application looks pretty cool, doesn’t it? And you can browse music by playlists and tags OR by folders and filenames (about time). I wonder if that CD icon surrounded by a frame in the black blank space in the middle means support for album art. They’ll cover the camera interface in some Part IV.

Steve Litchfield at AllAboutSymbian had the great idea to preview the UIQ 3 interface not through another early-firmware precommercial P990, but with an UIQ 3 Software Development Kit (Beta) and its emulator, which you can download and test by yourself. Now this is a good read. We’ll like that “when you close the flip of the P990, the user interface barely changes, with on-screen furniture simply rearranging to cope with the fact that there are slightly fewer pixels”. It is mentioned that the 5-way Jog Dial was removed because “showed that almost none knew about or used this” (minority of tech freaks in SE’s smartphones target group), and in exchange we now have a “back” hardware button below the 3-way Jog Dial and another button in the screen. Don’t miss his conclussion: “So is UIQ 3 a killer interface worth changing smartphones for? Not really, most of the changes are either incremental improvements, fixes for stuff that didn’t make sense in the previous version, or UIQ playing catch-up with Nokia’s Series 60 and Series 80″. (Ouch) “Having said that, UIQ version 3 is way, way better than UIQ 2.1 and will play an important part, alongside Symbian OS 9 under the hood and the well known hardware improvements, in making the upcoming Sony Ericsson P990 a genuinely outstanding smartphone.” (Allright). [Thanks LAU and James for the tips]

Discuss this in the P990 Forum Thread

Sorry for not posting anything in the past week, I’ve been busier than SE’s lawyers in spyshot times. Let’s get back to blogging with Mobileburn’s review of the Z520, the small and light Quadband clamshell we also previewed in July. And even without the EDGE support U.S. residents miss so much, the Z520 gets another top “Mobileburn Highly Recommended” rating for Sony Ericsson:

“As far as mid-level GSM handsets go, there is nothing in my mind that tops the Z520. In fact, if it had EDGE data support, I’d have nothing to complain about at all. The Bluetooth system works well, the light effects are very cool, and it is a nice compact handset. In short, it is just great all around. With that much said, it should be no surprise that I give the Sony Ericsson Z520 a “Highly Recommended” rating. If you like Sony Ericsson phones and don’t need the memory card slot or 2 megapixel camera of the K750, this is probably your handset.”

Discuss this in the Z520 Forum Thread

Mobile-review says in Part One of their P990 review that even though they’ve been playing with prototypes for more than one year (how the heck they do it!) but the current P990 units are still under development: UIQ 3 isn’t expected to go out of this “beta” status before the end of the year, so it’s we may not see the smarpthone in the stores until March. You come to understand how worth the wait will be when in Part Two of the review you read something like “The switch from the UIQ 2.1 to the 3 version can be compared with changing Windows 3.11 for Windows 95″. If you don’t find that 100% self-explanatory, I’m sorry you missed that moment of glory in 1995, but make sure you experience the glorious P990 user interface this time, whose big deal is the spectacular possibilities of theme customization (apparently way beyond what we know) both for operators and individuals. Will we see that in Part Three, Eldar? Many of you are complaining about the Qwerty keyboard taking a lot of space in the device and not being useful for your needs at all. Well first of all I bet some of you were the ones complaining about the P900 NOT having a Qwerty keyboard, but anyway, nowadays it’s a must for a business smartphone, especially since RIM Blackberry requires one to license its technology in a device (and that was the reason for the release of the P910). The new T9 system with automatic word prediction may surprise some non-believers, though. But for the ones of us that may use the camera and the Music button way more than the keyboard in any case, Mobile-review hints at a possible variation of the P990 in 5-6 months without the Qwerty keyboard, therefore smaller and measuring about 2cm less in height. Excuse me if I can’t resist mentioning that old friend of ours: P200, are you coming? [Thanks LAU and everyone who sent the links]
Discuss this in the P990 Forum Thread