Forum > Sony Ericsson / Sony > General > 5 megapixel Sony Ericsson K850 Cyber-shot phone announced

2007-06-14 21:53

As previous more advanced camera mobiles from SE, the new K850 has both flash and AF. But now the resolution is 5 MP. The camera usage itself does not differ much, but the media viewer is clearely improved.

K850 feels fairly solid in the hand, without being clumsy. The part that makes most impression is the screen, which according to the personal at the location makes use of a new technology where the screen is placed to appear as being glued to the phone. The result is an unusually sharp picture and it realy shows when watched.

The key pad is designed in a new way where the key pad and the screen melts together so to speak. At the bottom, the screen transitions to key pad over a soft rubber edge. One simply press there at the edge to select the menu entries shown at the botton of the screen. It works realy well. Previously SE have had problem with their navigation sticks, which easly have given up and lost sensitivity. Now there is a navigation button instead, which looks like a ring around two of the number buttons. On our particular test specimen the button is a bit damaged, så it does not respond well in all directions, but as said earlier, that is specific to our specimen. However, it feels a bit unusual to have buttons that are normally used for other purpose in the middle of the navigation button. One simply wants to press them to confirm choices.

The K850 5 MP camera provides the usual functions found on previous models where the settings in the menu now also have been complement with explaining pictures. The phone also senses the direction in which the phone is hold, thust pictures are shown horizontally if the phone is hold that way and vertically if the phone is hold tha way.

With its turbo-3g, K850 is capable of fast surfing and SE has developed the RSS reader we can also find in previous models. Now one can configure for instance if one does not want to download pictures and how much of the text one wants. It is also possible to get the content directly on the start screen as a rolling ticket with current information. The blogg function is now also updated to allow send of video clipps to one's blogg via the mobile network, yet another way to make use of the turbo-3G data connection.

As a phone, the K850 feels a bit clumsy and especially the square buttons makes it feel not very well designed. To some extent this is due to functions have been given precedence over design. At the side of the phone there is now a button to switch between view, video and camera mode. It becomes more like a real camera.

On 2007-06-14 23:48:55, *Jojo* wrote:
Let's see how will this FAIR with the N95 now . . .

On 2007-06-14 23:51:25, arj2442 wrote:
Sounds to me as if, to move around menus, you have to use the green ring as you would expect, but that to confirm a choice, you DON'T actually press the buttons in the middle..i.e 2 or 5, but you use..perhaps the central soft key..directly above the ring.

Anyone else follow that too?

On 2007-06-15 00:07:21, arj2442 wrote:
Surely it is quite far to move your thumb from the bottom of the ring when scrolling down a list...to then pressing select. Could this not get annoying?

On 2007-06-14 20:35:34, jcwhite_uk wrote:
Not released until Q4 is it? Thats October at the earliest. 5MP will be old by then.

On 2007-06-14 20:33:37, Dart5 wrote:
Not really - bit disappointed, doesn't offer much more than my K800. Was hoping that after having my K800 for nearly a year something a bit more would be on offer when my contract can be upgraded.