Sony Ericsson K700 reviewMay 12, 2004
The camera resolution is expanded up to VGA quality. That means you can capture still pictures up to 640 x 480 pixels in size (0.3 Megapixels). It's still no substitute for your old digital camera but the quality of the relatively small pictures has improved. See example of the three different resolutions here. Sony Ericsson S700 will in comparison be shipped with a 1.3 Megapixels camera. The main attraction about the camera is that it also can record video clips. The default settings are to limit the recording time to 10 seconds. These small clips can be sent by MMS. But you are not limited by the 10 seconds. Just change the settings to "unlimited" and the only limitation is the storage space left of the initially 32 MB free memory. My example clip (requires Quicktime 3GPP) is recorded in 176x144 resolution and occupies 145Kb. It is 16 seconds long and with recordings under similar conditions you could take a 58-minute short movie, even longer with a 128x96 pixels recording. Several filters are available to the photographer. Some useful and some for show-offs. A new application called Media Player is the starting point that provides easy access to stored and streaming video clips plus audio files. Sony Ericsson K700 can be used as a MP3 player, but the 32MB limits the number of songs you can bring with you. Too bad it is impossible to expand the memory. File types supported by the Media Player are AAC, MP3, WAV, AMR, MIDI (Polyphonic) and the MPEG-4 video format. From the Equalizer sub-menu, a couple of pre-set and adjustable elements can change Running Java applications feels much smoother than before. More processing power has been dedicated to the games and a new Java 3D engine also improves the experience. The K700 support J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition). Like most new Sony Ericsson phone models the K700 also support themes. Themes can be downloaded from several sites including Esato, and by changing theme the K700 will get a completely new look. Background images, text colours and text background colours, default ring signal plus more than dozens of other colours and images are changeable. The creation of themes is not done within the phone, but must be created using freely available Windows applications like the Sony Ericsson Themes Creator. Sony Ericsson K700 has applications to handle a large number of files types. To manage these files the File Manager application comes handy. The File Manager has 6 root folders in where you can store sub-folders. These are Pictures, Sounds, Videos, Themes, Games & More and Other. All image file types received via MMS, Bluetooth, infrared, downloaded from WAP or taken with the camera are automatically saved in the Pictures-folder. It is not possible to save images to one of the other folders. All recognized file types are stored in their designated folder. If you receive a file with an unknown file extension, the file is placed in the Other-folder. The File Manager let you mark, move, rename, copy and delete files one by one, or several files at the same time. Operations to multiple files are possible because you can mark the files one by one before selecting an action to perform. Music DJ is an application for composing your own polyphonic ringtones. The application first appeared in the T610 so many readers will be familiar it. You create a melody by inserting segments of music into a blocks displayed in horizontal rows for each instrument. The available segments are divided into four parts of a song: Intro, Verse, Chorus and Break. When you play the melody, the blocks containing music in each vertical column will be played at the same time. Example tone Since the test unit was a prototype, I did not have access to bundled software or user manual. There were also two cool features found in the K700 that I did not manage to test: Remote Screen application where images or sound can be sent via Bluetooth to a Bluetooth Media Viewer MMV-100 allowing you to view or listen to captured images or sound on a TV. The other application is the Remote Display. This is an application where you can use the K700 as a remote control for your computer. Get your PowerPoint presentation started, and slide through it with your K700. Remote controlling a PC or Mac have been possible before on older models, but then only with third party applications like Christersson's PcControl or Salling Clicker for Mac. This is the first time Sony Ericsson includes such type of software with a phone. Sony Ericsson does also include a couple of other useful applications in the K700 phone kit. Sony Ericsson Video Editor software for editing of video clips, in addition Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 Starter Edition for image editing.
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