Sony Ericsson K850i
£0.00
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The Sony Ericsson K850i is the current flagship in the Cyber-Shot range of mobile phones offering a respectable resolution of 5MP. While there have been other phones with equal resolution, this is the first that really balances being a phone and a camera, and offers not only AF and an image stabiliser, but also a powerful Xenon flash and Photo Fix too.
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Sony’s Ericsson K850i has 40MB of internal memory and comes with a 512MB M2 Memory Stick. It also accepts Micro SD cards (about half the price of the M2 sticks). There’s a full range of the standard options including ISO settings (choose from Auto, 100, 200, 400), white balance options, metering and seven scene modes. There’s a self-timer too, plus an optional tripod kit for better self-portraits.
The majority of buttons are incredibly tiny but spaced out well enough to allow even the most podgy-fingered user to operate them. Sadly the other, touch-sensitive, controls were all too easy to activate which was not reassuring.
The camera element of the phone is laid out more like a camera than previous phones, with a separate button to activate the camera and a slider to choose between camera, video and playback mode. There’s a digital zoom function best left for zooming into the image in playback mode and a built-in lightmeter that’s all too easily covered with your finger with disastrous results.
In camera mode, the 3, 6, 9 and # keys double as shortcut buttons and even light up so you can clearly see them. The camera does have an active lens cover, although curiously has an extra lens in front of it which (again) must be kept clean and free from scratches.
AF is fairly reliable – assuming you aren’t trying to focus on a landscape in the dark. Previous camera phones have suffered from freezing for several seconds while they record the image but the K850i is ready to shoot in around three seconds. With BestPic technology, the K850i takes nine pictures in a row and lets you choose the one you want.
Expect great results from the lower two ISO settings, but a drop in colour saturation at ISO 400. There’s a good level of sharpness and shots are usually well-exposed. At best, the results make okay A4 prints but are more than suitable at 6x4in up to 6x8in.
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I've had this phone since UK launch and had intended for it to replace my compact (Fuji F31d), It didn't!
Without being too negative I have been trying to get a new phone since as is such a buggy and underachieving piece of kit.
The menu system crashes regularly (after several software updates) and the phone soon begins to break into pieces (so far I have cracked the menu button and had a piece fall off) bearing in mind that I have yet to drop it I find that this build quality is unbelievable.
The buttons are tiny and I disagree there is enough space finding myself spending minutes instead o seconds creating text messages, however this may be a pro for the phone as I now send less text messages!
The camera is where it fails considerably, and it appears that adding a camera to a phone is not quite there yet, the camera uses an light sensor to meter however instead of it being inside the workings of the sensor its on the front of the camera so that you cannot hold it stable in the way you would want to (ironically they include a leaflet to explain this). Night shots are then out of the question as they result in camera shake no matter how steady the hand.
I am a fan of mobile technology and a young guy of 25 however I feel that the k850i specs are better on paper than in the real world.
Stu
(Written by: djh2k)
06 February 2008 09:52