Turning the phone on for the first time impressed me more than the look of the body. I was greeted with the Setup Wizard which smoothly helped me set up the date, time, and contacts in my phonebook
(by copying from SIM) and also giving me tips on how to navigate using the buttons. The user interface (such as menus and icons) is extremely vibrant with animations and pop-up menu icons that seem to lift up off the screen into your face.
The K500i, aimed at the younger generation, is packed full of not only useful but fun features. Two things I test straight away with any mobile is the quality of pictures taken with the camera and ring tones.
Camera
There is a protective cover (which I keep forgetting to slide open, duh) which covers the camera lens; there is also a mirror for you to take self-portraits (which, by the way I don’t use often?). One thing that put me off instantly was the shutter sound (the noise which sounds when a picture is taken). I have noticed that most, if not all Sony Ericsson’s don’t allow you to turn off this sound. If you’ve heard the shutter sound on Nokia’s, the sound made on this phone is completely different (it doesn’t sound soft, or normal!). It’s more like the sound of two really sharp blades scratching each other. What’s worse, there is no way of turning off the sound (even when putting the phone on silent). It is impossible to take photos without everyone knowing. But I have since gotten used to the shutter sound (and not being able to secretly take pictures of my friends!). There are four picture sizes to choose from:
* Large (640x480)
* Medium (320x240)
* Small (160x120)
* Extended (1280x960)
This handset also has a four times zoom and a brightness adjustor. The pictures that I took I thought came out really well and were very impressive.
In the manual, it says that to get the best photo pictures should be taken in ’Extended’ mode. I find this to be false; pictures taken in this mode appear grainy because the image is bigger (almost as if it were a 640x480 picture stretched to create a 1280x960 sized picture). Photos appear best when taken in large size.
There are also a number of effects to choose from (Black and White, Negative, Sepia and Solarize). There’s also frames you can choose to take pictures with, for example you can take a picture of your friends head on a baby’s body. Effects can be used in video mode as well.
Videos
Depending on the current conditions videos are captured on (bright/dark lighting for instance) sizes of a video for 1min of recording can vary from 500kb to 900kb. Quality of videos come out pretty good for a mobile phone (compared to the Nokia 6230, videos taken with the K500i are better, partly because of the bigger screen). You can select from a Large or Small video size (large takes up more space). You can also set the size limit of the video, unlimited/limited. It is best to choose limited when recording a video to send to another phone via MMS. Sounds within a video are good, but the phone picks up closer sounds better than sounds in the background.
For both still picture and video capturing modes, there is a Night Mode function. However, with the poor quality of images taken in dark lighting conditions you would have though night mode would compensate for it. It actually makes the quality worse, making the picture fuzzy and grainy.
Ringtones
The clarity of tones is exceptional, including the loudness (seriously, don’t put the phone up to your ear when it’s ringing, ouch). This goes the same for midi/wav tones. I am extremely pleased with the quality of the tones on the K500i. But it would have been nice to be able to use your own sound file for a message alert, you can only choose from seven of the Sony Ericsson alerts (good job they all sound good!).
Display
Phonebook
It’s important to have a phonebook which not only lets the user enter in contacts with ease, but view contacts with ease as well. The phonebook is the best I’ve used so far, for each contact you can easily enter in details such as their name, several numbers (fax, home, work, mobile etc), e-mail, house address and notes. You can also assign a picture (which appears when calling the contact/receiving a call from that contact) or a ring tone. One problem is that you can only assign ring tones to a limited amount of contacts which can be off putting. Nor can you assign tones to specific groups. The group function in the phonebook is there to make it easier for you to send messages to multiple persons (for instance you might send a party invitation SMS to your contacts under the group name Mates), unlike Nokia phones, where groups are used to identify contacts.
Voice Control
There are a number of things you can use voice control for:
* To activate voice control (using a Magic Word)
* To dial a number
* To answer/reject calls
3D Java Games
This is the first phone I’ve played on which has 3D Java Games. The K500i uses Mascot Capsule 3D, graphics produced on the Super Real Tennis by Sega are pretty good (of course not as good as graphics produced on a Nintendo GBA!). The game is real good as well. There’s a two other games preloaded, Darts and a Fighting game. There aren’t any Applications on the phone, but there is a folder for you to download and install them for use.
And one thing that I hate most in this phone is its range!!! Sometimes when I put it pocket and take out after some time it shows Emergency Sev. !!!! crap!! hats the single thing I hate in this phone. Can’t trust the signal quality. Another thing, is it hangs when opening camera pics folder. Not a serious problem, yet an annoying one!
So my advice : Buy it, if u live in city perimeter where there is no signal problem.. :)