You might remember the Sony Ericsson T707 as the clamshell phone that debuted in the hands of Maria Sharapova not too long ago. Clad in glossy, eye-catching colors, it's easily one of the most visually appealing handsets available today.
Looks aren't everything for the T707, but that may certainly be its most compelling feature. With a decidedly sexy design and plenty of attractive touches, it's the kind of phone you can't help but be drawn to, as soon as you set your gaze upon it. Once you turn the handset on, the external shell becomes even more lovely, with the outer panel glowing and pulsating to alert you of a message or a missed call.
Build of the entire phone is very sturdy, from the outer chassis to the inside panels to the top-mounted hinge. It sports a well-designed T9-style keypad that delivers good typing experience. Display is a 2.2-inch LCD, with bright colors and sharp details.
As a phone, the T707 offers good calls and a wide range of messaging support. Performance is just about what you'd expect from standard Sony Ericsson phones, making it a largely predictable experience. One of the company's trademark activities, as of late, has been to bundle its releases with apps of all sorts, and this phone is no different. It comes with custom-made versions of popular services like Google Maps, YouTube and Facebook, among many other third-party offerings.
On the features end, the T707 bundles a good set. It offers gesture controls, HSDPA connectivity, stereo Bluetooth, a 3.2 megapixel camera and music playback. Web browsing is fast, though, the screen is really too small to be all that enjoyable. Camera comes with a good range of features, although photo quality is decidedly average. For the music player, it supports both MP3 and AAC files, and offers above-average audio quality. This is dampened a bit by the use of a proprietary headset jack, forcing you to use the unappetizing set of earphones bundled with the phone.
Overall, the Sony Ericsson T707 is a fashion phone. It looks good and packs in a decent feature set, but isn't all that useful if you want to squeeze as much as you can out of your handset. At its price (we've seen it sell between $250 to $350, as of now), it sounds like it can carry its own weight, making it a good purchase, provided that a "hot, sexy phone" is at the top of your priority list.
Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson T707 Boasts Fashion-Friendly Looks, Decent Featuresunratednoel2009-07-30 10:11:10
Phone ReviewsSony Ericsson T707 Boasts Fashion-Friendly Looks, Decent Features
We rarely get to see smartphones sporting a clamshell form factor, with the design cue typically reserved for lower-end devices with more basic features. It's that reason why a handset like the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8230 feels relevant - it offers something different for those whose tastes might not exactly be the norm.
Since RIM decided to keep it within a reasonable size for a flip phone, the 8230 isn't able to fit in a full-size QWERTY keyboard. Instead, it uses a SureType entry panel, which allows for semi-QWERTY typing, with two characters assigned for each key. Like we said about the Samsung SGH T349, the partial QWERTY takes a bit of getting used to, although it does allow for some pretty fast texting once you get the hang of the layout.
Physically, I find the Pearl Flip to be one of the sexier clamshell phones around. While it does come in a little bulky, the entry-level smartphone talents more than make up for it.
As a phone, it offers great voice calls, with loud volume and zero interference the whole time we tried it. Speakerphone was similarly pleasant. It fits in all basic phone features you can expect from a modern handset, along with Blackberry's signature range of messaging capabilities. Like other RIM devices, it supports SMS, MMS, IM and multiple email accounts of pretty much any configuration you can ask for.
On the features end, the phone comes with an onboard music player (great quality), a 2.0 megapixel camera (average stills, with some amount of shutter lag), aGPS and a full HTML browser. It supports 3G connectivity, although does without Wi-Fi, which is sort of Blackberry's perennial Achilles Heel.
It comes with a great set of bundled apps that include various social networking tools, Documents To Go, five IM clients and Visual Voice Mail. There's also support for the Blackberry App World, which allows it download access to more apps that are compatible with the phone. Despite the broadband capability, it doesn't seem to support music and video streaming services (at least, with Verizon).
Overall, the BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8230 is a good-looking option for first-time smartphone users. It's not the most feature-rich handset available, but it's priced very competitively and fits in, pretty much, every business talent you can find in other Blackberry phones.
Photo Credit: Into Mobile
BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8230 Offers An Excellent Entry-Level Smartphone Experienceunratednoel2009-07-25 20:45:14
Phone ReviewsBlackBerry Pearl Flip 8230 Offers An Excellent Entry-Level Smartphone Experience
The Walkman-branded Sony Ericsson W518a, as expected, boasts highly-capable music talents. While that may be enough to offer a compelling choice for those in search of a media-centered device, it also fits in a strong range of features, including unconventional controls, a good set of third-party apps and broadband support.
Music quality is the high point of any Walkman handset and the W518a is no exception, pumping great-sounding tunes into your connected headphones. It offers the usual assortment of features, including playlists, album art, an equalizer, stereo widening and an airplane mode. Apart from the media player, it comes with an FM tuner and a pre-loaded XM Radio app.
The phone fits in an accelerometer, which allows it to change orientation when you rotate the handset as well as recognize movement. As such, the music player can be controlled by merely shaking the phone, with predefined actions corresponding to particular commands. It's a weird way to handle the phone, but it works and is actually very useful.
It comes in an attractively-styled clamshell form factor, with the outer panel decked with three touch controls, a small monochrome display and the camera lens. The finish isn't as shiny as some of the company's other handsets, making it less prone to smudges and dirt.
As a phone, the W518a offers average quality, with some fuzziness in the overall sound. It fits in the usual set of messaging features, along with IM and POP-3 email. Other standard phone features include voice recording, voice commands, USB mass storage and stereo Bluetooth. It also comes with an onboard GPS antenna and a wide array of third-party apps (YellowPages Mobile, Facebook, JuiceCaster and many more).
Display panel is a 2.25-inch screen, with 320 x 240 resolution that comes with vibrant colors, great brightness and sharp details. The phone controls, unfortunately, prioritize style over substance, making navigation tricky at times. Keypad doesn't offer the best use and is difficult to manage for rapid texting.
Camera module is a 3.2 megapixel set that produces considerably good image quality, despite the fact that this isn't a Cyber-shot phone. There are plenty of settings to play around with, including multi-shot and panoramic modes.
Overall, the Sony Ericsson W518a is a music phone that offers a lot more than great tunes. While the navigation controls and keypad will likely take some getting used to, the feature set is more than enough to make learning it worth your while.
Sony Ericsson W518a Brings Great Music Talents With A Nice Set Of Supporting Featuresunratednoel2009-07-23 15:20:37
Phone ReviewsSony Ericsson W518a Brings Great Music Talents With A Nice Set Of Supporting Features
Big fonts and big keys - that's the trademark put forward by the LG KF300, a clamshell handset that's sure to find fans among those who find today's ever-shrinking phones a bit too hard to handle. It may not be the sleekest phone around, but it more than makes up by relieving both your eyes and your fingers of the strain many handsets end up putting you through.
A thin and light phone, the KF300 sports a conservative design. Outside is a small display panel that shows the time in big, bold fonts, fronting a largely shiny plastic panel that surprisingly feels very sturdy. Flipped open, it turns up a larger LCD with average display quality, which uses predominantly enormous fonts (a good thing), interspersed with a few small ones (e.g. icon labels). The large menu fonts are adjustable, too, so you can reduce them a bit if you find the size a little too distracting.
All buttons and keys on the inside panel are considerably bigger than similar sets for most phones. The T9-compatible keypad, for instance, has the numbers written in a font size about twice of what most regular handsets feature. I've totally forgotten how good it was to type on a large phone keyboard (I used to own a flip Nokia with keys just a tad smaller than these) and the KF300 reminded me about it nicely.
Voice calls are very good, with clear and natural sound on both ends of the reception. SMS, MMS and email are relatively straightforward, along with the rest of the standard phone features.
It ships with a 2.0 megapixel camera module, which comes with a good UI but slightly below-average quality images. Many shots appear washed out and noisy, even in well-lit outdoor settings. It also manages to shoot some low-quality videos. Other additional features include a basic media player, microSD expansion and a proprietary headphone jack, although LG is nice enough to bundle a free 3.5 mm adaptor for those of us who'd rather use our own buds.
Strangely enough, I loved the ease-of-use facilitated by the LG KF300, with its large fonts, keys and buttons. If I was asked to choose a basic handset today strictly for text and calls, this will probably be one of my top three choices, even with the lack of extra niceties.
LG KF300 Touts Large Fonts And Large Keys For Less-Savvy Phone Usersunratednoel2009-07-20 23:10:19
Phone ReviewsLG KF300 Touts Large Fonts And Large Keys For Less-Savvy Phone Users
Even with souped-up feature phones and smartphones dominating the market, basic handsets like the Samsung Smooth continue to have their place among consumers. In fact, the Smooth isn't as devoid of niceties as it might appear at first glance, offering a few decent features to go with its inexpensive price.
Physically, the Smooth offers a very unexciting design, pretty much taking on the most generic idea for a clamshell form factor that you can imagine. It's small, compact and actually feels good on the hand. While the very small 1.9-inch LCD doesn't offer much in terms of screen real estate, it does get the job done. Overall navigation and control is very good, with soft buttons and a speedy interface.
On the features end, the Samsung Smooth comes with a few extras that make it a bit more attractive than your typical entry-level rig. It comes with Bluetooth, voice dialing, speakerphone and a VGA camera (comes with a night mode and a self-timer). A full-featured onboard GPS is also included, although it requires additional data charges to make use of Verizon's Navigator service. Messaging options include SMS, MMS, email and "chat". That last one, by the way, just takes you to a web browser after selecting from a number of available social networking apps, instead of an actual IM interface.
Calls are good, although occasional garbled transmissions on both ends of the conversation seem to occur sporadically. The speakerphone was also surprisingly capable, despite some noticeable echo.
Overall, the Samsung Smooth is a good entry-level handset if you're fine with the lack of premium features on a phone. It's probably even better as a backup phone, due to its considerably small frame and largely reliable operating capabilities.
Samsung Smoothunratednoel2009-07-04 11:13:36
Phone ReviewsSamsung Smooth
