Sony Ericsson Z1010 Review

Overall Rating

Nice keypad layout.

Big
Bulky
Camera in a terrible place
Appalling battery life

OK perhaps I ought to explain that My usual phone is the Sharp GX20, I am only using the Sony Ericsson Z1010 phone for a 3G trial for Vodafone - and am not allowed to discuss any aspect of the service from Vodafone - but they never said anything about talking about the phone.

The phone is big, about 1cm bigger than the GX20 in every dimension, and feels big in the hand, yup, it's heavy as well.
Picture quality, the phone focuses far quicker than the GX20, however the quality of the picture is noticeably worse.
The positioning of the camera on the outside of the phone (it has 2) is utterly UTTERLY terrible. It's above the battery instead of the norm by the exterior screen. This means that you can't just hold the lower half of the phone and click photos, you have to hold the bottom quarter - i.e ya gotta stretch to reach the centre key, and this is a big phone making this is a serious design flaw.
The worst feature however is the battery life, I took it off charge 20 hours ago and it is already down to 1 & 1/2 bars out of 5. This phone needs charging on a daily basis.

Good stuff - nice keypad layout. Above average features - MP3 player, Bluetooth, etc - nothing that other vastly better phones haven't already got.

Summary - I got this for free on a trial, and even at this price (with free calls and free texts - like I say I'm just testing the service) I am seriously struggling to consider it worthwhile. And I think that says it all - even free with as much free stuff as I can use it's still not worth it for this phone.

Members' Comments onCJ69's Review

• foggy on 13th Sep 2004

  Very useful review, especially on battery life, as I've just been approached by Orange and asked to trial either this handset or the LGU 8150 on their new 3G service.
  
  It's criminal that phone manufacturers are bringing phones to market that have this sort of appalling battery life - my girlfriend is with Three, she had an NEC e606 with such an appalling battery life (about 18 hours) that the phone came with a second battery as standard!!!
  
  Worse still, the manufacturers claim far greater battery life - Sony claim "up to" 295 HOURS for the Z1010!!!
  
  (See this link for this claim!!! http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?cc=gb&lc=en&ver= 4000&template=pp1_1_1&zone=pp&lm=pp1&pid=10048 )

• bigaudio on 14th Nov 2004

  Although I'm not interested in this phone, I fully agree with the comments made by Foggy. I had a SE P900 which Sony claimed could last 14 days on standby, I was lucky if I got 3 days.
  I think it's disgusting that phone manufacturers make these claims because one of the first things I look for when choosing a new phone, is the battery life expectancy.
  The annoying thing is, the problem can easily be remedied by simply using Lithium Polymer batteries which are proved to have the longest life of any battery out there.

• mrcivic33 on 6th Dec 2004

  I've had the z1010 switched on for the last 2 days and the battery is barely touched, battery bar is around 80% full. I have made a handful of calls (around 30mins talk time), sent a couple of messages, and played through 1 mp3 song (5 mins).

• puspuspus on 29th Nov 2005

  I guess you've just gotten a bad phone, because I have a Z1010, and I charge it once a week, max.
  Although I agree that it's a bit big, the cameras position is far better than many phones available today.