Sony Ericsson F500i Review

Overall Rating

Gorgeous, big screen
Small, very light, barely noticable in your pocket
Lots of features in a great interface
Excellent java and camera performance
Very cheap, compared to the competition

Buttons a tad small
Video recording resolution is very low
Battery life ain't great (about 1 day with heavy use, 3 without)

The F500i is the Vodaphone specific version of the K500i, the only difference is some Vodafone branding and that the Vodafone Live service is pre-installed.

I had read some great things about this little phone, its gaming performance and camera quality swung the deal for me.
First thing I noticed was how amazingly small and light it is, there is a lot crammed in there. Second was how elegant and easy to use the interface is, I thought Nokia's couldn't be beat but the F500's menu system is wonderful to use, and very fast.

The 2 things that people will be after this phone for are its multimedia and gaming features:
As well as Java 2.0, this phone is one of the very few that currently features a 3D engine. It's not as powerful as the N-gage, but the included Super Real 3D tennis is a fine game to show off to your friends. New games are easily uploaded using Irda or USB, and another rare (but very useful) gaming feature this phone includes is a screen re-sizer. Choose 5 preset resolutions, or create your own, to help get the many different screen sizes games are set for working on that lovely large screen.
The joystick is also very handy too. The java benchmarking tool Jbenchmark 1.0 gives this phone a score of 3600, very impressive, especially considering that the much more expensive K700i scores less (and last years T610 gets a lowly 600). All games I've tried so far run smooth as silk.
Those after a phone that can keep boredom at bay are well served by this little fella.

Likewise, those after a cameraphone could do a lot worse. It can often be a shock for people to upload their pics to the computer and see low-quality, sub-postcard sized pics. No problem on this one, its standard resolution is an impressive 640x480, which can be interpolated to a whopping 1280x960. Indeed, the phones screen gives only a clue as to what your pics look like when back on your comp. Its no substitute for a real digicam (or the new megapixel phones), but it's absolutely perfect for casual snapping. Like other phones, its best to have a lot of light though, as the pics can appear noisy on some indoor shots, though leaving the phone to look at the subject for about 10 seconds, and so adjust its exposure levels, can help.
Videos though, can only be taken at 176x144, which is not very good. The frame rate is decent though (again, better than its more expensive brother the K700), and it could find some use for those who just want a quick recording of unimportant things.

The phones other features are mostly standard, calendars, task reminders, sound recorder (can use anything as a ringtone), midi & poly ringtones, WAP and HTML browsing, email, MP3 ringtones and playback.....
Ah, MP3's, currently the new hot topic for phones.
If you want to play MP3's, buy an MP3 player. Lots of phone shops are trying to sell you phones based on MP3's, what they never tell you is how much memory they wolf.
With the nice, but not amazing, quality of this phones external speaker you may as well convert your MP3's to 64kbps, that way they will only take about 1.5 to 2 megabytes each. But you still won't get many on the phones 12 megs of memory.

As long as you don't fill it with MP3's the phones memory is generous, especially as its compression systems used are so good. I've packed it with 25 games, some music videos, lots of sound snippets (my ringtone is the car alarm from Phoenix Nights ;-) and tons of pictures and applications, yet I still have 7 megs left (enough for over 300 camera pics at standard res). Great stuff. The phone's filing system is wonderful too, everything taken or transferred gets automatically stored in the right folder, accessible within seconds.

I've waffled on enough, needless to say I'm glad I chose this phone over the Motorola I had my eye on. You can currently get this phone on Virgin (and from Amazon) for £109, an amazing price for such a neat little gadget. It had sold out everywhere when I went looking, so settled for paying £150 for it from Woolworths (with "free" CD Walkman, which I needed). Still worth the money.

Members' Comments onkrik81's Review

• PCthug on 2nd Nov 2004

  You stated that the phone can use MP3s as ring tones. I spoke to a Vodafone shop sales man, who stated that their version of the phone won't allow this, and they have also changed the lovely 3d icons to vodafones own 2d ones. Is this correct?
  
  MATT

• krik81 on 4th Nov 2004

  I don't know what he's on about, the phone can use MP3 ringtones, as well as MIDI, self-recorded AMR, and super-small IMY formats. It even comes with a bunch pre-installed, and I've used many in the month I've had it.
  
  He's sort of right about the default ugly Vodafone theme, but it was quickly changed (in the My Items->Themes folder) to the lovely Spinler theme, or Floom for the girls. Many more downloadable from the Ericsson site or using Vodaphone live itself.

• lewigy on 16th Nov 2004

  I'm hooked on buying a F500i BUT my missus hates its colour scheme, she's insisting I buy her the K500i !!!!! So I've looked into it and found out its £50 more to buy sim free and will allow a Vodaphone simcard..... but I'm frightend my F500 or her K500 will differ badly one or the other will be better or have a special function that will make the other seem rubbish..... do you know of any major difference's?

• krik81 on 20th Nov 2004

  I checked all six mobile shops in my area (liverpool) before buying the F500, both it and the K500 (on various operators)were roughly the same price, even in the vodafone shop. Though it may have been too new at the time to be subject to operator subsidising. Sim-free ones will ALWAYS be more expensive. £50 is a good saving, I'd get that if I were you. I've had no probs with Vodafone so far, and I'm paying a LOT less that I was with my old Orange network phone (mobile to mobile calls are cheaper for one). The reception wizzes all over my mates rubbish 3G phone too, that network is plauged with problems.
  
  As for differences, there's the case branding: a small Vodafone logo on the bottom of the phone, typical of almost every phone. The case is also coloured with a blue edge and light blue buttons. Personally, I think it looks better than the plain k500.
  The menu's icons are not as nice as the k500's, but the 3 other themes that come on the phone are very nice.
  The only other difference is something mentioned in the previous comment. I've found out that vodafone do lock out using MP3's as ringtones. This was never a problem for me as it's far quicker and easier to use the phones soundrecorder and sample sounds yourself. Apparently vodafone are going to remove such a pointless restriction in the next firmware release, maybe they already have.
  There are ways round it, detailed here: http://www.esato.com/board/viewtopic.php?topic=70829#post932695
  
  Like I said though, I can't see the point of using MP3's as ringtones. You'd have to first edit the file in a waveform editor (no point wasting several megabytes of memory on a ringtone you only hear for a few seconds), then there's the transferring.
  Why bother when it takes 2 seconds to select "record sound" and hold the phone next to the speaker when the bit of the song you want is on.
  Anyway, enough waffle. £50 extra just for a plain colour scheme and slightly nicer menu screen is hardly a bargain, especially when you'll want to put it in a case/cover anyway to protect its lovely screen from getting scratched by coins/keys and other pocket debris.

• krik81 on 20th Nov 2004

  I forgot to mention, you CAN use MP3's as ringtones if they have DRM (copyright code) attached, like the ones that you can order from vodafone live, or those awful adverts that plague the music channels. You can attach DRM to any MP3 you want fairly easily, details on that link above.

• lewigy on 1st Dec 2004

  The k500i is now £99 (on pay as you go ORANGE) in a shop called "the link" these shops are everywhere in north wales so I presume there UK wide. Orange is a sound network and I've never ever had any problems with them. I'd like to point out two key fetures that sell Orange to me:- 1) If your phone has no signal or is turned off, you will get a text message when its back on stating which phone numbers called you 2) If you do loose your signal mid-call (which I've not done so far!!!) if you re-dail that number straight away you will get a free 1 minute!! Also I find orange reliable and has a good signal all the time.