Sony Ericsson S700i Review

Overall Rating

Some good features
Stylish
Usually good camera
MP3 player works well
Messaging is easy

Unreliable
Bulky
Expensive
Extremely poor on vodafone
Photos are poor without excellent light
External memory limited to 128MB
Text capacity is embarrassing

I bought the Sony Ericsson s700i from Vodafone some time in October '04. I couldn't wait to use it as I had read so much about it and knew it had good features.

My anticipation and excitement was shortly lived as just after a month i had taken the phone back to Vodafone because it would no longer turn on. After a long three weeks of waiting (luckily I still had a sharp gx20) I received a brand new model of the s700i.

At first I thought the world of it; the 1.3 megapixel camera is great during the day to capture high quality moments. The MP3 player proved vital for journeys and general moments of boredom.

However, once again the phone did not last very long before it again became heavily faulty; messages would not receive on time, phone calls would cause it to freeze, songs failed to play often and the list went on. I again sent it back for repair but this time i had no sharp gx20 and so I was given a down market Sagem phone.

More then 6 weeks past and I finally received my phone back; it has been reformatted and the software was reloaded. For about a month it was perfect and I couldn't complain. My friends were envious of my sleek and cool phone, I found out how to use songs as ringtones and everything about it seemed right.

But of course less than another month after I got it back, it gradually became faulty. It's now full of faults just like before and I cannot be bothered to take it for repair because of the every lasting cycle.

It has good features when they work, the camera is great during the day but at night it's terrible and the light does nothing. MP3's work fine and with the headphones they are one of the few aspects of this phone worth the money. Battery life is poor, expect to charge at least once a day to keep this phone going. Add-ons are limited and accessories are expensive, this leaves few modifications for the phone.

This is a phone that I heartily do not recommend, it's great on paper but in reality it fails to meet the standard. If I have received so many faults and problems from new models of this phone as well, it's likely you will suffer the same.