Sony Ericsson K770i Review

Overall Rating

The Sony Ericsson K770i has great design, good useability, decent camera. Good keypad, also for larger fingers. Well balanced set of software tools for a non-smartphone. I got my K770i a few days ago, and it shows that so-called 'mid-range' phones have come a long way. I don't care a lot about mobile internet on a small screen, or about text messaging, but it seems from other reviews that this phone does that fairly well. Neither did I crave an MP3 player, but clearly this phone has good sound quality (I tried the radio, which is crystal clear over the headset). I wanted a phone with good keys that are hard to miss, good reception, handsfree (loudspeaker), modem and a decent snapshot camera. The K770i is all that. Of course the camera is not as good as a recent fullblown dedicated digicam (I have both digital compacts and a digital SLR to sompare it with), but it takes useable and, in good light, even very decent snapshots that are good enough for postcard-sized or even 13x18 cm prints, or PC screen use. And as they say: the best camera is the one you have with you. You can have a high-resolution SLR with a bag full of lenses, but if it is sitting at home while you encounter a UFO full of green men (or that funny dog sitting behind the steering wheel of its master's car), it does not help you one bit. With the K770i you will be able to take the shot. the camera also has a decent range of settings for various scene modes, resolutions and after-shot image improvement (such as contrast and brightness change, red-eye removal etc, and a handy cropping tool that alows you to zoom in on part of the photo and then save that part as a separate cropped image while keeping the original intact). It can also take panoramic shots, stitching multiple images together. All that makes it a digital camera about as good as dedicated 2 to 3 MP fixed-angle autofocus cameras used to be a few years ago (but those were three times the size of this phone and they did not make phone calls). Very acceptable.

I found that a good handful of additional software exists on the web for this phone: not just games, but also useful stuff like scientific calculators and dictionaries. You could have the Concise Oxford on this phone, right there in your pocket. Or any of a whole list of translation dictionaries. Or both...
It has a decent set of built-insoftware tools: note taker, calendar, alarm clock, stopwatch, basic calculator and so forth.
Finally, the LED flashlight/torch. I am a stickler for torches. This one is bright, will provide you with hours of light if needed (LEDs use very little power and a phone battery is relatively large), and you can even set it to flash ...---... for SOS in morse code. Handy.

My only minor gripes are the need to connect the original headset as an antenna to use the radio, and the lack of infrared. Very few phones these days have infrared, but my second-hand subnotebook computer still has it, and no built-in Bluetooth. So I'll have to buy myself a BT dongle for 15 euros. The phone came for free with a subscription renewal anyway, so a few minor investments in such accessories are acceptable.

As far as I can determine the reception is OK - we live very rural and some phones fail to connect in our home. This one usually does.

I'd say this is a good tool phone, the way the original Leatherman is the multitool everyone uses as a reference, even though far more complex and flashy varieties exist. Most people will not need more than this. This is not a toy, it's a tool. Recommended.

Members' Comments onFschwep's Review

• Fschwep on 11th Feb 2009

  Comment/addition to my own review: I have been playing with the camera of the K770i a bit now, and comparing it with a real digicam (Canon A80, 4MP, set to 2MP). It takes a while to find the best settings and the proper grip, as this phone cam is very light and thus the image easily shaken. The best image result is when you shoot in 3 MP and run the image through software on the PC (I suggest Faststone viewer) to improve colour and contrast, then reducing the size to 1200x1600 (2MP) and finally applying mild sharpening before saving it. The result comes fairly close to, though it's not quite as clean as, a 2MP shot taken by the Canon. Given the difference in lens and sensor size, that is quite a commendable result (note that neither has image stabilisation; the much larger Canon is far easier to hold steady).