SonyEricsson K850i - good, but not perfect

Just received my new SonyEricsson K850i, which I've been waiting months to receive, and before I start my review I must confess that I am a bit of SonyEricsson fan. That's not to say I haven't tried other manufacturers, but I just find that, particularly with the K range, you just get everything on a SonyEricsson with decent battery life, whereas Nokia et al usually leave features off some phones and the battery life is woeful.

At first, the K850i looks like a slightly bloated K810i (which I also own and is a fantastic phone, arguably better than the K850i - more on that later!), but it has a few tricks up it's sleeve, some nice, some dirty.

The K850i is the first time I can remember a SonyEricsson phone not having a dedicated back button - this is now achieved using the three touch screen areas, "soft keys", at the bottom of the screen - usually the right "button". This takes a little getting used to, but you can also use the "End Call" button to the same effect.

"Ooooooooooooh - touch screen!" you say - hold on a minute! I suspect that this will be a common feature of touch screen phones, but it is particularly irritating, and that is that when you talk, unless you have the cheek bones of a bulimia ridden super model, your face is happily navigating the phone's menu system. This often results in texts being sent, usually blank, to the first contact on your contact list. A little tip here - make sure you have inclusive texts in your plan, and make the first contact (cal it AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA to make sure it's listed first) your number (It may be that if you put a bum number in you don't get charged, but I can't verify this at the moment). This little dirty trick has led me to use the included headphones when calling in private - why isn't there a setting to automatically lock the keys (excluding start and end call) when you answer or make a call? If anyone knows of a way around this, feel free to add a comment to enlighten the world.

The touch screen soft keys can also cause problems with some older apps or games, as they haven't been specifically designed to deal with these, but on the whole, the left and right soft keys are labelled, and the middle key is usually "select".

Another obvious change from the usual K range layout is the joystick. I liked the joystick, especially to play my favourite game, the tennis one. I still can't decide if I like the new arrangement, which is a raised "border" around the 2 and 5 keys, which acts like a joystick, but far less intuitively as you have to feel round the square. I would urge SonyEricsson to consider returning to the joystick for the K range as it really does make a difference - hence my plug for the K810i!

The phone has the usual, if slightly tweaked and updated, SonyEricsson interface and menu system. A nice new feature is that when you start to type a number, the phone automatically presents you with possibilities from your phone book, making dialing much quicker, and making quick dial virtually useless.

When you turn the phone on, one of the soft keys is automatically labelled "Media", and when you go into this you find a whole new experience. You're presented with a menu system that allows you to browse, manage and view/listen to photos, music and video. The media system is quite sophisticated, and makes setting up play lists and tagging items much easier than in previous versions of the K series. If you turn the phone from portrait to landscape, the screen automatically rotates, which is great when viewing pictures or videos.

HOWEVER, and it's a big HOWEVER, with previous versions of the K phone, when you were playing music you could start and pause the music player using a key on the side of the phone (usually used to take pictures) - however on the K850i this doesn't seem possible - again, if anyone knows how, let me know. This therefore requires going through the "media" soft key and a couple of clicks before you can start listening to your tunes, which is irritating, but also a little bit of a security issue as you tend to hold the phone in front of your face whilst you do this - not very safe when you're on the Tube with one of the latest phones on the market.

Listening to music is a joy, as it has been for a couple of generations of K phone - which is why I wouldn't bother with a W phone. The included headphones give a decent quality sound, also acting as the aerial if you want to listen to the radio. The included 512Mb card can hold a couple of hours of music, and I would recommend re sampling your MP3s to 96kbps as, unless your listening to classical music, you won't be able to tell much of a difference, and to me it's better to have the music available.

Now you may have noticed that the M2 memory card is not that generous, but it's fairly cheap to upgrade, with a 4Gb card costing around £35 and an 8Gb card around £60. Not bad when you compare it to the equivalent iPod or similar, especially if you get the phone for free. The memory card is tiny, and will easily be lost if you're not careful, so I would recommend getting a bigger one so you don't have to change it around.

My main reason for getting the phone is the 5 megapixel camera, which I have to say is actually quite good. I enjoy taking pictures (http://www.flickr.com/digenie) and am starting to get more into the various parameters of photography, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that the phone has a proper flash, what seems to be optical zoom as well as digital zoom, and takes quite a good picture.

This is the other reason to get a bigger memory card, as each picture at 5MP will be around 1.5Mb, so you'll soon run out of space. The phone has a dedicated button to power up the camera, as well as some of the keys becoming dedicated camera setting keys when activated. Because of this, the camera is ready to shoot in a couple of seconds, so you should be able to capture the mood or get the shot before the moment has passed.

The camera has a best picture mode, which takes 9 pictures just before (how does it know?!) and after you press the shutter, so you can choose which one to keep. This is very useful for action shots, but more useful when taking group photos, so you can choose a picture with the least shut eyes or distracted gazes. You can also tell who reacts slowest to the "Cheese!" trigger.

You can choose from a number of modes, including a panorama mode where you link a number of pictures together to create the panorama. You can usually leave the camera in Auto mode, but you may want to play with the settings if you have time, especially if the light is poor or you don't want the flash to go off, e.g. shooting through a window.

This now brings me back to the K810i - and I may very well go back to it.

The K810i is much easier to use, especially the media player if you want to use it as a Walkman, and has a decent 3MP camera. It's smaller, slimmer and easier to use, doesn't send texts when your on the phone, and has 3G for Internet browsing. If you can't afford the K850i, or you're not interested in taking photos, go for the K810i - it's a great alternative.

I think I'll stick with the K850i for now and keep taking my photos, but if the touch screen keeps irritating me and I can't find a way to easily play my music, I may resurrect my K810i.

Rating 8/10