Sony Ericsson S500i Review

Permalink: Sony Ericsson S500i Review by Franz Bicar

Sony Ericsson has been a popular phone for a very long time. One thing that attributes to this is the elegant and beautiful designs they have on their phones. The S500i is another testament to this fact. Its sleek and sexy slider design sports a unique aesthetic that makes it look like it belongs in a high-end boutique rather than a cell phone store.

Its features include basic Sony Ericsson capabilities, namely a built-in mp3 player, a stereo Bluetooth, a 2.0-megapixel camera, a wireless Web browser, e-mail, and more.

As mentioned, the S500i has a sleek and sylish design with a classy and sophisticated appearance. But its not just its design that makes it so attractive. The phones size makes it very appealing. It measures at only 3.9 inches by 1.8 inches by 0.5 inch and weighing about 3.3 ounces.

The phone features a 2-inch diagonal display and is capable of displaying 262,000 colors. It has a 240×320 pixel resolution with colors that is brilliant and screen and images that is amazingly beautiful. Underneath the display is the navigation array, which consists of two skinny soft keys, a circular toggle with a central OK key, a Back key, a Clear key, a dedicated Web-access key, plus a key dedicated to opening a My Shortcuts menu. The circular toggle also doubles as four user-defined shortcuts.

Its design is not the only thing that’s appealing with the S500i. Its features, however basic they are, is still not just something you can ignore. The S500i comes with a generous 1,000-entry phone book with room in each entry for five phone numbers, e-mail and Web addresses, notes, and more. You can save the contacts to the caller group of your choice, and pair them with a photo for caller ID as well as one of 11 polyphonic ringtones.

Other essentials include a vibrate mode, a voice memo recorder, text and multimedia messaging, an alarm clock, a calendar, a task list, a notepad, a timer, a speakerphone, a stopwatch, and a calculator. On the higher end, the S500i also comes with a wireless Web browser, an RSS feed reader, stereo Bluetooth, PC Syncing, and USB mass storage mode.

As mentioned, the S500i has a built-in mp3 player which surprisingly produces very good quality audio. Settings include an equalizer, playlists, stereo widening, and shuffle and loop modes. There’s also a flight mode so you can listen to your songs while on an aircraft. You can even send the song to someone else via a picture message, an e-mail, or via Bluetooth. The music player supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, and eAAC+ file formats.

The S500i comes with a good 2-megapixel camera. Camera options include three sizes, two picture quality settings, white balance adjustments, color effects, four different shooting modes (Normal, Panorama, Frames, Burst), a night mode, a self-timer, plus the choice of four shutter sounds (no silent option).

There’s also a built-in camcorder, which records clips with sound and has about the same settings as the still camera. Photo quality is very good, with sharp edges and clear colors.

The Sony Ericsson S500i has a rated battery life of 9 hours talk time and 15.4 days standby time.

Sources:
http://www.youtube.com
http://www.gsmarena.com
http://www.yourmobilephonereviews.co.uk