Sony Ericsson K310i review – a good phone should be inexpensiveThis middle-sized phone in classic construct left the best impressions. Yes, it’s not elite, not the cutting edge of digital technology. It’s a regular working horse – comfortable in work, trustworthy and just nice.Calm design, simple, but qualitative materials. Absolutely no caprice. And the brand – Sony Ericsson. That is a lot in itself. Serious player phones, expensive camera phones, complex smart phones – not everyone needs them. Regular phones stay the most popular, are produced in huge quantities and there to stay. Another thing is that from year to year the budget phones become more perfect, acquire many functions that used to be a privilege of middle and upper class phones. Presently, you can reveal the color screen, camera and MP3 player function in any simple phone. Sony Ericsson K310i also has everything listed above. In what form? In the most unpretentious – it just has it, period. But they are not instruments of the advertisement decorum; they are quite working instruments that widen the phone’s functionality. You don’t need an expensive camera (that’s still shoots worse than a full-fledged camera)? You don’t need a phone player (real flash players are still more compact and comfortable)? You are not chasing after the glossy plastic (that still is plastic and its price of $500 does not turn it into a diamond)? Than you should look at the inexpensive phone. This one, for example. Silvery and modest – the first encounter It’s frankly plastic, but it suits it. The mixture of light gray and painted silver (also light green on the inside, under the paint) plastic creates a feeling of lightness. I have to separately note the quality of the materials – traditionally high for Sony Ericsson phones. There is not even a hint to the abrasions of the paint, scratches or chips. The panels of my notebook, also painted with silver, lost they are market appearance a long time ago. But I am sure that K310i will look like new in a year or even two years. I am saying this from my own experience. My old and faithful Ò610 is more than two or three years old. And it looks like I just bought it. Even though, I am not that accurate and I am not especially careful with the phone. I just try not to throw it or expose this nice device to any kinds of mechanical “traumas”. So, the new phone is refined and well formed. In close encounter I liked it better than the K510i – mainly because of the lack of false rubber that I don’t like for some reason. By the way, the elite Ê800i has this “rubber” all over – the back panel, of course. And I really don’t like that. But this modest budget phone is made from simple material that is comfortable to touch, quite solid and looks quite good. In any case, it does not look like a poor relative compared to its classmates. Quite the opposite, it’s very… representational. The frame proportions are traditional for all Sony Ericsson classics. A rectangular block with splayed to the back panel; panel edges and impetuously rounded, with a back shift, upper and lower edges. It fits your hand like a glove.     A plastic “glass” that protects the screen from mechanical abrasions covers the upper phone panel. There is a narrow slit of the phone (main, not loud) speaker above the screen… And here, for the first time, I come in contact with the characteristics of an inexpensive model. The cover glass by portions of a millimeter overflows the soft keys. And that edge is sharp. And an unwitting thought appears that it really is glass, not plastic… Possible, it’s a vice of a test model. I really liked the keyboard. The soft keys of the under-the-screen block visibly stand out and they are surfaces are arched up. It is very comfortable, as you won’t make a mistake. The joystick is excellent – a cylindrical “stump” with a spherical hollow in the center. It’s really a joystick, not a conglomeration of buttons (the square framing has an exclusively decorative purpose). At that, the joystick is of an excellent quality without gaps or false starts. And the hollow in the middle does not tire the pad of the finger. A solid A. The phone buttons – end and answer – are separated into a separate block between the soft keys, joystick and main keyboard. The buttons are small than the others, but are easily found due to the big gaps. The main keyboard is located in three vertical rows with big separation lines between them. The buttons are quite large – they remind you of a W710i keyboard (that is excellent), although, visibly smaller. In short, all is good with the buttons. Only the backlight is not very good. Dim, yellowish, ugly. But it doesn’t blind you in the dark. There are no Russian letters on the buttons – as I wrote earlier it is a test version. Obviously, all serial models have bilingual keyboards. K310i model is not an exception. There is only a new generation system adapter (like in all new Sony Ericsson phones) on the lower edge. A charger, headset and other accessories – all connect to the system adapter. By the way, the connection of the charger and peripherals, in contrast to the old phones of the consortium, became surprisingly easily and comfortable. And trustworthy. My old man Ò610 constantly loses connection with the charger due to the worn-out plug (that I have to connect in eyeglasses – it’s so small). But here there are no problems whatsoever. There is a large dark cover plate with a built in device and profile switch button located on the upper frame edge of the phone. The presence of an IR port is an important characteristic. There is no Bluetooth here (although, the phone itself thinks differently – flatters itself, little dove) so the IR is an only device of wireless connection with a PC (they didn’t give me a USB cable, although, it, probably, exists). I can say with all responsibility that the K310i IR port is excellent. You can activate it for 10 minutes to transfer one or two photos and the adapter will switch off after that not to waste the battery energy. But if you have a lot of content you can just turn the port on and transfer anything you wish. The photographs transfer one by one – very comfortable. The speed isn’t great, but the connection is quite stable. And the size of the photo files is quite small – the phone has a VGA sensor so the images come out almost weightless. There are two buttons on the side edges – the shutter button of the built in camera on the left and the Internet browser start button on the right. I don’t like the last one, but you can’t do anything against progress. If there is mobile Internet than you will have those that will want to browse the Global net via phone. The battery compartment cover takes up most of the back frame part. You can remover quite easily and the fastening is not very tight. There is a lithium battery with 750 mAh volume under the cover that lasts for 6 hours in the waiting mode and for 360 hours in the waiting mode. There is also the SIM card slot below the battery – an easy fastening in the form of two metal slides. The loud speaker covered with a nylon net, camera lens set into a conic blind (very well), adapter for connecting an external antennae and a hidden loop for a neck lace (with a T-like stub, not the best, but common for SE structure) are locate under the cover… I am curious to know how would you connect an external antennae, say, in a car? First, you would have to remove the battery cover. Or… drill it?          What else? Size. The phone is small and light – 101õ44õ17 mm and weights 82 grams… I that it now? No, I have to tell you about the screen that I haven’t mentioned. And I did that on purpose. Why? Well, let me pull myself together and explain… The thing is that the phone has a color screen on the basis of a passive matrix. And that looks like a grievous saving. An active matrix became a standard even for budget models. And now this surprise – in the second half of 2006… The manufacturer names the screen with an abbreviation UBC, possibly, noting the prominent characteristics. Yes, the size is standard (1.8 inches diagonally), the resolution is normal – 128õ160 pixels, the color is good – shows 65 thousand of color shades. But how does it look in the bright sun? I’ll be cautious (as I like the phone very much). In bright sun the picture looks no better than on my veteran Sony Ericsson T610. And you cannot really see anything in the sun on my Ò610. System Usually I do not devote much attention to the program stuffing of a new phone. If you describe the system – you’ll have to describe the characteristics of the program realization of the model type of that or other manufacturer. I.e. every time write a long story about the same thing as there are not many differences in the models of different companies. Or copy a part of the previous review (as they do on other portals) and that I cannot do. I better pull myself together and write big reviews on all popular brand phones describing the program stuffing that I magnificently call “system”. I would do the same thing here – run over a few visible differences (not that many) and end the story. But I can’t. As I said there is a belief (not even a suspicion) that the test version is sewed incorrectly. And what I see on the screen might be very different than what will appear on screen of a new phone its owner… No, the differences will be minimal. But they will definitely exist. Look at the pictures of the screen. I took out the “ears” that give out an alien insertion (I suspect a W550 model).                                          Camera In front of me I have the first SE of the new generation that cannot photograph… No, the second one – the first was the W300i. Of course, you can say that I became fussy as I see a lot of expensive camera phones. But that’s not it. It’s just that I’ve seen what 1.3 and 2 mega pixel sensor Sony Ericsson phones can do (but, I’ll have to be clear that they cost twice or three times as much). Without an auto focus, with the simplest (most probably, plastic) optics, they shot so that I didn't want to take a camera into my hands. Why is that? The answer is simple – in these products the company did not make a goal to manufacture devices for serious photo work (and don’t forget about the cost of this device). As I said in the W300 review, there are specific cases for serious photo work in the model row of the company. The photos look fine on the phone screen. And the memory – the phone has 15 MB without the upgrade capability – fits a lot of images. In the camera mode, the screen shows «300+», i.e. more than 300 shots… It seems senseless to talk about settings with this kind of quality. We’ll see later when there will be a normal version from the market.        Video sample 1, 3GP, 306 KB >>> Video sample 2, 3GP, 363 KB >>> Conclusions If you think that I am disappointed with this phone, you are gravely mistaken. I see its disadvantages, but fully understand that it’s a budget model. You need a different kind of money in order to buy a photo or a player phone. That’s why I wasn’t voicing complaints. I was just notifying the new owner that he isn't going to buy something that costs three hundred dollars for just a hundred and a half. It’s just a phone with somewhat widened functionality. It has an excellent organizer, Java games and a perfect 40-part polyphony. It has everything for normal and comfortable connection. No more than that. Sony Ericsson K310i is an excellent budget model. For all those, who specifically need a phone, not an expensive multimedia computer. © Nikolay Nadezhdin, Mobiset.ru reviews Translated by Olga Mexina (info@mobiset.ru) Published — 06 march 2007 |
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