The Sony Ericsson K660 is a stylish web phone targeted at the youth.
K660 impresses with speedy internet connection possibilities, a bold
design and choice of colour, as well an attractive price tag. This is a
traditional Sony Ericsson phone - which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Official product pictures of the Sony Ericsson K660
Advantages
Cool front design and bold choice of colour combinations
HSDPA support (3.6 Mpbs) as well as quad-band GSM with EDGE
Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
FM radio with RDS support
Positioning services with Google Maps pre-loaded
NetFront 3.4 with enhanced functionality; cursor and full page view zoom
Very affordable
Disadvantages
Small display for web browsing
Camera is not suitable for prints
Creaking soft keys
The front & backside are fingerprint magnets
The backside feels a bit cheap
The K660 looks like a traditional Sony Ericsson phone, even though
it’s a bit wider than most Sony Ericsson phones. Apart from that, there
is also the question whether or not the bold colour combination is
suitable for a “traditional Sony Ericsson phone”. Sony Ericsson’s
colour combinations are becoming more and more untraditional compared
to what they were a few years ago. Being that this is the case, I’d say
that the colour combination on K660 is on the edge of being
traditional. The K660 has no direct predecessors, but has a large
resemblance with the newly announced G502 & Z770.
The K660 sales package is a tiny box, and it’s amazing how Sony
Ericsson managed to get the bundled accessories in it. It was
definitely almost impossible for me to get it all back in. Along with
the K660 comes a 256 MB M2 memory card, a HPM-62 stereo headset, a
USB-cable, a charger and the mandatory load of manuals and of course
the applications CD.
It’s bold and cheerful
The K660 is a stylish candy bar phone with rounded edges and a
glossy front. The sharp 2-inch large TFT display is capable of showing
up to 262.144 colours, and is semi-visible in direct sunlight. Indoors,
colours are very nicely saturated and the display is very bright. The
K660 is marketed as being a web phone, so I definitely wouldn’t mind a
larger display.
The K660 keypad consists of 12 alphanumeric circle keys that are
quite comfortable to press. The keys are nicely spaced, so I didn’t
have any problems using it. The soft keys and option keys, however, are
placed a bit too close to each other, and they’re quite creaky. The
four alphanumeric keys on the right also light up and double as short
cuts in the web browser, which is quite nice.
K660 measures 104 x 47 x 15 millimetres, and tips the scales at
about 95 grams. It’s actually feels a bit lighter than what I’d
expected. Its size is acceptable, and it fit my pockets perfectly. The
K660 is available in four colour variants; Cyan on Black, Lime on
White, Silver on Black & Wine on Black (this is the colour of the review unit). I personally like the Lime on White & Silver on Black variants.
The backside of the K660 is quite plain. The background material is
matt plastic, which feels surprisingly good, although it’s a
fingerprint magnet. The 2 mega pixel camera is on the backside, and so
is the mediocre loud speaker.
The left side of the phones holds the Memory Stick Micro slot, and
nothing else, while the right side plays host to the camera shutter key
and volume keys. The sides are of the same material as the back, which
gives you a good grip of the phone.
On the top of the phone you’ll find the power button, while the Fast
Port connector, microphone and a lanyard eyelet are at the bottom of
the phone.
The battery is a BST-38 battery that should last up to 330 hours in
standby mode or up to 9 hours of talk on a GSM network, or about half
of that on a 3G network. The battery in the phone lasted for about 4
days of normal use, which is acceptable.
Beautiful themes!
The K660 is one of the first cheaper
phones to make use of the A2 software platform by Enea. The A2 platform
is quite snappy, it looks great and it adds lots of functionality to
the phone.
The K660 comes with 5 pre-installed
themes, and they are honestly some of the most beautiful ones I’ve ever
seen. The creators really did a nice job there. The themes are;
Amethyst, Clarity, Connectoid, Digitize & Gossamer. My personal
favourite was definitely Digitize, and then Connectoid, but the others
aren’t bad at all either.
Three of the themes substitute the
standard menu with a new one in Flash, each specifically created for
that certain theme. All menu layouts are based on a 3 x 4 grid of icons.
The user interface is quite user friendly,
and most people will get the hang of the system within a very short
period of time. The three soft keys are used for various actions on the
phone. The soft keys, however, are no more used for calls, as two new
dedicated call keys have been added in the A2 software infrastructure.
The activity menu is still present, and
it’s a brilliant feature of Sony Ericsson’s feature phones. It’s
basically a pop-up window with various event informations, i.e.
messages, missed calls & alarms, handling of running applications
& games, application shortcuts as well as Internet bookmarks and
Google search features. All of that is located in a single menu, you
can reach by pressing a key on the phone.
The K660 is no different than any other
A2-powered phones when it comes to default applications and software
features. It delivers the same amount of high quality applications,
such as Location Services (with Google Maps), Media application,
calendar, alarms, advanced file manager, remote synchronization
(Exchange ActiveSync), and so on. I’d suggest you to read about this in
my W890 review or check out the screenshots below.
It’s a snap’n’share!
Let’s face it - the K660 camera is far
from the best we’ve seen from Sony Ericsson. It’s a mediocre 2 mega
pixel CMOS camera with a fixed focus. While it is quite good at dealing
with low-light situations, it still lacks at least an LED flash. You
can use zoom (not in full size mode) while taking a picture, but keep
in mind that it’s digital zoom, and it does nothing more than crops
your picture.
The revamped camera interface of the A2
software platform is easy to use, and it’s easy on the eye as well.
It’s not lightening fast when going through the settings, but luckily
you can use a few keypad short cuts for some selected features, such as
self timer and night mode.
The settings menu will give you the ability to set the following;
Shoot mode - Normal, Panorama, Frames & Burst
Picture size - 2 MP (1600 x 1200 pixels), 1 MP (1280 x 960 pixels) & VGA (640 x 480 pixels)
Night mode - Off & On
Self-timer - Off & On
White balance - Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent & Incandescent
Effects - Off, Black & white, Negative & Sepia
Settings - Picture quality (Fine & Normal),
Review (On & Off), Save to (Mem. card & Phone mem.), Auto
rotate (On & Off), Shutter sound (Sound 1, Sound 2, Sound 3, Sound
4 & Off) & Reset counter.
The lack of some certain settings compared to other phones is due to the lack of auto focus in the camera.
Let’s move on, and see how the camera performs in various situations. Press the thumbnails for full size samples.
You will rarely end up with snaps that are
poorly saturated with the K660. However, due to its lack of auto focus,
the photos aren’t always that sharp and nice looking. I noticed a
strange problem with the K660 on the first photos I did with it -
semi-transparent yellow lines down across the photos, as visible on the
fifth photo. Another thing is that there are a few minor problems with
the white balance, which is clearly visible on the last sample photo.
K660 does video recordings as well.
They’re encoded in MP4 format in a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. The
frame rate is about 15 frames per seconds. The video bit rate is about
400 Kbps, which is OK. The video quality is expectable - nothing
ground-breaking, but it isn’t bad either. You can check out a video
sample below, or download it here. QuickTime is required to watch the video below.
Your recent snaps can easily be accessed
by changing from camera mode to preview mode. I find the photo viewer
very good, and it’s loaded with brilliant features, like X-Pict Story -
a cool slide show application with mood settings, effects, transitions
and sounds. Another nice feature is photo tagging - by tagging your
photos, you’ll always know where they are, and it’ll be faster getting
to them. If you don’t like that sort of sorting, then you should be
happy to know that the K660 also automatically sorts your photos by
month.
Suitable for music
Although the K660 only comes with a 256 MB memory card,
it still packs one of the best mobile music players - the Walkman 3.0
player without the branding and gimmick features. The music player is
extremely easy to find your way round in, and it’s graphically stunning
as well.
The K660 will support most common audio codecs, such as M4A,MP3,
AAC, AAC+, E-AAC+, WAV & WMA. You can set equalizers to enhance
your music (4 presets and the option to manually set the equalizer).
The K660 will display the album cover art, if any, or you can set it to
display an animation instead. The player can be used in both portrait
and landscape mode, but you’ll have to manually change the mode.
The K660 audio quality is quite good. It’s not at the
same level as the W890, which I recently reviewed, but it seems to be
on par with the K850. The loud speaker is among the best Sony Ericsson
has ever created, so I’ve got to give them props for that.
If your music collection should ever end up boring you,
you’re in luck - the K660 has a built-in FM-radio tuner, so you can
listen to the radio with a headset plugged in. Up to 20 radio
frequencies can be automatically found and stored, and K660 supports
RDS, so there’s no risk of ever losing the radio channel, even if it
changes the frequency.
TrackID is a unique feature of most new Sony Ericsson
phones. It works by recording a short sample of the radio (or music),
sends it to Gracenote’s database, and returns with song details - all
within seconds. Depending on your operator, there may even be a link to
buy the song. It’s amazing how well this works!
Screenshots from W890
Funny games
The K660 comes with three games pre-installed. These
are JC Does Texas, Roller Coaster Rush 3D & QuadraPop. I’m not a
big fan of QuadraPop, but the other two games are excellent.
JC Does Texas is another game in the Johnny
Crash-series, this time doing Texas. Johnny Crash is a stunt man, and
the object of the game is to fire him through a cannon, and then steer
him in the air, hitting various objects. It’s quite easy, and took me
about an hour to complete.
Roller Coaster Rush 3D has been one of my
favourite mobile games, ever since it was released. It’s a 3D game with
nice looking graphics, and it runs quite smoothly on the K660. The
object of the game is to control a set of coaster wagons, and make sure
the people on them are having fun, but don’t get hurt.
QuadraPop is a bit like tetris, and I find it
quite boring. The blocks have changed from being musical instruments to
being sea objects, such as starfish and crabs. It’s easy to play, but
I’m afraid many will get sick of it after a short while.
Does web 2.0
K660 is a Quad-band GSM phone with EDGE, UMTS 2100
& HSDPA 2100 (3.6 Mbps) support. You can transfer files wirelessly
with Bluetooth (version 2.0 + EDR), which supports transfer speeds upto
about 140 KB/s. If you’re a music fanatic, you can stream your music
wirelessly, as the K660 also supports the A2DP Bluetooth profile for
stereo audio streaming.
K660 supports USB 2.0, and data transfers are quick and
smooth in USB mass storage mode. There is no infrared connection on
this phone (but who uses this?).
Screenshots from W890
K660 is marketed as a web phone, and with the built-in
Access NetFront 3.4 web browser it does a good job. NetFront 3.4 has
been significantly improved compared to other phones. It seems faster,
and there is now a mouse cursor and whole page view feature, which
makes it a lot easier to navigate the webpages. There is no support for
Flash, but some light Java scripts are supported.
Once you open up the web browser for the first time,
everything will be in landscape mode. This is by far the best way to
browse the web, as it makes use of the full display in width. On the
home page, which can be customized, is a Google search feature, some
various information about your RSS feeds and recent visits, as well as
links to Sony Ericsson services; one being the m-buzz music store.
Generally, the K660 does a good job in mobile web
browsing, and it does a fair job on websites that aren’t too complex.
The browser isn’t as advanced as other browsers - as always, I’d
recommend installing either Opera Mini or TeaShark, if you want the
optimal web experience on your Sony Ericsson feature phone.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to set up my email accounts
on the K660. It supports both IMAP4 and POP3 protocols. It should also
be possible to attach large files, and receive these files on the
phone, but again, I didn’t manage to try that out.
Phonebook works great
You can save up to 1000 contacts on the K660, or a
total of 7000 telephone numbers. Personally, I don’t think I’d ever get
close to 1000 contacts, but I guess a few people will need this amount
of memory.
You can store various information about each contact.
This includes numerous different types of telephone numbers, email
addresses, website, name, picture, special ring tone, work and private
related informations about postal address, title and so on. Finally
there’s also the option to add a date for the contact’s birthday - this
date can then be put in the calendar and the phone will remind you that
the contact’s birthday is coming up. It’s such a brilliant feature,
which I’ve found useful on quite a few occasions.
Just like other A2-based phones, the K660 supports the
Smart Search feature. Imagine you’d have to go through a list of
hundreds of contacts just to find one number - did I see you shiver? No
need to do that! If I were to find my contact entry in the phone book,
I’d simply have to type “6, 4″ for “M, i” and my entry would pop up as
well as other entries where this number combination fits (this could be
Michael, Nick, etc.). It also works with telephone numbers, so if you
were to find the number “123456789″, you could simply type in “1, 2″
and it would pop up.
Screenshot from W890
I freakin’ love the phonebook!
Messages
Both MMS and SMS messages can be composed on the K660.
It is also possible to create a voice message. The MMS and SMS editors
are simply superb, bringing all the latest features, including EMS
support, smilies & formatting, to the user. This is one of the
areas where Sony Ericsson is miles ahead of every single other
competitor. Not only is the editor superb, so is the T9 dictionary with
the largest set of words. If it should happen that a word is not in the
dictionary, you can add it yourself, for the phone to remember.
Last screenshots from W890
A few MMS & SMS templates are on the phone and you
can of course add your own. Messages can be saved on either the phone
memory or the memory card.
As always, you have a nice amount of messaging settings
to set and play round with. Personally, I always enable the “request
answer” feature, which will automatically ask the receiver to answer.
Calls & calls management
The sound quality during calls is quite good. It’s loud and clear,
with only very little background noise. You can put it on speaker if
you want other people to listen as well, or if you’re simply doing
something else while talking on the phone.
Screenshot from W890
You can manage your calls on the phone and set the
various call settings like speed dialling. The call list holds the last
30 calls. However, if you’ve called a contact more than once, only the
most recent call details will be displayed.
Conclusion
To be honest, I wasn’t that thrilled about the K660 at
first. Sure, it seemed like a nice mid-end phone, but there was nothing
spectacular about it. Boy, was I wrong! K660 is as unique as anything
else, and the design has most definitely speaks a statement.
The K660 impresses me the most in terms of software.
The A2 platform is brilliant, and putting it in a phone like K660, just
goes to prove that it’s versatile. The phone was stable as a rock - no
sudden restarts, no freezes, no nothing.
The price of the K660 is excellent. In Denmark, they
retail at about £145 unlocked. For this price you get a decent mid-end
phone with HSDPA, a 2 mega pixel camera, a crisp display and the
wonderful A2 software platform.
The battery life is definitely acceptable. Four days
between a charge is something other manufacturers can learn a thing or
two about.
When it comes down to it the K660 offers a decent
feature set at an attractive price tag. This phone is ideal for
youngsters, who’d like a phone that impresses.
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