Sony Ericsson K790i Review
Reviewed by Alex Curtis (Mac 'n' Cell)
With a 3.2 megapixel camera, Sony Ericsson is hoping you’ll use this mobile to replace your digital camera, and there’s good
reason to—it’s a great phone, a good digital camera, and a great all-round multimedia device. Let’s take a look:
Form factor
The K800i / K790i looks like your typical SE candybar phone, which they’re well known for. From the original bluetooth mobile
T68i, to the T610, SE knows it’s junk-food phone. Although the K800i / K790i looks like it’s predecessors, SE truly upped the
ante here.
The differences between the K800i and the K790i are these: K800i has the ability to use high-speed 3G data connections in the
2100 band (so, not for us in the US) and it also has an additional lower mega-pixel camera on the front. The K790i skips the
front-facing camera and the 3G connections, and instead uses the EDGE fast-ish network. The phone I tested was a K790i here
in the US on the Cingular network, equipped with EDGE, which performed as expected.
The phone’s face is a brushed black metal surface, bordered by an aluminum band. What’s not covered by the brushed metal are
the sides (in matt-black plastic) and back (covered in a high-quality rubber-textured plastic). The keypad’s slightly rubbery
keys have a great tactile feel. The directional stick (or d-stick) is flanked by six buttons—two “soft keys”, back and delete
buttons, and web and shortcut buttons. It sounds like a lot to deal with, but it makes a lot of sense when you use the phone.
The speaker at the top is covered by a thin metallic mesh. On either side of the mesh is are two brushed metal ovals, which
initially I thought were decorative, actually are “soft keys,” primarily used in games when the mobile is held land-scape.
On the back side, is a black metal sliding cover with “Cyber-shot autofocus 3.2 mega pixels” embossed on it. Behind the cover
is that auto-focussing 3.2MP lens and a mini-miror for self-portraits. Above the lens a light sensor and camera flash. To the
right of the lens is the external speaker.
On one side of the phone is a camera shutter button and a volume toggle which doubles as a camera zoom when cyber-shot camera
mode is engaged. On the other side is a play / pause button which activates the media player. Just below that is the memory
stick micro door.
The top and bottom edges of the K800i/K790i sport the power button and power-port interface respectively. Nothing really
special there, except the bottom also has a lanyard loop.
Screen
Okay, I’ve covered all the tactile buttons and bits, now I get to talk about the display. Ohhh, the display! Crisp and bright
262K colors illuminate the 76,800 pixels (arranged in a rectangle measuring 240 by 320px). Such a great display is needed to
show off the sharp photos taken by the camera. It’s also transflective (TFT), so you can read it well in the light (though
not quite as well as I’ve noticed on my personal Nokia 6270). Except for being a TFT, it reminds me of Apple’s MacBook
display—it’s high contrast and really shows off the dark colors well.
The Interface and Applications
Turn on the phone and you’re quickly greeted by a flash of light that quickly fades to reveal the Sony Ericsson logo,
accompanied by a pleasant sounding theme song. The phone’s first interface you’ll experience is in the way of choice between
radio silence (flight mode) or normal mode. After you’ve make your choice, the default theme presents itself as a black
background highlighted with animated violet arcs, sparks, and semi-circles of light. Gray-ish text in a friendly and bold
font makes text easily legible.
The first time you start the phone, you get to watch a little video and are walked through a short but useful tutorial of how
to use the phone. Nice touch. You’ll also need to set the day and time.
Menu and Application
The menu system is accessed by pushing in the d-stick down. Anyone who’s used a Sony Ericsson mobile will find themselves in
familiar territory. When selected, icons spring to life in a 3 x 4 grid. When hovered over, each icon magnifies (a la Mac OS
X task bar) and the name of the app listed at the top. The usual suspects are all here “Internet,” “Entertainment,”
“Messaging,” “Media Player,” “File Manager,” “Contacts,” “Calls,” “Organizer,” and “Settings.” Some special adds are:
PlayNow: Sony’s online media portal for downloading ringtones and other media. The website’s interface is colorful and
intuitive, making it easy to sample ringtones before purchasing them.
Cyber-shot: Sony’s souped-up camera application especially for the 3.2MP camera. It offers a few nice additional options
such as shoot mode, which allows you to snap a picture as usual, a panoramic photo, frames (which allows you to place
cartoony frames around the image you’re about to take), and “BestPic” which will rapid-fire photos when you push the shutter
button, and then allow you to pick the best one. Scenes allows the user setup the camera for the next photo’s context, such
as twilight landscape, portrait, sports, or document. Focus allows the user to pick between auto, macro (which works quite
well!), or infinite. Effects allows for some pre-photo color shifts like B/W, sepia, negative, and solarize. Whitebalance
makes lighting easy with choices like daylight, cloudy, fluorescent, incandescent, etc. Metering lets you adjust the exposure
by moving crosshairs to the subject of the photo. There are a few other settings, but they’re all pretty standard. Cyber-shot
records video with most of the same settings, but also includes an image stabilizer and night-mode. A new function for the
Cyber-shot software is one that allows the user to easily upload photos to a Blogger account especially for this phone, check
it out. I didn’t fill in any of the account specifics as I was just testing the phone, but assumably, if you already have a
blogger account, you can associate it with this mobile’s account.
Radio: think RDS (allows for channel and song readout) FM radio only when the headphones are plugged into the proprietary
connector.
Games: included are three 3D-ish games. The lamest of which is FotoQuestFishing: a game where you play an underwater
photographer who snaps images of rare aquatic life (get it—it’s a camera phone!). The second game is a 3D putt-putt golf
game. The third is Tennis game made by Sega, which I really sucked at. The second two games are multi-player via bluetooth,
which sounds like a neat idea, but unfortunately, I didn’t have anyone else to play with. :-( Interestingly enough, none of
the games that came with my K790i used the aux metallic soft keys at the top of the screen.
RSS reader: it’s hidden in messaging, though this makes sense with how it works on this phone. It’s a simple list of RSS
feeds (pre-loaded ones include BBC News, Google News, and three Sony Ericsson feeds of press releases, fun downloads, and
press releases—yes, they really want you to get their PR propaganda). You can set the time-interval in which the phone will
check for new posts. When there’s something new to see, a little orange RSS button appears on the main screen (next to
voicemail and SMS messages). The posts are read by selecting the feed, which presents the posts by title and short
description. selecting the post expands it (with images and links) and if you’d like to know more, the last link opens up the
story in the phone’s Access NetFront web browser (which I swore was Opera Mini it was so nice). It functions seamlessly,
however adding feeds can only be done through the keypad.
How’d It Perform?
In two words: very well. If you’ve ever read any of my other reviews, you’ll know that I like Sony Ericsson phones and the
K790i is no exception. The interface is intuitive, nice to look at, and fun to use.
As far as performance, the screen is beautiful and menus respond quickly. As a phone, which is, of course what it is, it
works well. I had no problems making calls and found the reception to be on par with my personal Nokia phone on the Cingular
network. Calls were clear, though the default volume is a tad low. When paired with a bluetooth headset, I found calls to be
unusually clear. Speaking of bluetooth, this phone sports the A2DP stereo protocol, if you want to listen to tunes wirelessly
(unfortunately, I didn’t have the required headset for such a great feature).
Battery life seems quite good. I only tested the phone from late Friday (when I first charged the battery) to Monday morning,
and even through numerous tests, it still had battery life (albeit low by that time). SE claims up to 7 hours talk time and
350 hours standby time, and I have no reason to disbelieve that.
Applications worked well. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the phone could now play mp4 files, in addition to the
standard, and generally poor quality 3gp format. If I had a larger Memory Stick Micro card (the phone I tested came with a
64MB chiclette), I would have liked to test this out more extensively, but the mp4 video that I did load on it played back,
though the audio was slightly out of sync. It may have been the encoding of this specific mp4, however. Audio-wise, it can
play both mp3s and AACs, though, nothing from the iTunes Music Store or Windows equivalents.
The RSS reader was a great addition to the “regular” mobile phone. It’s nice to have access to the latest blog-posts, updated
as frequently as I’d like, and notified of new posts as simply as an SMS message. Although typing in new RSS feeds is a chore
(as I think any text entry on a keypad is), the SE’s Access NetFront web browser notifies you if the page you’re surfing has
an RSS feed, and allows you to add it to your mobile’s regularly checked list. Nice.
I didn’t use the phone for messaging, as I rarely use phones for data-entry. However, the messaging application allows for
POP3 and IMAP, as well as the usual SMS, MMS, and push-mail protocols. Data entry can be accomplished thru a smart dictionary
as well as T9, and I found the system to work well.
Camera
Oh yeah, this phone also has a 3.2 mega-pixel camera! It takes some great photos in daylight and you’d be amazed at how well
photos come out in the dark, thanks to the Xenon flash built into this camera, er…phone. Even in macro mode, the camera is
right on. My regular digital camera is a 3.2MP camera, and but for video recording, I think the K790i matched it toe-to-toe.
taken with the K790i with no light (except flash)
taken with Canon Powershot SD200 with no light (except flash)
I found it convenient that both the phone’s memory and memory card are individually accessible via bluetooth and USB. Also,
the mobile can be charged via USB.
The Verdict
If you’re in the market for a new mobile and digital camera, you really should consider this phone. Most of us have no need
for over 3.2 megapixels. It’s plenty for printing photos that you can blow up to 8x10” and still look good. For sharing among
friends via email or on a blog, 3.2MP is probably too good-a-quality (did I tell you that the K790i automatically resizes the
photos it takes before sending it to your Blogger blog?!).
Sony Ericsson did a great job with this phone / camera. The interface makes sense and looks stunning thru this high-contrast
display. The controls fall into hand. Lastly, besides a full keyboard, it packs most of the multimedia features you’d want,
without feeling like a jack-of-all-trades, instead it’s a master of all. Run out and buy this phone!
MacnCell.com Note
My next post will be Mac specific—meaning how this phone works with your Mac. Since you’re here, that’s probably what you’ll
want to know most. Don’t worry, this phone compliments the multimedia capabilities and it-just-works Mac experience quite
well. A video podcast showing all the UI goodness is coming as well.
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