At A Glance:

This device has a unique form factor. Although a candybar, the keys are tiny little bits of chrome metal that protrude from a rather flat surface that is the phone・s body.

This is also another prototype set so there were also some bugs in the software which we expect will not be there in the retail units. Having said that, Sony Ericsson still makes a very desirable-looking handset.

In the box (prototype components)
Handset Transceiver Battery (standard battery) Charger

Exterior
The Sony Ericsson tradition of making phones that look like a camera on one side and a phone of the other has been retained here. You could be forgiven for thinking that this was only a camera if you looked at it from the back.

The rear surface is equally well manufactured, with a metallic green lower half for our review unit, and a polished metal upper half with a hole for the camera lens to poke through. Apparently, the lower half is also available in blue.

The device is not too heavy considering that much of it appears to be metallic in composition. On the whole, I must say that it is a very nice looking device and worth taking a second look at. The specification says that this phone weighs in at 95 grams.

Buttons/Screen
The buttons on the T650 are like no other I have ever seen. They are bits of gleaming metal which looked very unique against the flat surface of the phone・s body. The navigation pad is a ring of green metal around a green centre button.

The screen is a 262K TFT type with a resolution of 240 x 320 on a 1.9-inch screen. The buttons light up with a white backlight which is rather bright in order to light up the alphabets that have been etched onto the green surface of the phone. For once, the alphabets are not on the buttons but on the sides immediately adjacent to the buttons.

It was interesting, but those buttons started to hurt the fleshly pads of my fingers after a bit. This one is definitely not made for those who SMS all the time.

Software/Messaging
Since the review unit we had was a prototype, there were still many unresolved errors within the menu. However we shall skip that part as we expect all these errors to be resolved way before the actual launch of this product.

The menu is the usual grid of 12 icons, and the phone gives a tiny little buzz vibration when you move from icon to icon within the menu. SMS and MMS functions are supported as expected, and an email client and RSS reader can also be found inside the messaging submenu. However, as mentioned earlier, the keys are rather pointy and tend to hurt the fingertips after prolonged usage.

Applications
The PIM structure in the phone is fairly straightforward. The calendar, tasks and notes are similar to what is found in most other handsets, while the light submenu gives you options for using the rather bright flash LED as a flashlight.

The calculator was a little unwieldy to use, especially the part that requires using the navigation pad to move the cursor around to select an operative symbol. The code memo application places a PIN on a note and prevents someone who does not have a PIN from reading or modifying said note.

Camera/Video
The T650 has a 3.2 megapixel camera which can shoot in the general resolutions of 1, 2, and 3 megapixels. You can add effects such as sepia and solarise to the pictures you shoot and affix the date and time to pictures as well.

The prototype unit we reviewed has a bug that prevented any pictures shot with the camera from being saved. Of course, this should be fixed by the time the retail units come out. Anyhow, we noticed that there was some lag in the recording of the images even if the phone did not actually save the images. Nevertheless, it was slower than the RAZR2 V8 which we had at the same time as the review of this unit.

A secondary camera may go unnoticed at the top right of the screen. This is the self-camera that is used for 3G video conferencing.

Multimedia/Voice
The music playback was fair from the loudspeakers. We did not have a set of earphones with this prototype unit so we can・t tell you if it is any good. There doesn・t seem to be a standard jack for headphones, so we・re guessing that you would have to use either the Bluetooth headset or use some kind of headset that plugs into the proprietary toothed jack on the left side of the device.

Voice dialling and answering are the main voice features of the phone, and you can also save the callers name as a voice tag and have the phone read it to you when the caller calls in. A magic word feature allows the user to activate voice functions by saying a special word or phrase that they have chosen.

Connectivity
This phone has Bluetooth and apparently has a special type of USB cable which connects from the port on the left side of the phone to a computer・s USB port. We did not have the data cable with the prototype package. The T650 is a 3G-enabled phone, but it also supports Class 10 GPRS if you prefer to use it.

Games
There is only one preloaded game in the T650 and it is called the Lumines Block Challenge, which is similar to Tetris but you need to match up squares instead of rows of blocks with the same colour. Just as with the original Tetris, the game is fairly simple and rather addictive.