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The Sony Ericsson K800i at the moment has a new sibling to take on the legacy of Cyber shot branded phones: Sony Ericsson K550i. This phone has a 2MP camera module as compared to the older K800i, which has a 3.2MP camera module. It is a alternate of the outdated K750i, which has seen magnificence and is still a hot favored in markets all around the world. Let’s not go on with the praise which will never observe end and just move on with what is more enticing-the phone’s review.

(1). Build and Design

The Sony Ericsson K550i is built as per the current trend of slim handsets. Back then, K750i was nothing revolutionary when it came to build and design. K550i has been redesigned completely. Its extent will give you a pretty good idea of how slim this phone is: 102 x 46 x 14 mm. Not like it’s so slim that it beats the record set by Motorola and Samsung, it is lean and perfectly contented. The phone weight is downhill by 15 grams, summing it up to just 85 grams. The K550i looks smart and very bold. For some, this new design will be very attractive and at ease.

The K550i on its frontal is divided into three parts; the screen, menu buttons and an alphanumeric keypad. The screen is a 256K colors, large 1.9 inch TFD display and supports a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels. TFD screens are much older than TFT and don’t really have any major difference in battery use, but TFD screens provide much better contrast.

Below the screen are the menu and the navigation buttons section which are supported by a 5-way D-pad instead of a joystick. There is a web-browser hotkey and to the left and the rightmost key is the Activity/Multi-task hotkey. In the center is the 5-way D-Pad with Menu/Call keys on either side. The Up and Down buttons of the D-Pad has a crest on them which makes it easy to navigate Up/Down through menus but at the same time it hinders the use of the middle button of the D-Pad which is comparatively sunken. This entire keypad section is painful and could call for a lot of wrong key strokes; in short, I’d say it is not designed too well.

This phone’s battery compartment opens sideways instead of the conventional slide out. There are two locks placed on the right side to keep the battery compartment closed at all times. For those who faced problems like the battery cover sliding out while taking the phone out of a tight pocket, it will be a welcome change. The fact that the memory card slot is placed below the battery cover, calls for concern. Nevertheless, it is not placed under the battery itself, so the memory card is still hot-swappable.

The back of the phone comprises of the camera alone. The camera has a protective cover that slides sideways to reveal the lens. So now you won’t have to countenance the problem of the lens cover opening when sliding the telephone in or out of your pocket. Along with that is the Cyber Shot branding embossed in large as well as the typical Sony Ericsson branding with the 3D logo. The top of the phone has the same intend by the be in charge of button which now also doubles as a profile hotkey. The infrared port is also placed in a similar mode as seen in the K750i.

(2). Camera

The Sony Ericsson K550i has a 2MP camera module and has the same LED flash instead of the Xenon flash as seen in K790i/K800i. The camera should be much improved than the one seen in the K750i, reason being that the camera has the Cyber Shot brand which adds to the superiority expected from the camera as that places it in some pertinent digital photography ancestry. Let’s find out whether this brand placing adds to the weight.

The K790i was quite imposing with its clarity and its Xenon flash. With this model though, the 2MP camera has limitations several aspects. The camera as I initially used the phone seemed very decent but with no thrills of excellent quality that anyone would expect from a CyberShot. Sony has tried to push it immensely with the CyberShot branding designed for the K550i. The camera has inherited a lot of its interface from the K790i/K800 but it’s still a 2MP camera. A run through with the different modes–’Shoot’ has modes: Normal, Panorama, Frames, and Burst. The ‘Scene’ modes are: Auto, Twilight Landscape, Twilight Portrait, Landscape, Portrait, Beach/Snow and Sports. There are 3 options in Image Size; 2MP, 1MP and VGA. Under ‘Focus’, the equal three options as seen in the K790i are available: Auto, Macro and Infinite. The Effects available are same as in all the phones built on the base of K750i: Off, Black & White, Negative, Sepia, and Solarize. The White Balance helps set to get the best quality in appropriate lighting as in: Auto, Daylight, and Cloudy, Fluorescent, and Incandescent modes. ‘Metering’ is a new mode see in this phone that has two options: standard and Spot. Picture Quality also has two options: Normal and Fine. There is an option to set the Shutter sound, though you are given four choices, ‘No Sound’ option isn’t included. Although, switching to the silent mode makes possible clicking pictures without the shutter sound.

The video of the camera is the same, no changes here except for a few modes borrowed from the still image capture. The videos are recorded in QCIF at 176 x 220 resolutions. The video recording format used is .3GP. The CyberShot branding should have seen a change in strategy with CIF recording, but that would affect the popularity of the K790/K800.

(3). Sound

The K550i has good sound quality even though music isn’t its main feature. The sound quality of the phone is at par with the K750i. The same stereo headsets are bundled along with the K550i. They produce decent music and the voice reception during phone calls is excellent. The K550i has an audio player which unlike the K750i doesn’t feature the MegaBass set which anyway doesn’t really make a dissimilarity with those set of headsets. The phone also has an FM tuner which gives a good reception when in proper frequency range.

(4). Battery

The battery of the K550i is a 950 mAh Li-Ion battery. This battery rating now seems to be standard. Most of the phones from Sony Ericsson feature a 950 mAh battery. This battery could last you 3 days easily considering to you don’t use a K-Series phone as a Walkman phone. The talk time received in those 3 days totaled around 4 hours. Most of the battery was consumed with the camera usage; the LED being the main power consumer.

The Sony Ericsson K550i sells for around Rs. 11,500. It is 1.5K more expensive than the K750i. At this price I’d still settle in for the K750i which has much better camera quality, if Cyber Shot is what I was looking for. Other than at the same occasion there is no doubt that the K550i is a better phone with upgraded software and EDGE technology completing the whole mantra of connectivity.

In the end I could say that both, the old-gold K750i and the newer slimmer and smarter K550i are good options. You just have to figure out the amount you’re willing to spend and for what reason; Better camera or improved functionality.

The LG Chocolate phone has mechanism a new style of mobile phones from the LG stable. They have a brand new border which is quite appealing. The Dynamite 300, known as KG300 in the international markets, shares the same interface. LG, with this model plans to enter into a head-to-head rivalry with Sony Ericsson’s K750i which is the most favored buy for anybody looking for a mobile phone for around 10K. We’ll have to wait and see how well this phone would be conventional by the end users.

(1). Features and Interface

The Dynamite 300 is being advertised as a fully loaded phone by LG. The phone is in actual fact fully loaded: it has a 2MP camera, music and video potential, development slot for more storage and even an FM tuner has been provided with. The phone has a brilliant screen which gives it a slight edge over a part of the antagonism. But considering the fact that there aren’t many GSM buyers keen on buying LG phones, it wouldn’t have much of an impact. The only thing departing for it would be the price of the phone.

The interface of the phone is same as the one seen in the KG800. It is smart and very acceptable. All wrong intuitions of LG interface have been overcome with the KG interface. Though the phone has an inbuilt memory of 60 MB, it is still slow throughout. Things do take time to unlock and going through menus quickly isn’t possible. The other parts of the interface which could draw people away from the phone are because follows. Firstly, I didn’t like the vibrator mode of the phone. The vibrator is very mild, you can hardly feel it, such that you’d have to use your hand in the way of feel the phone and see whether it is vibrating or not. Some the profiles of the phone are not customizable, like the silent and the vibrator. Other than that, most of them are completely customizable. The play/pause and the volume keys don’t work when the phone is keypad locked. That makes things troublesome when you are travelling, especially with the audio playback.

(2).Camera

The Dynamite 300 has a 2 MP camera. It can be started by holding the camera hotkey, which is on the right for about 2 seconds, provided the keypad is unlocked. The camera lens has no protection, so it would be terrifying if the phone fell on its back. The camera isn’t an auto focus one hence; the brilliance is no where close to the K750i. Nevertheless, the camera performs well outdoors whereas indoors it messes up with colors. Night mode is fair enough as there is no flash light to assist in the dark. The handset records video in very old QCIF. The video be recorded in .3GP format at a 176 x 144 pixels. The quality is average plus not much to debate about that because the same applies to K750i. The phone has a very high-quality video playback; convert videos to .3GP plus you will notice it. The screen of the phone has much to take credit for. The video playback has an advanced fast-forward feature with up to 8x fast-forward means.

(3).Build and Layout

The Dynamite 300 is a basic bar type phone with trainband network capabilities. The phone fits comfortably in the palm of your hand and doesn’t weigh too much. The scope of the phone stand at 100 x 46 x 17 mm and it weighs just 89 grams. The telephone has a full sleek finish and would be troublesome for people with butter-fingers; not that a dull finish would have done them any good. They’re not butter-fingers for nothing. Anyway, the phone has a large 1.9-inch display and the 256K TFT screen supports a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels.

Just above the top left of the screen, there is a small blue LED which blinks when being charged or in networks range. Below the screen is the D-pad of the phone which is quite eccentric. It’s a 4 way D-Pad and is quite wide. The alphanumeric keys are also wide and at the same time quite thin with no space in between. Though the keypad looks un-ergonomic, it is okay to work with. The D-Pad is the only cause of trouble in this section.

On the left side of the phone there is a play/pause button closely followed with the headset port. At the end of the left side is the microSD card slot for memory expansion. Both, the headset port and the card slot are neatly covered to prevent from dust accumulation. The right side of the phone has the volume control plus a camera hotkey such that when you tilt the handset, you can use it like a digital camera. The bottom of the phone has the mini-USB port which is used for file transfers and can also be used to charge the phone.

The back of the phone houses the 2 MP cameras and the speaker of the phone. The camera has a mirror for self-portrait pictures and the speaker is placed just above the camera lens.

(4).Sound Quality

The Dynamite 300 being a fully loaded phone from LG, would be partial without this accessory: the stereo headset. The headset has a standard 2.5 mm jack which makes it possible to use your other earphones/headphones with a 2.5 mm pin or a converter which is available easily. The earplugs of the headset reflect an almost similar design like we seen bundled with Samsung’s Boom Box. Although these didn’t look all scary like the single Samsung offers, we did face the same problems. These were also uncomfortable and didn’t fit too well. The sound excellence of the headset also wasn’t exceptional. The default headset bundled with the K750i will easily beat this headset is terms of superiority. The music player has option of various equalizer presets which didn’t help get better the sound knowledge much. The FM quality of the phone is average; all was based on the reception of the radio station. There wasn’t anything outstanding to make the FM tuner actually good. The speaker of the phone was good for nil. Forget concerning the sound quality of the speaker, it’s hardly possible to hear the phone ring especially while traveling even at the peak ringtone volume. In my opinion, I wouldn’t really prefer this phone for its music features.

The LG Dynamite 300 is available in the markets at a price tag of Rs. 8,500 with a one year warranty. The phone doesn’t come bundled with a memory card but think this; you can get the phone plus a 1 GB micros card and still end up spending less than 10K. It is a bargain because the K750i is bundled with just a 64 MB card. While buying a 1 GB recollection card with it would take the cost of the K750i to 11.5K. Still then, I’m sure most of us would still buy a K750i and be satisfied with a 512 MB card expenses around 10.5K. Need I say more, LG may have likely shaking the K750i’s market standing with this new toy but in vain?