Music-oriented phone

Boy Toys by Ding

I've been accused of being too Nokia-oriented in this column. People have accused me of having secret meetings after dark with the Finns, and have claimed that I'm a part of a global conspiracy to help Nokia with world mobile-phone-domination. So to prove them wrong, here I am with my hands on another music-oriented phone, but this time, from Sony Ericsson.

What I'm looking at, is the Sony Ericsson K618i. The phone is not from SE's music-oriented Walkman lineup, but an entry level phone. It's a candy-bar design, with dedicated volume and camera keys, and a play/pause key for music. No track selection keys on this one.

Features include a 2-mega pixel camera, MP3 player and err, that's it. The lack of an FM radio, which became industry standard a couple of years ago for phones with at least a hint of music on the concept, is a big downer.

However, the phone has a couple of very neat tricks up its sleeve. This is something of a blogging oriented phone. It has a native RSS reader to subscribe to your favorite blogs and newsfeeds, and the phone has a handy photo-blogging feature in it. It supports blogging at blogger.com, and users can add the body of the post as well.

Audio quality is good, but the low volume of the phone is a bit of a letdown. Other than that, it's a very solidly built phone, and like almost all Sony Ericsson phone is a gem to use. The back of the phone is textured with a groove pattern, and this adds the touch of class to the phone, while increasing the grip when you're holding it.

The battery lasts for around 1 ½ days in real life conditions, with average amounts of texting, phone calls and a bit of music thrown in. Camera quality is average: It's hard to raise your head above the rest with a 2 mega pixel camera when almost everybody around you is boasting cameras with more than three million pixels.

How does it stack up? It's an average phone for an average price. The lack of a radio is a big minus, but the RSS reader and the blogging software manage to almost fill that gap. It's a logical thing to buy. Think of it as wearing sensible shoes: you're not the fashionista around town, but you're not the town hippie either.