Hands-On With Sony Ericsson's M600

Sony Ericsson M600

Sony Ericsson M600

Sony Ericsson M600

At the Sony Ericsson party in Barcelona last week I had the chance to sit down with some SE executives and talk about their new handsets. The inaugural M series handset, the UMTS/GSM M600, shares a large percentage of its components with the W950 Walkman phone that was announced later that night. The M600 also shares the distinction of being at least part of the reason that the P990's release was delayed a bit - it seems that the P990 was slipped a bit so that the M600 release date could be brought forward.

The M600 that I had access to at the press event was not a fully functioning model, but it did give me a chance to check out the keyboard design. The keyboard has an unusual layout that is not altogether dissimilar to that of the RIM BlackBerry 7100 series. A somewhat normal numeric keypad is found in the middle of the device, and an extra column of keys are found on either side of it. Each key represents two letters of the alphabet, just as is the case in the RIM handsets. The keys have a concave shape to them, meaning that the left and right edges of each key stick out further than the center does, making it easy to find the edge as if it were a separate key. This is good since you have to press on this edge to get the intended letter: press on the left edge to get the left letter, on the right edge to get the right hand letter. It seemed ok to me while playing around, but I didn't have enough time to form a concrete opinion.

Like the P series devices before it, the M600 has a scroll wheel on the left hand side. A significant difference, though, is that it is a 3-way scroll wheel. You can scroll up and down and press it in, but there is no longer the forward/back motion that the P series tended to use to get out of the existing menu. Instead the M600 has a separate back button located below the scroll wheel. This is a far more intuitive system, and I don't think that most people will mind the change at all.

Sony Ericsson M600

Sony Ericsson M600

Sony Ericsson M600