Sony Ericsson's K700i is Loaded

Connectivity

Sony Ericsson K700i Sony Ericsson handsets have long been at the top when it comes to connectivity, and that has not changed. The K700i offers just about any kind of handset data connectivity you could ask for short of 3G service. The GPRS service works flawlessly, and can be used in conjunction with a cable, Bluetooth, or IR connection to allow you to use the K700i as a GPRS modem for a laptop or PDA.

The Bluetooth system performed very well. I had a few snags with a headset not being identified properly by name (coming up as "unknown"), but this only happened twice, I believe, and had no impact on use of the headset. Headset audio quality was fine, something that was a bit of a problem on the T610. I was able to pair up the K700i with any number of headsets, PDAs, and other handsets. It was able to receive anything sent to it without complaint, and is even capable of using the Bluetooth Sync profile for contact and calendar synchronization, doing away with the need for the Sony Ericsson supplied sync software. My only minor quibble might be how long it sometimes takes for the K700i to realize that a Bluetooth connection has been closed by the other device, but that is hardly worth mentioning. In general the system works as you would hope.

Messaging

Just as it has made changes to their UI, Sony Ericsson has made some changes to the various aspects of their messaging system, including the T9 system. The SMS system in the K700i is not all that much different than those in pervious phones, but the look has changed a wee bit, and they have streamlined the recipient selection process. The change to the recipient selection comes by way of a list of recently used recipients that is shown under the options for selecting a number from the SIM or for looking up a contact. It is a small change, but it will remove a required step from the process of sending a message if you tend to send messages to the same people all the time, as I do. Another change, and one that I don't like, is the removal of the delivery report option for SMS, even though it is still present in the MMS editor. The "reply requested" option is still there for SMS.

[In spite of my being told by SE USA that delivery reports were, indeed, absent from SMS in the K700i, it appears that is not really the case. Whether the option shows up or not appears to be linked to your SIM, as numerous people have reported that delivery reports are available on their phones. -editor]

The MMS editor has also been updated a bit, and the results are nice. You have many options available to you, such as selecting a background color for the message. Of course you can insert text, pictures, video clips, and sounds into the message, too. The images can be animated, of course, and you can define the length of time that any particular slide in your message will be displayed. There is also a preview function to let you view the final product. One last thing that I thought was a bit odd was the inclusion of a "make a call" option. This lets you place a normal phone call without having to exit the editor and save the message you are writing as a draft, to be completed later. I suppose that Sony Ericsson feels that the length of time people could possibly spend building an elaborate message makes this necessary.

The email system has not changed much from that of other recent Sony Ericsson handsets, as best I can tell. It worked without much fuss at all, picking up mail from our POP3 server and sending it out via SMTP. I do not have access to an IMAP4 server, so I was unable to test that.

 

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