Sony themselves produce televisions, cameras, walkmans, DVD players and computers, and after seeing their Walkman brand do so well through the partnership with Ericsson, it was only a matter of time before the CyberShot brand found its way into a  handset. So is this phone just a camera, or is it capable of pushing the boundaries of mobile phones even further?

Sony Ericsson have created some of the best selling handsets in recent years, probably best of all was the K750i, loved worldwide for its 2 mega pixel camera, appearance and advanced features. Sony expanded on that phone with models such as the W800 and W810i until they had the music market covered. Now it’s their turn to claim the camera side of the mobile phone market.

Featuring the iconic CyberShot brand, the Sony Ericsson K800i has a camera that is simply extraordinary. Never before has anything like this been seen on a mobile phone. Although Nokia were the first to break the 3 megapixel barrier with the N80, the camera quality wasn’t quite as good as Sony’s effort. With the inclusion of BestPic, users are guaranteed the best quality photo every time.

BestPic is an amazing feature which takes nine individual shots every time the capture button is pressed. This means that you now have a choice of nine photos you can save, so if you find that one or two of the images are blurred through slight movements you simply discard them and save as many of the rest as you like. Also, with an image stabilizer and Xenon flash included too, there’s no excuse not to get a perfect photo every time. The phone also has 64MB of onboard memory, meaning that there is loads of room to house your high-quality snaps. If this wasn’t enough, you can also blog from the handset using blogger.com. The phone has an extra option under ‘send’ which enables you to effortlessly create a blog from scratch and update it on the move.

Inevitably the phone does end up being a bit of a one-trick pony, however with such a fantastic feature on board Sony were hardly going to go overboard with cutting-edge features.

The multimedia player on the handset is just the same as that on a Sony Walkman phone, although the purchase of an M2 card is essential if you want to store audio, video and images. This means that users upgrading from the earlier K750i, W800i or W810i won’t be able to use their memory cards in this handset as they all supported Sony’s other memory card. Seeing as this is the only current handset supporting M2, it does seem a bit strange why Sony have included the new format on this handset – especially since the newer W850i uses the Memory Stick Pro Duo.

Videos on the K800i are displayed magnificently alongside your 3.2 mega pixel photos, with a 2” TFT screen on the handset. This does mean that the handset is a bit bulkier than earlier ones, with the screen alone taking up half of the phone. Measuring at 105 x 47 x 22 mm, it definitely isn’t the smallest handset; however we can forgive Sony because it still manages to look attractive. With a weight of 115g we do have a phone which is easy to carry and doesn’t feel overly heavy. The inclusion of 3G means that the handset was never going to be the slimmest on the market. However with a 7 hour talk time the phone is, like most Sony Ericsson phones, going to last a very long time between charges.

Out now, and winner of the Mobile News ‘handset of the year’ award for 2006, the Sony Ericsson K800i is a fantastic camera phone worthy of your full attention. The phone has also been released in silver on some networks to support the upcoming Bond film Casino Royale, so it looks set to be around for some time to come.

Review by - Scott Goodacre

More Sony Ericsson Reviews

Published - 18/11/2006

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