SPECIFICATIONS
- K810i UMTS/900/1800/1900 MHz
- K810c UMTS/900/1800/1900 MHz for China Mainland

General

Network: UMTS / GSM 900 / GSM 1800 / GSM 1900
Announced: 2007, February

Size

Dimensions: 106 x 48 x 17 mm
Weight: 115 g

Display

Type: TFT, 256K colors
Size: 240 x 320 pixels, 2 inches
- Wallpapers, screensavers

Ringtones

Type: Polyphonic, MP3
Customization: Composer, download, order now
Vibration: Yes

Memory

Phonebook: 1000 x 20 fields, Photo call
Call records: 30 received, dialed and missed calls
Card slot: Memory Stick Micro (M2), 128 MB card included

Data

GPRS: Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
HSCSD: Yes
EDGE: No
3G: Yes, 384 kbps
WLAN: No
Bluetooth: Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
Infrared port: Yes
USB: Yes, v2.0

Features

Messaging: SMS, MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
Browser: WAP 2.0/HTML (NetFront), RSS reader
Games: Yes + downloadable, order now
Colors: Noble Blue, Golden Ivory
Camera: 3.2 MP, 2048x1536 pixels, autofocus, video(QCIF), xenon flash; secondary videocall camera

- Java MIDP 2.0
- FM radio with RDS
- MP3/AAC/MPEG4 player
- TrackID music recognition
- T9
- Image viewer
- Picture editor
- Picture blogging
- Organiser
- Built-in handsfree
- Voice memo/dial

Battery

Standard battery, Li-Po 950 mAh (BST-33)
Stand-by: Up to 400 h
Talk time: Up to 10 h

DETAILED REVIEW

DESIGN

Visually Sony Ericsson K810 doesn't differ much from the K800. It has the same form factor and pretty much the same color and size. It is several millimeters thinner than K800 and the most significant design change is the new keypad which is unusual for the recent Sony Ericsson line of phones as a whole.

The TFT display takes up the most part of the front panel. It has a mirror-like finish much like the K800 does and in much the same way it catches fingerprints rather easy. Above it there is the secondary VGA camera, the in-call speaker and two multimedia shortcut keys. Those were present in K800 too but here they are more prominent. Now they even have blue icons marking their functions. When the camera is on, the left one can be used to change the camera shoot mode, while the right one changes the Scene setting. When the camera is off, the left one opens the last picture you've browsed in fullscreen mode, while the right one opens the camera pictures in thumbnail mode.

Below the display there is the keypad with the usual Sony Ericsson soft keys and the newly-designed round metallic keys. The leftmost column of the alphanumeric keys serves the double purpose of dedicated camera keys for changing the picture resolution, auto focus mode, self-portrait timer and flash options. Icons with blue backlighting explain the function of each key. The keys "3" and "6" can also be used for zooming in and out when taking pictures. The alphanumeric keys design us rather controversial, but more on navigation and keypad user-friendliness is to come later on in the review.

The Sony Ericsson K810 left side features only the Memory Stick Micro M2 memory card slot and a dedicated Radio start/stop key. Viewing the K810 from this angle allows you to see that the active camera cover is much thinner and doesn't bulge from the body of the mobile the way it did on the Sony Ericsson K800.

The bottom part of the K810 features the regular Fast Port, the in-call microphone and an eyelet for attaching a wrist or neck strap. The top part of the device incorporates only the On/Off key which can also be used for fast switching of the ringing profiles.

The right side of the Sony Ericsson K810 hosts the camera shutter key which is styled in the way the keypad keys are and bulges slightly so it is easier to press and use. Next to it is the Infrared port and in the upper part of the right side we find the volume keys which can be used for zooming when taking or browsing pictures.

Flipping the phone over reveals the real eye candy - the 3.2 megapixel camera with its active cover, the loudspeaker and the Xenon flash. The back panel itself is made of matt plastic and except for the camera lens cover, it does not catch fingerprints that easily.

When we slide open the back over, the standard Sony Ericsson Li-Polymer BST-33 battery with a capacity of 950 mAh gets revealed. Right beneath it is the SIM card bed which is a regular Sony Ericsson one meaning that the SIM card is easy to slide in and hard to slide out. The same battery is used by Sony Ericsson K550, W850 and W880, just to mention a few. According to the manufacturer, the battery should last up to 400 hours of standby mode and up to 10 hours of talk time when used in GSM-only network. Unfortunately, we couldn't test the phone's battery life since we used it heavily during our tests and thus the battery life we experienced was not indicative for the real-life performance of the phone. But judging on other devices with this battery we think that it's a safe bet that with average usage the K810 battery would most probably max out at 4 days.

Generally we are quite pleased with the general ergonomics of the Sony Ericsson K810. It feels nice when held in hand and fits perfectly in your palm.

For the viewer's pleasure

We are quite pleased with the Sony Ericsson K810 display. It is a 262K colors TFT display with a QVGA resolution and a 2" diagonal. Two inches is not that much for a high-end multimedia mobile phone these days. Yet we find it enough. Legibility in bright light conditions was not the best in previous Sony Ericsson models. They surely were legible but not anywhere close to the displays Nokia uses in their middle to higher range of mobile phones based on the Nokia S40 user interface. The situation got better with the Sony Ericsson W880, but here we again see the good old display used in K800 for example.

Joystick: playing hard to get

While generally we couldn't find any fault in the K810 design and construction, the keypad was the source of our greatest disappointment. And it's not the controversial alphanumeric keys we are talking about. The weakest point of the otherwise rather user-friendly handset is among the most important ones - the navigation joystick and the soft keys. The joystick is too sunk in for the user to be able to push it easily up or down. It doesn't matter if it's a man's thumb or a girls' one, the result is the same - a lot of frustration. The other problem - the one with the soft keys is that they are actually toî stiff to press and they give almost no positive feedback when pressed. On K800 the web browser key and the Activity menu key were stuck in-between the soft keys and that made it hard for us to use the soft keys. The K810 no longer has that problem but it seems that Sony Ericsson have totally lost it with the keypad and navigation here.

Other than that the alphanumeric part of the keypad has a relatively even white backlighting. A certain flaw we see which may be attributed to the fact that our test handset is a pre-release version is that the blue camera icons on the left side of the keypad are constantly lit while on paper they should light up only if the camera is on. In the same time the icons beside the upper shortcut keys above the display have no backlighting at all. We hope that all that would be fixed in the final version.

Telephony at its usual level

Sony Ericsson K810 manages great at making and receiving calls. Not that we would expect any less than that. Unfortunately, the loudspeaker wasn't the loudest one we've seen. It certainly lacks bass elements but that is something usual for a mobile phone.

User interface

The user interface in K810 is a standard non-smartphone Sony Ericsson user interface. Honestly we've slowly becoming fed up with the user interface - it's been around for 2 years now that they haven't changed it a bit. It offers great user-friendliness but new mobiles equipped with it don't offer any new functionality over previous models.

The Sony Ericsson K810 has a dedicated Flight mode. When turning on the phone, you are presented with the option to start it directly into Flight mode. The phone cannot work in Flight mode unless there is a SIM card inserted.

In active stand-by mode the screen displays information about the network signal, battery strength, current date and time, plus the next alarm that's due to go off. Pressing the navigation pad in any of the four directions can start a given feature or application according to the user preference. The main menu itself is made of a matrix grid with 4 x 3 animated icons. All sub-menus are in listed view with tiny icons on the left side. The phone reacts and performs fast in every submenu and application.

PROS

* Excellent 3.2 megapixel Cyber-shot™ camera with autofocus
* Xenon flash
* 64MB internal memory
* Memory card slot with hot swap functionality
* 3G support with video calls
* FM radio with RDS
* Bluetooth (with A2DP) and Infrared port
* Multi-tasking support

CONS

* Uncomfortable joystick and soft keys
* No EDGE (K818 has EDGE, but no 3G)
* Records video in ancient QCIF (176 x 144 pixels) resolution only

Conclusion

The Sony Ericsson K810 tries to build on the success of its predecessor and tries to win the heart of the customers with enhanced user-friendliness of the camera. It manages to do so - taking pictures and changing camera options has never been easier.

We find the somewhat controversial design of the keypad nice and using it doesn't prove to be any hindrance to the overall "user-friendly" idea of the device.

There are some greater flaws that we really couldn't live with - the highly inconvenient joystick and the hard soft keys. After all a badly designed navigation solution can spoil the experience of using even the greatest phone possible. That drawback is even more surprising since obviously the Sony Ericsson designers have put a lot of efforts into usability.

Our final verdict is that given the serious design flaws and the lack of serious upgrades, you should stay with the Sony Ericsson K800 until a better cameraphone comes up on the market. What is more, once the K810 hits the market, the price of the K800 should drop down so it would become a great buy.

Enjoy the Phone!