Sony Ericsson K810i

At the end of last year, we crowned the Sony Ericsson K800i as our phone of the year for 2006. For us it was a perfect combination of high tech features and usable design.. so when Sony Ericsson announce the SE K810i, we were pretty exciting. Surely that must be a phone that would be better than the K800i? Yes?

The long and the short of it is that the Sony Ericsson K810i appears to be exactly the same as last years K800i.. there's a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, a Xenon flash and multishoot capabilities. The K810i is a UMTS 2100 phone with tri-band GSM support, a 2.0'' QVGA display, expandable memory, a comprehensive software suite including an email client, web browser, RSS newsreader and blogging support and a whole host of really cool features.. but they seem to be exactly the same in the K810i as the older handset.

Being sad sort of techie types at Mobile Gazette, it took us a little while to look away from the specification sheet for long enough to actually examine the K810i itself and of course then it was obvious.. Sony Ericsson have changed the keypad. Well, alright, they've made a few cosmetic changes too.. but ultimately the most significant different that we can see is the funny little round buttons where the K800i had a conventional number pad. And the K810i has gone a bit shiny too, as is the current fashion.

Now.. we haven't tried the K810i's keypad and heck, there might have been good reasons to change it.. but to us, this looks like a silly cosmetic change that might actually put off buyers. Yes, it's quite possible that Sony Ericsson have taken the old K800i and have spoiled it.

If you can live with the strange keypad, then the Sony Ericsson K810i promises to be the same excellent camera phone as its predecessor. If you've got a K800i.. well, best to keep hold of it for now as Sony Ericsson are bound to have something more interesting up their sleeves for later in the year.

Sony Ericsson say that the K810i should be available from Q2 2007 in Noble Blue and Golden Ivory colour combinations. There will also be a non-3G K818c variant for China.
2/21/2007 9:46:40 PM
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