Using the M600i as a phone is a rather strange experience, as you end up using the touch screen most of the time. Sure, the stylus is pretty good - it's located at the top left corner - but it's annoying not having call-make and call-break buttons. It's quite frustrating having to tap the screen all the time to get into your contacts and to initiate and end calls. There's plenty of space just below the screen where three soft-menu buttons could have been placed to correspond to the three options that are listed on the default menu screen. This would've made it much easier to use the M600i without having to use the touch screen all the time.
With the new scroll wheel, it's not as easy to navigate the M600i's menus as it was with the P910i. There was also lag using the scroll wheel on the main screen, as the text wouldn't appear until you've already moved past the icons you didn't want. This is a minor issue, but it makes you wonder how much extra processing power the M600i has.
However, once you've fired up an application there are no noticeable slowdowns, so this seems to be related to navigating the menus and might be something that Sony Ericsson will fix in a future software release. The good news is that the M600i, as with previous UIQ devices from Sony Ericsson, can be updated over the internet, so you don't have to send it off to a service centre.
It's really disappointing that Sony Ericsson didn't fit Wi-Fi to the M600i as a device like this is made for wireless networking. Unless you&'ve got a genuinely unlimited 3G data tariff, you're likely to miss the lack of Wi-Fi, but the M600i is really fast in 3G mode, although it doesn't support HSDPA, but it will fall back to GPRS if there's no 3G coverage. It also Bluetooth with A2DP support, so it can be used with stereo headsets.
You can select to view the main menu as a grid - much like any other Sony Ericsson phone - or as a list like the P900s present. The standard menus are the same as those you'll find on most Sony Ericsson phones as well, with the possible exception being the Office menu. By default the M600i doesn't come with a wealth of applications, but you do get a version of Opera built in, which is the main web browser. You also get Quickoffice which allows you to access and edit Word, Excel and Power Point documents. There's also a PDF viewer and a basic notepad application.
Useful things such as a calculator, a multi-format unit converter, timer and stopwatch also come as standard, as well as a media player and an RSS reader. Two games are also included: Vijay Singh Pro Golf 2005 3D and QuadroPop.
COMMENTS
Psychic phone
Previous poster said: "You *can only search on last name OR first name* depending on how you flip that switch on the phonebook. Keyboard, pen, whatever...you can still not search the *whole* name.
The predicament is that sometimes I need to search for first name and sometimes for last name - to do this I have to re-sort the phonebook. Not going to happen."
Yeah, when I buy a phone, one of the criterias is that when I think of the person's name, the phone should call it too. :D Your comment made no sense whatsoever in searching for name criteria. Maybe you should stick w/ a regular phone line and not use cell phones at all and not post such stupid comments for everyone to see.
Keylock
Re the keylock issue highlighted in the review, you can actually take keylock off by just pressing and holding the "back" button on the side of the phone - avoids the carry on with pressing the unlock button on the key pad and then tapping the unlock button on the screen.
Re: M600 better than you think
"Searching Contacts, for example, can be done using the keyboard so need to scroll the long list of 1000 contacts."
Yes, but that's not the point...
You *can only search on last name OR first name* depending on how you flip that switch on the phonebook. Keyboard, pen, whatever...you can still not search the *whole* name.
The predicament is that sometimes I need to search for first name and sometimes for last name - to do this I have to re-sort the phonebook. Not going to happen.
Disabling USB charging may be a good idea
I can think of a good reason why you might want to disable USB charging. You may be connecting to a device, such as a palmtop, which doesn't have oodles of spare power to throw at the phone. So I think it's a good idea, though whether it should be disabled by default is another matter.
Lack of Camera
Claiming that a lack of camera function is not a quirk its a godsend. More and more companies and firms are denying entry to people who use cell phones with cameras. I use a Nokia 9500 at the moment and find it s camera to be a nuisance:
Ian
