Sony Ericsson intros 5Mp Cyber-shot phone
HSDPA 3G on board too
Sony Ericsson is to beef up its line of Cyber-shot camera phones with a new five-megapixel model, but you're going to have to wait until nearly Christmas to get your hands on it.
Sony Ericsson's K850: 5Mp snapper
The K850 is set to go on sale early in Q4 - October, basically. When it arrives, it will not only sport that higher-resoution image grabber but also a xenon flash, auto-focus, 16x digital zoom and a 2.2in, 320 x 240, 262,144-colour display. It also has 3G connectivity with HSDPA high-speed download technology. Sony Ericsson claimed the camera can upload at HSDPA speeds too - does it have HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) on board? If it does, that's not an abbreviation the company mentioned.
Once again, Sony Ericsson's Best Pic feature - it takes nine shots in rapid succession, as soon as you touch the shutter key; when it's done, you keep the one you prefer - is present, as is the ability to send images directly to a PictBridge printer, and to tweak shots first.
The phone has 40MB of memory on board, backed by a bundled 512MB Memory Stick Micro - aka M2 - card. However, the K850 can also accept Micro SD cards in the same slot. Bluetooth 2.0 is part of package too, and the phone boasts an RDS-capable FM radio.
Sony Ericsson's Z320: cut-price clamshell
Sony Ericsson also showed off its upcoming Z320 clamshell camera phone, a budget model - it's can only take 1.3-magapixel snaps. Like the K850, it has a 2.2in, 320 x 240, 262,144-colour display, but it's only a tri-band GSM/GPRS device. It goes on sale in Q3. It will be offered in a choice of red and blue colour schemes. The K850 will come in black with green or blue styling.
More K850 and Z320 pics on the next page
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COMMENTS
Has anyone actually used the N95 camera?
It's rubbish. The K800i takes far better photos and it's "only" 3.2Mpx. Take the same photo on both devices and you'll see the difference, even if you zoom in.
The K850i, if it continues in the same way as K800i started off, is going to be amazing.
Meh
The functionality on Sony Ericsson phones has gone seriously downhill since the P900i, given the choice between this and an N95, I'll take the Nokia thanks.
Not overly keen on Sony Brand....
... but Sony Ericsson on the other hand produce what I think are excellent phones.
These 2 are good examples of this and the OS on their phones I have found to most reliable (I don't use SE phones, due to requirements I'm on windows mobile, but I do try and force my wife to upgrade her SE phone as much as possibe :] ).
K850: prepare to be underwhelmed
Aren't all these features (including the 5Mpel camera) already available on the N95, which will have been on the market for around 9 months by the K850's release date?
Awesome,
Yet again another SE phone that I think I will be getting, I've gone through the K700i, K750i, W810i, K800i and W880 phones (working for a mobile network helps ;) ) and I have never had big issues with these phones, with the exception of one of two times when the joystick button started to fail after a year on one of them.
I'm quite into photography but find carrying an eos350d isn't practical a lot of the time and most camera phones have very poor quality images when taken in low light conditions, the cybershot range have always impressed me over say the Nokia variety.
