Around the sides are volume buttons, a camera shutter button - curiously missing on the majority of Touches, including the Diamond - a power button and USB-power-headphone combi port. Both SIM card and Micro SD memory card are housed in an odd little compartment which is only revealed when you slide out the keyboard. They overlap, with the memory card slotting in first, beneath the SIM. It's awkward, but if you're not planning on doing a lot of hot-swapping, it's fine.
Spartan sides
The Qwerty keyboard slides out with a satisfying thunk to reveal four lines of keys. That's one less than the Touch Pro, so you'll need to press the FN key to get the numbers, but there are direction keys and dedicated keys for email and texting, plus a couple of soft-menu keys. The keys themselves are of tactile rubberised plastic and, though small, raised in the middle and easy to find with the thumbs. It's as practical and as compact a phone keyboard as we've come across.
As you'd expect, there are clients for email and instant messaging services plus, when writing text messages, an automatic character counter is usefully shown on the page.
The 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7225 processor is similar to that found on the Diamond and Touch HD, but it comes midway between them for Ram, with 256MB of memory. In other words, it's nice'n'nippy, but as with all Windows Mobile handsets, it helps if you close down any apps you're not using.
Well connected, with HSDPA and Wi-Fi
The S740 has quad-band GSM and an HSDPA 3G connection capable of up to 7.2Mb/s download speed, if your network supports it and conditions are right. There's no camera on the front though, so if video conferencing is your thing, this phone won't be for you. If you need a faster internet connection than 3G, there's Wi-Fi too.
COMMENTS
Eh?
Is it me or are those 'photos' computer generated? The shine across the number keys and the general anti-aliasing just doesn't look right. Nor does it that the phone isn't turned on.
Not really good for the cred there reg. Fake photos? Whatever next?
Am I th only one who noticed..
There is not a single pic of this thing switched on and no pics of the interface?
I really wanted to see what it looks like, you know, in use.
Not as good a phone as claimed
I used this phone for a week and I took it back.
The Send/End keys are too small and hard to find, making it very hard to do its main function which is being a phone.
Like many sliders the top row of keys (in this case 2 soft keys) is way too close the the edge of the top half when opened. You end up using your nail half the time to hit these keys.
The only NAV buttons are on the top half of the slider in the middle of the top half. Try reading a web page and scrolling down. You having to awkwardly reach up from the QWERTY where you have to hold it when open anyway. Do this for about 10 web pages on 4-5 sites and you will want to scream. Add to that the way too small NAV ring and navigation on this device is just plain broken for ease of use.
Next the QWERTY keyboard is IMHO terrible. The keys feel mushy lacking a tactile snap and worst of all they lack sufficient "bumps" to find the difference between keys.
Finally the aggressive power management is insane when it comes to key backlighting. Try using this phone in the dark. On other phones like the Moto Q9 I am able to reactivate the key board backlight with a tap to the 4way nav keys. On this device that does not work for the QWERTY, you have to hit something on ITS keyboard which in this case is a letter or soft fn keys and like I said above given the lack of humps on the keys even if you about where a key is in the dark, you can't find it until you get the keyboard lit. I've tried to use the keyboard in a dark car while a friend was driving and I wanted to through it out the window.
It does have a nice feel and I coveted it when I saw someone with it, but one week of use and it went back and I dusted off my Moto Q9. I know keyboards are highly personal in preference but I really suggest you try navigating a web site and see how hard it is to get the keys to light up when u r in the store. I really wanted this phone to be "the one" but sadly it fails in basic usability unrelated to the software.
Re: David Evans
Sorry David, completely different. This uses Windows Mobile standard edition. As mentioned in the review, it has no touch screen and you cannot create or edit office documents (well, you can with third party software - but not as standard).
The Xperia is a Windows Mobile Professional device which means it has a touch screen, a full version of Office Mobile (you can create and edit office docs) and is also quite a lot larger ad heavier with a significantly larger/higher-res screen.
The XPeria is aimed at road-warriors, this is aimed at people who want a phone-sized device that is also good for email.
