K750i

Rains have let up in Pune, and for the first time in two - three weeks, the sun shone in the manner which befits him. That he hid behind the clouds a bit later, is another matter altogether. Roads however have not drained, and waterlogging is still a problem, and Santu's bike looks like it has been through the Kadur rally.

Speaking of Santu, he bought a brand new black Sony Ericsson K750i yesterday. I must put it on record here, in the gamut of impressive fatures it boasts of, the music player takes up all the accolades. It even scores over the 2 megapixel camera, which incorporates a flash as well, and held horizontally, can guile people into believing it might be a digicam after all.

More on the music player later, let me go on to other features. In spite of all the heavyweights loaded on to it, I should say that the display could have been bigger. It is bigger than the Samsung x100 (Santu's previous phone), but way smaller than my Nokia 6260. Actually I was surprised when Santu told me he bought this, because he seemed unshakably impressed by flip-open phones.

Moving on, internal memory is a spacious 32 MB, and Sony displays its quintessential "I-am-different" attitude by making the external memory card as a Memory Stick Duo (64 MB). Which means that Santu can't use the stick in a Digicam, or if he intends to do so, he will have to buy one which supports it. I loved the slot though, the card toggles inside like the Card Slot in O2 XDA II.

(For the record, Sony is the only one company which has retained Memory Sticks in all its products. This is one thing I have against Sony, it hampers portability. I have a 1GB RS MMC for my N6260, and I could not find one Sony digicam which would support RS MMC/SD MMC as ext memory. I settled for a better bargain eventually- Samsung Digimax A402)

Coming back to K750i, the camera is a breathtaking 2 Megapixel with still and video shooting, with amazing resolution. Havent shot much using it though, but it comes across as a superb feature. The camera also has a slide cover, which protects the lens when the phone is laid on its back.

The music player is by far the best feature I saw on the phone. The speaker churns out sound at amazing clarity and acoustics, and I was most impressed by the software. While you are listening to music, it stops when you get a ringtone, allows you to play the ringtone, and once you exit the screen, the music comes up automatically. As in every other phone, you can put the music into background and run other tasks.

I am however, unimpressed by the placing of the speaker. It is on the backside of the phone, and its volume, naturally drops instantly when you block it with your finger. So I am skeptical of how loud its tone may sound, if the phone is placed on its back, on the desk/bed. The volume would naturally reduce, unless you want to put the phone with its display-down, in which case you would want to turn the phone upright to know who's calling.

Menu functions seem fast enough, allowing for the confusion from a Nokia - Ericsson migration, and gallery functions and pictures and videos seem to work well when sent from my N6260. A wav ringtone did not work, and I dont know why, because others ran really well, in some cases even better than in my phone.

Overall, the phone is compactly designed. It has some ot the other feature etched into every side on the cuboidal structure, and the camera keys are so designed that the user feels that he is using a mini-digicam. The compactness has given rise to nooks and corners though, because I felt that the battery compartment was not airy enough to insulate it while charging. It is totally packed, and you cannot clean the phone's power contacts even with a slender brush. The SIM compartment is packed tightly too. The commendable thing on this front seems the placing of the ext memory card. It allows for hot-swapping, meaning you dont need to switch the phone off to change between cards.

More on this later, after relentless testing.

Meanwhile Harsha has left for UK, and I guess his flight left Delhi around 0900 today. Havent heard from him yet, and dont know whether his international roaming is on.

More later, adios amigos