My new phone - Sony Ericsson K800i

A new year means a new phone. This time it’s the Sony Ericsson K800i.

I was happy to annoy the Carphone Whorehouse salesman when I called up O2 and they were able to offer me a better deal than he could For £30 a month I get 400 cross-network minutes and 100 texts. I also get to claim £200 in rebates over the course of the 18 month contract.

I can only assume contracts are becoming longer because the increasing sophistication of phones is making it necessary in order for the networks to subsidise them.

This is my fourth Sony Ericsson mobile - I tend to go for them because I like the design and the UI doesn’t feel quite so clunky as some other phones. The main features of this new model that interest me are the 3.2 megapixel camera, push email, RSS feeds and 3G.

3.2 megapixels! My “proper” camera is only 4! Mobile phones are becoming a viable alternative for casual photography. As Dave rightly points out, there’s more to a good camera than resolution (shutter speed and low light performance for instance), but they’re getting there. It doesn’t escape my notice either that the resolution on this camera is markedly superior to that on the iPhone. I expect that the iPhone will get several improvements before it reaches UK shops, if not it will look seriously underspecced.

I’ll have to resort to third party plugins to get it working with iSync (thanks a bunch Apple), but I’m sure it’ll do nicely for the forseeable future.

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