Sony Ericsson K810 review: A Cyber-shot is reborn

Tasks & more

The Sony Ericsson K810 offers many time organizing features. There is an Organizer icon in the main menu and it contains several applications: Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Alarms, Calculator, Synchronization, Timer, Stopwatch, Applications and Code memo. The Calendar offers monthly, weekly and daily view. As we mentioned before, when you add a birth date in the phonebook, the phone asks you if you wish to add it in the calendar too. Tasks can be two types: simple Tasks and Phone calls. Reminders can be put as Subjects. Notes are written as messages; there is even the T9 dictionary to assist writing. There are five alarms available. Each one offers a lot of options - you can choose to repeat it on chosen days of the week or everyday. Furthermore, you can add text and a picture to the alarm as well as set its behavior in case the time that the alarm is due to go off comes while the phone is in silent mode.

Organizer menu • Calendar • Alarms

The Voice recorder doesn't have any limit in the duration of the recordings since all the free memory is available for the purposes of the application. The Calculator is the regular Sony Ericsson one, which you have probably already seen. It offers the basic functions with no bells and whistles.

Voice recorder • Calculator

Some other applications include the MusicDJ and VideoDJ. VideoDJ is for making video clips from scratch or for editing existing recording using special transition effects and by adding background music. It can be a very amusing application. MusicDJ is a very simple application for creating custom polyphonic melodies.

As far as the additional applications are concerned, an interesting and funny one is the FaceWarp application, which is used for manipulating portrait shots by adding funny faces and grimaces.

There is also a HP Print application which allows for direct printing of pictures, contacts or calendar events to a real or virtual printer.

The HP Print application • printing pictures • finding printers

Much like the Music Mate application comes preinstalled within Walkman phones, the Sony Ericsson K810 cameraphone comes equipped with the brand new Photo Mate application which offers various aids and practical tips and tricks for making great pictures.

The Photo Mate application • Pictures of people submenu

Games: back to basics

The two games preinstalled in our test Sony Ericsson K810 are nothing new: the Tetris like QuadraPop game and the amusing tennis game Sony Ericsson WTA Tour. Unfortunately, the test beta unit had some problems with running the QuadraPop game - here are some screenshots of the WTA Tour only.

Sony Ericsson WTA Tour

Final words

The Sony Ericsson K810 tries to build on the success of its predecessor and tries to win the heart of the customers with enhanced user-friendliness of the camera. It manages to do so - taking pictures and changing camera options has never been easier.

We find the somewhat controversial design of the keypad nice and using it doesn't prove to be any hindrance to the overall "user-friendly" idea of the device.

There are some greater flaws that we really couldn't live with - the highly inconvenient joystick and the hard soft keys. After all a badly designed navigation solution can spoil the experience of using even the greatest phone possible. That drawback is even more surprising since obviously the Sony Ericsson designers have put a lot of efforts into usability.

Our final verdict is that given the serious design flaws and the lack of serious upgrades, you should stay with the Sony Ericsson K800 until a better cameraphone comes up on the market. What is more, once the K810 hits the market, the price of the K800 should drop down so it would become a great buy.