Review: Sony Ericsson K300i

When I was about to buy this camera phone, somebody asked me why not buy K500i, or K508i, or even K700i. So here’s the comparison. As far as features are concerned, there is no difference in K300i, K500i, and K508i. The only difference is in shape and size. K300i has a slightly smaller screen. But K300i looks much better than the other two. K500i looks like a toy. And the shape of K508i doesn’t attract me that much. On the other hand, K300i looks like a serious phone. It also happens to be the cheapest of the three. I don’t believe in spending heaps on money on a cell phone. Most of the fancy features in expensive phones are hardly ever used, and at the end of day you are just making a phone call. So why spend a fortune on a cell phone. So I decided to go for K300i for its looks and price. My second choice was Nokia 6020 but it was Rs. 2,000 higher than K300i, and above my psychological limit of how much money should be spent on a cell phone.

K700i, however, does not compare with the three models I just compared. It’s a much better phone. It has a better camera, and higher screen resolution. It also has Bluetooth and USB port, which are missing in the lower three models. And then it is priced much higher. I never considered buying this phone.

Ok, now let’s start the actual review of the phone. I’ll first start with the camera, since that’s the reason I bought the phone.

The image quality of the phone, as expected, is not bad at all, though some might argue after looking at my moblog. The thing is, it’s not a professional camera with auto focus and image optimization capabilities. So it’s unfair to compare it with professional quality cameras. Sometimes the pictures come out noisy, but I think it has more to do with light conditions than the camera. Under good light, the image quality is very good. The default image size is 640×480. You can also take pictures at smaller sizes. And then there is extended size of 1280×1024, but I have never tried it yet. 4x digital zoom is available at smaller sizes. I hardly use the digital zoom because it doesn’t give very good results. The only annoying thing about the phone is the loud noise that comes out of the speakers when you take the picture. There is no option to turn that sound off. But there is a workaround. If the phone is in silent mode, then the camera “shutter” noise doesn’t come. So if you want to take pictures without disturbing people around you (there can be countless cases when you need to take pictures silently), just put it in silent mode.

You can also record videos with the phone. Matter of fact, Sony Ericsson is marketing this phone as a video phone. You can shoot at a size of 176×144, small for decent video projects, but perfect for video blogging as the size of the video file wouldn’t be too large. Since the phone has a 12MB memory, I am sure you can record videos of decent length. I can’t say much about the video recording feature because I haven’t used it enough. Even though I am eager to put something in my video blog but I am still looking for a chance.

Now let’s look at the other features of the phone.

Using the phone is very easy. I was very skeptical about it before buying the phone because I am used to Nokia phones and I was afraid if I would be able to get used to any other phone. But after few hours of playing, I was pretty comfortable with it. The joystick of the phone gives you the real power and control to access the features of the phone quickly. You can make shortcuts of commonly used features, like create SMS, go to inbox, view stored pictures, and access them with single movement of the joystick. Since moving the joystick is faster than clicking buttons, you can reach options under multiple sub-menus in no time. I also discovered some other non-intuitive but useful features after reading the manual, but now that I know about it, they have also become part of intuition.

The buttons on the phone are a little small, and I have to use my nails in order to push only one button at a time, but I don’t consider that a problem, in fact, I have noticed that if I use my fingers to type an SMS or something, my speed is much slower, so adaptation is the key.

The phone can play midi and mp3 files, and have animated wallpapers and screensavers.

I loved the phone the moment I had it in my hands, and have been loving it ever since.