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Sony Ericsson M600i

Sony Ericsson M600i breaks away from the trend of trying hard to combine business and pleasure by focusing strongly on applications for business use. This could be considered as Sony Ericsson’s attack on Blackberry’s popularity among businessmen. The M600i is like a slimmer and lighter blackberry, measuring 107 x 57 x 55 mm and weighing 112 grams.

Obviously, it is a lot more comfortable in the hand and a lot less like talking to a calculator when used as a phone. And with its unique 2 letter per key keypad, typing is easier and faster than with Blackberry’s full QWERTY keyboard. The fusion of the traditional keypad and the QWERTY keyboard, which uses opposite edges of the key for each letter, makes way for bigger and fewer keys to cover the alphabet. Sure, it takes time getting used to, but once you get the knack of it, you’ll feel the difference and ingenuity of the design. What’s more, M600i also has on-screen keyboard and handwriting recognition features.

One major eye-catching feature of the smartphone is its 2.6” QVGA TFT touchscreen with 262,000 colors and 420 x 320 pixel resolution.
It is almost as dazzling as the iPod Nano. The touch sensitive screen makes emailing simpler and easier as you can just tap the screen to open, read and reply to emails. And a finger would do just fine if you happen to lose your stylus. Also, an old feature from the Sony mobile makes a comeback in this smartphone—the 3 way jog key, making navigation around your phone applications a breeze.

M600i operates on Symbian 9.1 system and UIQ 3.0 platform. It is also equipped with 3G and GSM Tri band features, allowing you to travel almost anywhere and access faster data of 3G where it is available.

Doing away with funky multimedia features and focusing on data and emails, Sony Ericsson enabled this smartphone to work with several proprietary push email services. These include, Altexia, Blackberry connect, Intellisync, MS exchange active sync, Seven and Ericsson’s mobile office. Emailing through a phone has never been as easy as text messaging, and it even comes with an alert option to let you know you’ve got mail. So, you don’t have to look at your phone from time to time to check if you received an email.

Another form of connectivity included in this smartphone is Bluetooth with additional support for the audio gateway, allowing played back audio tracks to be transmitted to a headset. The M600i also has a USB 2.0 port for faster PC connection. You can also set up an email inbox in your PC, letting you sync emails from a PC email client like Outlook. However, Sony Ericsson did not give this device Wi-Fi capability, which could be considered a major setback by people on the go.

True to its commitment to focus on business applications, M600i comes without a camera. Come on, who really uses the phone as a serious camera? But the device does have an impressive multimedia support, including MP3, AAC, and AAC+ for music; 3GP and MP4 for video; and Media player for web streams.

For data storage, M600i comes with 80mb internal memory and a 64mb micro memory stick. And where most smartphones have failed, M600i succeeds with a good battery life. It promises 7 hours talk time and 14 days on standby on ordinary GSM signal usage and half of those times on 3G signal. And that is still much better than other smartphones.