Looking For A Smart Phone Try the M600i

One of the things that I love doing with consumer electronic products is to test them in a real live environment. So as I trotted off to the CES Show in Las Vegas I took along the new Sony Ericsson M600i mobile phone that is also an organizer MP3 player and all round handy device.

What I found good about this device was that it was simple to use as one has a stylus, touch key to flick through the menu’s and a scroll button. It is also compact and lightweight unlike similar devices from iMate or Palm.
A top of the range 3G touch screen phone the device was not without its problems but these were easily overcome. When travelling, I always set my portable device on the local time for the region I am in with my home time set as the second time. The only problem with this device was that it kept resetting itself to my home time not the region I was in time. This in turn stuffed up my diary.
The phone also locked up every so often and the only way to fix this was to take out the battery and reset which can be slow as one of the setbacks with this phone is that it takes several minutes to boot up from scratch and entwer a Sim code.

But despite this I would highly recommend this phone as an all round good organiser. The phone comes in a choice of two very colours which are granite black & crystal white coloured casing. The casing is extremely thin considering all the features that are in this phone. During my trip was able to compare the M600i and the new iPhone from Apple and what is crystal clear is that we are moving into an era when high quality touch screens in phones will become the norm for many power users. Ironically I felt that the M600i was of a higher quality than the Apple offering however these are early days and what was shown at Macworld were prototypes.

Overall the M600i is a very stylish conscious phone that is slim & refined. The built in features resemble the features incorporated in Sony Ericsson P910i which is a mobile office styled mobile phone.
One of the things that I love doing with consumer electronic products is to test them in a real live environment. So as I trotted off to the CES Show in Las Vegas I took along the new Sony Ericsson M600i mobile phone that is also an organizer MP3 player and all round handy device.
What I found good about this device was that it was simple to use as one has a stylus, touch key to flick through the menu’s and a scroll button. It is also compact and lightweight unlike similar devices from iMate or Palm.
A top of the range 3G touch screen phone the device was not without its problems but these were easily overcome. When travelling, I always set my portable device on the local time for the region I am in with my home time set as the second time. The only problem with this device was that it kept resetting itself to my home time not the region I was in time. This in turn stuffed up my diary.
The phone also locked up every so often and the only way to fix this was to take out the battery and reset which can be slow as one of the setbacks with this phone is that it takes several minutes to boot up from scratch and entwer a Sim code.

In addition I travelled with a notebook running Vista and despite the enterprise version of this software being released in November 06 Sony Ericsson had failed to post a driver that allows this device to connect to the new Windows operating system.
But despite this I would highly recommend this phone as an all round good organiser. The phone comes in a choice of two very colours which are granite black & crystal white coloured casing. The casing is extremely thin considering all the features that are in this phone. During my trip was able to compare the M600i and the new iPhone from Apple and what is crystal clear is that we are moving into an era when high quality touch screens in phones will become the norm for many power users. Ironically I felt that the M600i was of a higher quality than the Apple offering however these are early days and what was shown at Macworld were prototypes.

The M600i comes with a very clear large 262k colour screen (240 x 320 pixels) which is the perfect size & provides the perfect quality for viewing video clips, email, messages & viewing all that the user desires on the Internet. The phone comes complete with a video clip feature & the user can also use the video streaming option.

Sony Ericsson has made things very easy for the user of the M600i and I felt very comfortable using this phone in a busy environment like the CES Expo show floor.

A user can access 3G technology to the full by surfing the Internet with their M600i & at the very same time receiving an incoming call or even making an outgoing call.

The integrated mobile RSS feed provides the user with an up to the second news updates directly to their phone. A user can also add software & applications very simply to the M600i as it has a Symbian OS operating system. However I missed access to key word documents.

By interfacing the phone with my Windows XP desktop PC I was able to download more than 2,000 contacts however it was very slow compared to Active Sync between a Windows Mobile phone.

While it isn’t as thin as the new Motorola Q which is set to be launched in Australia soon , it’s still slim in its own right, measuring only 10.68 centimetres by 5.58Cm by 1.52cm wide. This made it easy to carry around.

It looks sleek and feels comfortable in the hand, thanks to its smooth metal body and softly rounded corners. It is also is one of the smaller smart phones we’ve seen.

Finally one of the best things about the M600i is the amazingly large and bright QVGA touch screen. Measuring 6.35Cm diagonally, the LCD boasts a 240×320-pixel resolution and 262,144 colours–markedly better than a lot of other phones we have reviewed.

The screen was saturated with colour, images and text are sharp and very easy on the eyes. The backlight timer is adjustable, as are the themes, wallpapers, colours, and menu style (grid or list views). Because of its touch-screen interface, you can easily navigate through the menus just by using the included stylus (it’s housed in a skinny slot on the upper-left side). You can also choose to use handwriting recognition, a virtual keyboard, or the dual-function QWERTY keyboard for text input. The touch screen shows smudges after a while, especially if you end up using your finger to select menu options instead of the stylus.

Conclusion:

At the end of the day would I want this phone as my permanent organiser: the answer is yes, as no phone is perfect and this one is close enough to be totally acceptable.

Sony Ericsson M600i
Company: Sony Ericsson
RRP: AU$849