Sony Ericsson S500i - Slick, Smooth and Highly Functional

Beautiful images, a smorgasbord of illumination effects and a compact, stylish design. The Sony Ericsson S500i is a welcome addition to the Sony range and offers good looks as well as a range of features that put many other phones in its class to shame.

When closed, this slider phone measures 99mm x 47mm x 14mm. Not the most slender phone on the market today, but still not a heavyweight at just 94 grams. The closed phone has a central five-way navigation button, flanked by a two-way select buttons, and back and clear buttons on the top. Below the central button are single-touch web-access and menu shortcuts buttons. Slide the phone open to reveal a standard phone keypad, with keys that are firm, but responsive.

The phone makes excellent and innovative use of its large QVGA screen, which resolves at 240×320 pixels. You would be hard pressed to find a more illuminating phone on the market – the S500i has a time-sensitive thematic and lighting system, which allows you to set your desktop background and external lighting to change as day becomes night, or when the weekend arrives. Take a call, or receive a text message and the phone lights up. Available in “Spring Yellow” and “Mysterious Green”, the phone creates a visual feast.

It is not short on features either. Topping the list is the 2 megapixel camera with a host of pre-set shooting modes. You can use the camera to get up close to your subject, with the 4 x digital zoom. Uploading your photos to the internet is also possible. The camera also records video, which resolves at 1600 x 1200.There are also a great range of features to help your organize your electronic life. With EDGE data support, Symbian web-browsing capabilities, email client, RSS reader and a built-in blogging tool the Sony S500i gives you no excuses not to stay in touch, even when you’re on the move. The phone is unfortunately not 3G compatible, so web browsing and data downloads aren’t as quick as they could be.

Although not part of Sony’s Walkman range of phones, the S500i still has impressive music-playing capacity which supports MP3 and AAC formats. Music is played using Sony’s dedicated music software. The included headphones are high quality, with music playing back cleanly and crisply. The phone also has Bluetooth capabilities.

Sony has designed the S500i with an impressive talk time capacity – almost nine hours, with up to 15 days (370 hours) of standby time. The phone comes with 12MB of internal memory, but this is expandable thanks to the inclusion of a Memory Stick Micro slot.

Overall, the S500i is a slick addition to the Sony Ericsson range. With sophisticated good looks and great illumination backed up with a solid array of features, this phone is sure to be a winner.

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