Sony Ericsson S500i

Print | Close this window

http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39030107,49292007,00.htm

Reviewed 3 August 2007

Reviewed by Frank Lewis

New mobiles are appearing on the market almost daily, so to stand out from the crowd a phone has to offer something a little bit different. This stylish slider from Sony Ericsson tries to rise above the pack by including some quirky features that you probably haven't seen before.

The S500i is available on most networks for free with a standard contract.

Strengths
Thanks to its slim design and neat sliding action the S500i is a beautiful-looking handset, even before you turn it on. Once it does spring into life however, it offers up a couple of surprises.

The phone has small mood lights embedded in each side that glow with different colours when you receive an incoming call or text message. It is also loaded with a number of themes that change over time to reveal various colours for different seasons, or just different times of the day. Neither of these features are what you'd call essential, but they do give make this phone individual. Another neat little extra is that the handset vibrates slightly as you move from item to item in the main menu.

The S500i boasts some quirky mood lights and is slim in design

As you'd expect from a Sony Ericsson handset, the user interface is top class, so things like texting and adding contacts to the address book are very straightforward. Also, although the handset is not branded as a Walkman phone, it does have many of the excellent music-playing features you'll find on those handsets.

The battery life is pretty impressive, too. You'll get around nine hours of talk time out of it and it'll last for around 15 days on standby.

Some other useful extras include a feature that automatically creates an online blog that lets you upload snaps to directly from the phone, as well as an RSS newsfeed reader.

Weaknesses
The phone's sliding design looks great but it has also had the effect of making the keys on the keypad slightly smaller than usual, rendering them fiddly to use. The screen is also a tad smaller than those you'll find on similar slider handsets from the likes of Samsung, and although the camera takes decent snaps with good colour, it lacks a flash for taking pictures indoors and doesn't have a self-portrait mirror.

There are also a couple of niggles on the music side. The supplied headphones are too bass heavy and so give your music a slightly muddy sound. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that no standard headphone adaptor is supplied with the phone so you can't easily swap the cans for your own headphones.

At just 51mm the screen is not the biggest, but this handset will turn heads

Like most Sony Ericsson handsets, this one uses Sony's proprietary Memory Stick format. No memory was included with our phone so if you want to make the most of it you'll have to shell out for a Memory Stick M2 card. These currently cost about twice the price of the microSD cards more commonly used in phones from other manufacturers. This is worth bearing in mind if you're planning to use the phone as your primary music player.

Conclusion
The mood lights may be a gimmick but they're an interesting touch, and besides, this handset still has plenty of other nifty features to offer, including a great music player, easy user interface and support for RSS feeds.

In short, it's an impressive all-round performer that also happens to look great.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Kate Macefield