K800i First Impressions

See the photo. It's quite clear and sharp no? It was taken from my car while I was driving home yesterday morning. The car was moving at a good rate of speed.

I was testing the K800i Cybershot cam image stabilization and quick shoot function. I simply flipped open the lens cover, pointed the phone at the road side and hit quick shoot (the joystick). I did not look through at the viewfinder and I did not have to hold down the regular shoot button. In other words, I didn't endanger myself or other road users while carrying out this experiment...

Judging from the photo, the test result was very satisfactory don't you think?

Yes, I finally received my phone from my colleague on Monday evening. Overall, I'm very satisfied with it.

After a few days of fiddling with it, there are many things I like about the K800i.

Obviously, there's a camera which is the number 1 reason why I wanted a K800. Most camera phones are phones with cameras built into them. This one however is a camera with a phone built into it. A camera bearing the Cybershot name has quite a lot to live up to and the K800 cam has no trouble maintaining that rep.

It's got everything a camera is supposed to have. I especially like the quick shoot function. Point and click, no setup needed and the resulting image will be top notch most of the time.

Media players are bog standard features of practically every phone these days. Obviously, the K800i comes with it. The sound quality is awesome, especially with hands free earphones. The external speakers ain't bad either although I wager the Sony Ericsson W series will have better media features.

Still, the media player on the K800i is enough for me. It's nothing fancy but it works quite well.

I love the radio tuner on this thing. At least now I can listen to the radio at the office. Especially on nights like this.

I like the keypad. After many years of using the small keypad on the L6 a large keypad is a breath of fresh air. It's nice to text with and I text a lot.

The rest of the phone is pretty standard obviously and some other features I haven't really explored yet. Overall it's a nice phone and it has exactly what I want, no more, no less.

However, there are a few things that's not so good about it.

One thing, the OS isn't the most user friendly thing in the world. I wish it had a "Home" key. Without a Home key, I have to keep pressing the "Back" button until I get to the main screen. That's a lot of button pressing particularly if you're going through a lot of submenus to fiddle with settings.

I wish the screen was tougher. The K800i screen is a little fragile and will scratch rather too quickly for my taste unlike the L6 screen. I guess I'm going to have to buy a screen protector.

And an external case to protect the rest of the phone. The phone feels quite plasticky and kinda fragile so I wouldn't drop it on a hard surface. No such worry with my old L6 which did survive being dropped many times and feels quite tough, what with it having an aluminum case and all that.

Despite all that, the pros outweigh the cons by a ton so I would still heartily recommend this phone to anyone who wants a high quality camera phone.

At Rm850/- brand new, I think it's a freaking bargain considering it's capabilities.

Now excuse me while I go to Zedge.net and download themes and other stuff for my new phone...