Sony Ericsson phones are in the center of attention for quite some time now, and they deserve it, since most of the newer models sport the great design, all the latest functions and simplicity of use all in one single device. From the days of T610 this company has had only successful models.

Black, with a sleek chrome finish, K750i is one elegant-looking handset. The phone got nothing but nods of approval and admiring looks whenever it was shown in public. 

K750i’s gorgeous screen shows crisp, sharp images with rich colors. Although you cannot adjust brightness or contrast levels, there are no issues viewing the interface under direct sunlight.

All the external controls of the phone are well-placed. Individual numerical keys are ridged and suitably spaced out. The top left music shortcut button can be mapped to launch the media player, radio or last used multimedia application. Together with the volume controls on the right, music playback can be adjusted even when the keys are locked.

Another useful key is in the middle, offering quick access to new messages or events, missed calls and Web bookmarks, as well as a customizable list of your favorite functions. One of the few bad things is that resuming applications like Java games may take as long as a minute. The upper row of softkeys seems slightly loose and possibly more prone to wear and tear. Those with larger hands may find the small joystick less easy to operate as well.

The rear of the handset is representative of the K750i’s is sporting the sliding lens cover–which conveniently triggers camera mode on or off–and impressively powerful photolight. Holding the phone horizontally in landscape orientation as you would a normal digital camera, your left index finger operates the 4x digital zoom while your right digit rests naturally on the shutter button. The numerics also double as camera shortcuts: "4" for macro mode, "7" for night mode, "*" for light, etc.

 
Wow! No more painfully slow menus of previous Sony Ericsson models! The newer menu interface is generally very smooth, responsive and intuitive. You can customize the four-way navigational joystick to trigger often-used functions like messaging and alarm clock. Most menus show as a scrollable list of options, while others with multiple categories such as settings have separate tabs which can be navigated sideways. Usual applications like Calendar, Tasks, Notes and Stopwatch can also be found.

With a 2-megapixel CMOS camera sensor with autofocus, you can easily develop photo-quality  prints from the maximum 1,632 x 1,224-pixel snapshots. Furthermore, you have other options like macro mode for excellent close-ups, night mode, self-timer, effects like sepia and solarize, as well as white balance for different lighting ambience. You’d be hard-pressed to find better image quality from a camera-phone at the moment.

The loading times are sometimes disappointing, though. Saving images onto the Memory Stick DUO takes about up to 4 seconds, while the initial loading of pictures for viewing can take a while as well. Users also have to go into camera mode before accessing their photos. Video quality at the limited 176 x 144-pixel resolution is nothing to shout about, either. On the plus side, the pre-included slideshow mode is a nice way of showing off all those precious baby candids.

While some phones seem to throw in music playback and MP3 support as an afterthought, the K750i serves as a genuine alternative to any flash-based portable player. The number of tunes is limited only by the size of the hot-swappable Memory Stick DUO which supports up to 2GB. Although you can use only Sony Ericsson’s proprietary stereo earpiece, sound quality is excellent. Add an equalizer with preset modes as well as manual adjustment plus FM radio, and you have little reason to travel without any music

With Bluetooth, GPRS and infrared onboard, the only noticeably absent feature in the K750i is 3G,which in my personal opinion is not such an important thing at all, but there certainly are people who would like this feature.
 
Call and reception quality is good, though the unusually high placement of the speaker holes makes it a little strange at first, but you’ll get used to it eventually. The 900 mAh battery is quite impressive, since it gave about 3 and a half days of usage, with about an hour of MP3s per day and normal phone usage (around 15 minutes of calls per day and 4-5 messages, with a few camera shots).

It isn’t the cheapest phone in the market by any means, but for a sleek-looking phone that’s user-friendly with excellent multimedia features, you get what you pay for. If you’ve some cash to spare and aren’t eager for 3G, the K750i comes well-recommended as one of the best phones money can currently buy.

Worldwide mobile-phone sales reached 190.5 million units in the second quarter, with Nokia and Motorola accounting for nearly half of the market, a research firm said Thursday. Nokia and Motorola strengthened their positions in the marketplace, accounting for 49.8 percent of sales. Nokia increased its global market share by 2.3 percent to 31.9 percent. Motorola, on the other hand, was the second best-selling vendor in Western Europe, where it finished No. 5 a year ago. The company finished the quarter with 17.9 percent of the market.

Samsung came in third with a 12.8 percent market share, followed by LG, 6.5 percent; and Sony Ericsson, 6.2 percent.

Sales in Western Europe and North America were driven primarily by phone replacements for older models. In emerging markets, falling average prices for phones boosted sales. Nokia and Motorola manufactured about half of all mobile phones sold worldwide during the second quarter of 2005, according to statistics published by the research institute Gartner.

Recently i came across an interesting application which enables you to have PTT ( push to talk) in your phone, even if this feature is not factory built in! For those who don’t know what it means, it is kinda like a walkie talkie way of communication. You press a button, record a message, press the green button on your phone, and the sound is sent over the GPRS to anyone anywhere in the world!

The delay of the message is around 5 seconds, which makes it more than acceptable. This means that you can now walkie talkie to anyone in the world over GPRS for just a fraction of the cost for a regular call! The application is available both in Symbian and Java format.

About getting the application,all i can say is: Google!

Samsung d500 is being praised all around the world as one of the best phones of all time, not including smart phones. There is some truth in it, since it was the first phone to unite MP3 reproduction on a satisfactory level, megapixel camera and bluetooth / irda connection in one device. Samsung d500 is fully multimedial, and still fits in any pocket!

D500 comes in two colors - black and silver. My impression was that the silver version is a lot better, since the black d500 has some plastic pieces on the side which look to me almost blue, and the polished plastic on the front of the phone looks sleazy and cheap.

Samsung d500 is a slider phone, which has become a kind of company’s trademark. The slider stile is very popular around the globe, and so this model was destined to succeed from the beginning. D500 is a bit bigger than older Samsung sliders, but nothing serious. If anything, it just makes it easier to open the phone. The screen on d500 is clear, sharp and shows nice colors-262 144 of them !It is better than most of the other phones, but can be compared to newer Motorola and Sharp models, which also have some of the best quality screens. The menu has suffered some changes, and they have been good ones. It looks a lot better, the icons are much better drawn than in previous Samsung   models. However, what bothers me is that there is no option to assign a specific melody to sms messages or organizer alarms! This function just doesn’t exist! I was forced to use stupid preinstalled melodies for sms and alarms, even though I had a lot of my own sounds that I have installed…..those I could only use for calls.

Mp3 player is similar to older Samsung models, nothing new there. Equalizer exists ,but just for fun it appears, since I haven’t heard the difference when I changed the settings. The reproduction is satisfactory though, and I managed to fit a little under a hour and a half of decent quality music into the phone. The headphones are of good quality, and they connect through the usb port on the side of the phone, the same place that Sound Mate goes to. Sound Mate is just an external speaker, nothing special about that! It does enhance the sound but the phone looks amazingly ugly with it! The strange thing about the headphones is that they are always silver, even if you got the black version of d500!It seems kinda stupid, since silver headphones on a black phone look really ugly, like they don’t belong there at all. Since the designers of d500 paid so much attention to everything else, it’s strange that they left this out…

The Samsung d500 has an 850 mAh li-ion battery, which provides a solid 2-3 days of normal use. If using the camera a lot or listening to MP3’s frequently, the autonomy will fall to one- one and a half days. Nothing strange about this, I was satisfied with these results.

What’s new about Samsung d500, is that this is the first Samsung phone to have a fully operational IR port, which you can use to transfer all of the files from the phone to another phone or PC. It also supports Bluetooth, which is also a first for the company. The bluetooth connection with the PC went ok, no problems there. The bluetooth handsfree headset worked a little bit shaky, though.I have tried the headset which came in the package (which is always black ,so it looks kinda shitty with a silver phone),and it had moments when the connection simply got lost! This however was of little importance to me, since I usually used the regular headphones for MP3 and I would just talk through them if a call comes through while I’m listening to music.

Another thing that amazed me is that there is no voice dialing! None at all! What were they thinking? No call recording either! I hope that this will be corrected in the newer versions….

The overall feeling is that Samsung d500 is a solid phone, with a lot of features and good performance, but with a few strange and big mistakes. After a week of having this phone, I seriously started thinking about replacing my Motorola V3 with d500, but in the end I decided that for now I will stay with what I have and wait for something a bit better from Samsung…at least something with a memory card slot!

To those that care about good design, decent camera, and a solid quality MP3 player, I recommend Samsung d500 as a good solution.