Mini-Review: Sony Ericsson K600i

I got my hands on this little number recently when we bought it for my fiancee's parents. Since she has a 3G phone, we figured it'd be good if her parents had one too so that they can video call each other. I chose this model over others because its small, elegant and easy to use compared to Symbian-powered Nokias. Its a steal at RM 900 too, just about $290 CDN.

The appearance of the K600i is wicked. Its plastic, but anyone would be fooled into thinking its metal. Needless to say, the fit and finish is top-notch. Overall, the phone looks very stylish, but for the size of the phone, the display is a bit small. The resolution is 206x176 which is pretty standard these days. Its a little more colourful than most with 262k ability, but the difference is hardly noticeable. Weirdly enough, the screen should be identical to my W800i, but its not. The colours are actually very different. Slightly blue-hinged I think. From what I understand, this is a result of backlight difference rather than LCD. The buttons look real cool too, with the made-of-metal look and all, and because they're flush with the front face. This actually presents a problem though when you use them. Because of their flush mounting, they're a little harder to push than most people are used to. I read about this issue in other reviews, but I didn't realize its this prominent. The K600i uses the older style connectors at the bottom (not the newer ones found on the walkman series), which, in a way is good because you can charge and use the included handsfree at the same time.

The usage of the K600i is more or less just like any other recent Sony Ericsson phone. However, it doesn't have some of the new updates my W800i has. The animation in the menus is toned down a little, somewhere between the K700i and the W800i. I don't think it gives you the option to assign an MP3 as your SMS tone. Minor differences, but since its still sold as a new-ish phone on the market, the firmware should be the same as all the new SE phones. The biggest issue this phone has is that there is no expandable memory. For shame, because otherwise I think this model could have sold quite well. Speaking of sales, I haven't looked at exact number but I think the K600i is selling poorly. I base this on the ever-dropping price. When it first came out, it was about RM 2000 and now its RM 900. Its only been a few months! By comparison, the W800i debuted at RM 1900 and is now like RM 1790.

The camera at the back is a 1.3-megapixel, fixed-focus CMOS unit, and does a so-so job of capturing images. To put it in perspective, its not as good as the 1.3-megapixel unit in the S700i, but its a BIT better than the Nokia 1.3-megapixel cameras. The front camera is a VGA unit, I'm guessing very similar to the camera on the back of the K700i. Its OK for self-portraits to be viewed on mobile phones (not for PC viewing) and ideally suited to its purpose of video calling.

The K600i is a good, solid phone that is low-priced for a full-featured 3G dual-camera phone. Its amazingly simple to use for calling, video calling, SMS, MMS and light browsing, and looks very, very classy with its pseudo-metallic finish. The only real issue with it is the lack of expandable memory, and some minor gripes are the smallish screen (both size and resolution) actually) and flush-mounted buttons that can be difficult to push.

Bottom Line: You can't do 3G on a budget better than this K600i.