Sony Ericsson K790i Review

Every once in a while comes a phone that will want to make you throw or hide your own phone.The K790i is one such gem of a cell phone which will the send the expletives rolling from your mouth as you initially work your way around the phone.

Looks And Build Quality

Absolutely clean and uncluttered design. In hardware terms the K790i isn’t much to look at. Small (105 x 47 x 22 mm)and light (115g) with shades of slate grey and silver and white highlights. The front facing controls are dominated by a small joystick which is one of the better ones I’ve used. It is responsive and has plenty of travel. You can program its four directions for specific functions.

There are two absolutely tiny buttons to the far left and right of the joystick that need to be approached with a fingernail if you are to hit them accurately. One launches the web browser, the other is the Activity Menu key which contains four tabbed sections: these are more shortcuts to applications, web bookmarks, notifications about missed calls and new messages, and, helpfully the chance to close any running applications that might be slowing the handset down.

The hardware controls are very well thought through. Both softkey buttons and the joystick help you access features and settings quickly, and two further small buttons above the screen give access to more. One of these calls up thumbnail images regardless of what else you are doing with the handset at the time. If you have ever fumbled on a handset for a particular shot to show to a friend you will know how valuable this is. To the back of the handset is the USP of the phone, the camera, which is accessed by sliding a cover. Also present is a xenon flash which is nice and effective.

Screen and UI

Absolutely delicious. 262k at 240×320 pixels. And you can flip from landscape to portrait modes in a jiffy. The screen is pretty readable in bright sunlight too.

Performance

Nice and fast, is usually why people steer clear of Nokia’s and get Sony Ericsson’s. This one’s no exception. Everything usually loads up when you hit a key and there’s hardly any waiting period, except when you’re playing around with the images that have taken at the max resolution of 3.2MP’s.

Battery Life

Absolutely good(Li-Po 900 mAh ) .Talk time is a good 7hrs and you can play MP3’s continuously for around 11hrs. So looking at a real world scenario(around an hour of talking, 2 hours of music playback, and some shots with the camera), the battery should offer you juice for up to 2 days without the phone needing a dash to the mains.

Connectivity
A plethora of connectivity options greet you on the K790i, there’s GPRS Class 10, EDGE, HSCSD, Bluetooth v2, Infrared and USB 2.0. So you’re never probably gonna have a problem connecting to the world…

Music Playback

This is a SE phone, so you’d be forgiven to take for granted the fact that the phone is gonna be a good music player. And it does not disappoint. We plugged in the SE W810i’s earphones and I have to say, it has to be one of the best sounding phones around. Good enough whilst travelling anyway.

And oh, there is an FM player as well. Thank you very much.

Camera
When I wrote the article on the W800i sometime in 2005, I said it was the best camera at that time. Nothing new about this one, that it raises the bar for cell phone cameras to an all new high. I’ll just post the pictures taken from the phone and you can decide as to how good it really is. (Coming soon..)Video capture is in the ancient QCIF format which is not all that good, considering what the camera is really capable of.

Memory

The phone comes with 64MB of internal memory and comes with an expansion slot which accepts Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick Micro format. The size of the card is as big (or small rather) as the MicroSD cards, about as much as your fingernail. These cards are pretty expensive and a 2GB card can set you back by almost a Rs3-4000k.

Applications

The phone has so many applications that I can do little more than just list the highlights. You’ve got the usual ring tone composer, an excellent web browser, an RSS reader (God bless SE), video and image editors(quite effective, this one). Then there is the picture blogging fetaure. You take a picture, then you can choose ‘Blog this’. The picture is resized, and you give it a name and a description then send it to your photo blog. Et voila, the picture is now ready for the world to see!

Affiramtive!!

+Great Camera!

+Nice and fast interface

+Good large screen and resolution

+Good looks

+Good battery life

+Functional In built applications

Negative

-M2 memory expansion

-QCIF video capture

Price INR 16000-17000

Conclusion

A great buy at the current price. Its got just about everything you need and you should certainly be a happy soul buying it. Apart from the camera, there are loads of other nifty features that’ll seal the deal.

Rating 9/10

McLaren Mercedes MP4 20 in Mumbai

So, Johnnie Walker wants to announce that it has arrived in India and that too in style. So what better way to do it than use their association with the McLaren Mercedes F1 team.

They go out in all force and print ads in leading newspapers accross the country “Going Soon..” on 23rd and 24th December at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse.

And when we go there, we find out its meant only for members of that club, a sort of VIP event as of 23rd. But i’m a rebel. A born one, and never the one to let go of things so easily. I barged right in and had a word with the Johnnie Walker Managing Director(the man was really cool and nice, i must admit). The press was waiting, and so were some people who had come from far off places like Bangalore. They had to take the covers of the car.

And cellphones weren’t allowed as well. Why you ask? There was a race in progress, so due to the reasons best known to the club, phones were a strict no-no at that goddamned time. So I took permission of at least 4 top people in the club saying that we were from Johnnie Walker itself(God bless that Johnnie Walker MD for giving us this cracker of a idea) before clicking away some 4-5 photos. Good adventure. Whew!!

Sony DRU 820A DVD Writer review

I dunno why but my Hard Disk crashes with better alacrity than a Hollywood couple breaking up and thats the reason why i wanted a DVD Writer to back my data up. And they’re available pretty cheap these days too. So here’s a small brain storming session that took place,
Me : I want backup..(LimpBizkit’s Rollin playing in the background… Backup Backup, tell me what you wanna do now….)
Dad : SuperDad to the rescue!!
So me and my Dad sit down to discuss backup options
1) An iPod!!! (slurp…) or a flash based music player…Nah not feasible..
2) Some external HDD… But its still an HDD, sonny
3) A DVD Writer.. Now you are talking sense ma boy!!
So off we go to Lamington Road to pick up a Lite On drive which has been constantly acing Digit Magazine’s Test Drives since the last 2-3 years. Which certainly is no Taiwanese fluke..
This was my first time to Lamington Road and I was disappointed by how small the place was.
Anyways we hunted and hunted for a Lite On Super All Write but discovered it was out of stock everywhere. So we went to Rashi Peripherals and picked up a Sony DRU 820A. I wanted a LightScribe drive but sense prevailed and I brought some RAM for my comp. Ohboyohboyohboy.
And oh yes, if you are going to Lamington Road, do try Merwan bakery. Excellent stuff, but stupid ambience, so don’t take your girlfriend there. Or you’ll end up counting the days you were together..
Ok back to the DVD writer then.

1) Looks and physical interface

 

 

Sony doesn’t provide any optional bezels while Lite On does give 3(white, black and silver). So once brought, the bezel story ends right there.
One button and an LED are provided. No headphone jacks.

2) Tray
The tray doesn’t look fragile all right and the tray too has a neat mechanism. Fast almost till the end and slow towards the end. This should prevent the tray from maligning some years down the line. Now that’s smart, er… so what if I’m gonna throw this drive as soon as Blu Ray and/or a HD-DVD burners get cheap.

3) Software and other freebies

You get Nero 6.6 and that’s about it.. No DVD playback software, no nothing. Thank you very much..Moser Baer media has been used for all the below tests.
 

4)Read Speeds
Observed(Nero CD DVD Speed)(Average speeds)DVD+R (Single Layer) 10.62DVD+R (Double Layer) 9.01 

 

DVD+RW 8.97

5) Write Speeds
Observed(Nero CD DVD Speed)(Average speeds)

DVD+R(Single Layer) 11.98

DVD+R(Double Layer) 6.53

Conclusion
So this is a nice, fast and reliable writer and a true multi writer in every sense of the term. I know this review comes at a time when the next model is already out. And i’m pretty sure you’ll be pretty happy buying it. It supports writing at 18X, you see.

Pics from CDFreaks.com