Introduction

Sony Ericsson has unveiled the long awaited successor to the T630 through a series of announcements. Aided with smartphone capabilities, this phone has all the makings to become a bigger hit than the T610, the best seller last year worldwide.

Design

The exterior of Sony Ericsson has classic lines and curves, and strays little from the largely popular shape of the T610 and T630. However, the rear has been giving a complete makeover to conform to the new design template that SE has decided to incorporate in all new phones.

As described by SE, the phone has a 'dual front' design. The front shows a typical phone while the back side resembles a mini digicam. The phone casing is made from brushed aluminum, giving it a stable feel that plastic does not. Overall, the fit and finish of the phone is exceptional.

Also included is a new connector cover which fits snugly at the bottom and offers added protection against dust and moisture.

It has a compact size of 99 x 47 x 20 mm. The phone weighs in at 93 g and due to it's compact size, it fits easily in the hand. One drawback is that the phone does not sport exchangeable covers.

The built-in VGA camera located on the back of the K700. It supports three resolutions, VGA (640 x 480 px), QVGA (320 x 240 px), and QQVGA (160 x 120 px). Features include 2X or 4X digital zoom, and a photo light which improves overall picture quality in low light conditions. Other useful additions include automatic exposure control, and automatic white balance.

The camera can create panorama pictures by stitching together several different pictures into one large picture. This is done with the help of a unique image processing technique that is user friendly. The user simply takes a picture and then moves the camera slightly sideways and then takes a new picture. This can be repeated several times until the user selects to save the panorama where all the different pictures are stitched together.

But that's not all. The same lens can be used as a camcorder. With a maximum resolution of 176 x 132 px, the camcorder can take video clips encoded in the H.263 codec format.

Basic Features

The phone is tri-band 900 / 1800 / 1900 GSM, making it compatible with GSM networks in North America, Europe, and Asia. Additionally, the K700 comes with a 670 mAh Li-Ion battery that has maximum talk and standby times of 7 and 360 hours respectively under optimal conditions.

Screen

Sony Ericsson has been making spectacular displays recently and the K700 is no different. A brilliant 65K TFT display with a maximum resolution of 176 x 220 px. TFT, as opposed to STN, has the circuit transistors placed on the glass at the pixel location instead of the need to scan the pixel location. This results in greatly increasing the response time and allows for very fast refresh rates, which is needed for fast paced games as will be explained later.

The resolution is incidentally larger than the resolution found in all Series60 smartphones. This added height is used to good effect by displaying the network coverage even when the user is playing games etc. Due to highly effective white colored backlighting, readability is not compromised under any conditions. The K700's screen is top tier compared to most phones on the market today.

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