Screen

The 4K-color external LCD display measures 80 x 101 pixels high and offers at-a-glance phone status and access to some phone features without opening the clamshell.

The standby screen for the external display shows the carrier, time, date, signal strength, battery charge level, and other information. However, the screen fades out and uses white numerals to tell time. It is so dark that it is essentially unreadable when not activated by pressing one of the side buttons to wake it up.

The internal LCD display is built on TFT (Thin Film Transistor) technology and provides better performance and contrast which makes it more viewable in sunlight than the external screen. It measures 128 x 160 px in portrait mode and has 65K-colors, allowing for high-quality color imaging and video.

For a TFT screen, the circuit transistors are directly on the glass which allows for brighter and more vivid colors and faster refresh rates. The drawback to the TFT LCD is that they use more power than an STN (Super-Twist Nematic) which is why the external screens often use STN to prolong battery life. To conserve power the screen fades to black after 15 seconds if no buttons are pushed, a setting that can not be changed.

With the 4K- (external) and 65K-color (internal) LCDs on the Z525a, Sony Ericsson has failed to keep up with the rest of the industry as 262K-color displays which offer great performance and contrast have become standard. Many of the high-end phone manufacturers have even begun producing 16.7 million color screens - a far cry from Sony Ericsson's 65K-color screen. While the Z525a's screens may be satisfactory in some conditions, they often need to be shielded to be viewed in the sunlight.

Audio

The Sony Ericsson Z525a supports up to 40 simultaneous chords which allows for a strong performance of polyphonic ringtones. With its built in MusicDJ sound synthesizer program, the phone can also be used to create, edit, and send ringtones in MIDI format.

The Z525a also has MP3 ringtone capability as well as the ability to record its own ringtones. Music or voice can be recorded directly as a ringtone through the speaker although there is some loss in quality. The Z525a has the all the features to make it very capable as a portable MP3 player but with only about 16.0 MB of memory and no expansion slot, less than 10 songs could be stored on the phone, rendering it essentially useless.

The media player software will allow it to play and store MP3s up to 192 kbps and includes an equalizer to allow the bass, treble, and voice levels to be adjusted. It also allows the user to sort the limited number of songs it can hold into folders and simple playlists and will support audio files in MP4, M4A, 3GP, AAC, AMR, and WAV - in addition to MP3.

Blue lights around the rim light up in eight different patterns that sync with melodies to match individual callers. The phone's unique light effects will respond to the rhythms and beats of the music which is just another in a long line of fun and innovative features of the Z525a.

With an MP3 player and the Z525a's ability to create and record songs, the lack of an expansion slot and limited memory is rather disappointing. While the Z525a's purpose with PTT and strong messaging features is to keep in touch, Sony Ericsson may have missed an opportunity to keep up with an emerging trend.

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