~* Disappointing run with Sony K530i *~. Review on Sony Ericsson K530i

I was always a devoted customer of Nokia because in six years of usage Nokia gave me very little to complain about. In between I had also tried Samsung and ended up with a very bad experience(Can you beat it, the phone went dead exactly one day after the warranty ended!). My requirement of a mobile is always limited to calls, sms and music and my basic nokia was giving me a fair enough service in that regard. So never felt the urge to change to a high end mobile just for showing off.

But finally I switched to a high end mobile just because I wanted more space to save my messages and contacts. So after a brief market survey I decided to go for Sony Ericsson K530i. On 12th Feb 2009, I bought a K530i(Customer no – 267700266, Invoice No – MH/2677/00001/ 2991) from The Mobile Store in Palm Beach galleria. The accessories that came along with the set was a charger, battery, headset and a Motorola Sling Bag(Don’t ask me why they give Motorola sling bag with a Ericsson set!).

*Report card:

*Working in mobile technology for three years, it was my natural instinct to test all the features of my new handset thoroughly before it would pass my customer satisfaction test.

Thus I began to ‘play around’ with my phone, a jargon used for random testing of mobile phone. And within half an hour I came up with at least 4 major problems which I am elaborating below –

1. When you are viewing a picture in the landscape(the picture will be horizontally aligned) mode, if you happen to receive a call, then the incoming call dialog with be displayed in landscape only. Ideally indifferent of which mode a picture is being viewed whenever a call comes the screen should revert back to the original alignment. Really don’t know how the Ericsson people missed out on such a big issue.

   
   




2. When you are using the headset for listening to music or the radio and if you don’t want to scroll manually to any particular song/radio station by using the navigation keys, then the only option left is to press and hold the volume up/down keys in the side of the phone. But can the developers give me a way out if suppose I have the phone in my pocket and wish to change the station without taking out the phone? Certainly Nokia has an edge in this – they provide the channel changing option via the headset itself.

   
   

3.While viewing the photo in the normal mode I cannot perform a zoom function. So everytime I need to zoom I have to first change to the landscape mode and then proceed. That’s too much work!

1. The highest volume of the ringtones are so low that one can hardly hear it from the adjacent room. I had to miss many important calls because of this, until I started taking my phone even to the washroom!

   
   




2. The 3G support video calling doesn’t work for video only works for voice calls.

   
   




3. The sim card holder is worst. I had to struggle for 5 minutes to take it out from the slot.

   
   




4. While typing a message, people who used to typing very fast will face some problems, as the letters come a tad slow.

   
   

8.If the smallest drop of water by chance gets into the speaker on the phone the voice goes ka-put. I almost had a heart attack when I couldn’t hear a thing after sweat drops entered the speaker. I had to put it under the sun for half an hour to bring it back to life. In a tropical hot country like India how this delicate darling expects to survive?

1. The receiver quality is so good that it catches all the surrounding noises and amplifies them so much that the person on the other end of the phone can’t help but squeal. This prevents me from calling up anyone in a noisy environment.

   
   




2. There is only a single socket for charging and plugging in the headset. So while I’m charging I cannot listen to songs via headset unless I buy a separate charger which has an extra socket to accommodate the headset.

   
   




3. Aac format of ringtones not supported

   
   

And many more itty-bitty problems are there. Some good features of the phone are:

1. The handset comes with a large 262k color screen which is a TFT type screen with a screen resolution of 176 x 220 pixels.

   
   




2. It’s a sleek phone. Dimensions of 102 mm x 46 mm x 14 mm and a total weight of only 92g make it easy to carry around.

   
   




3. The looks of the phone are very eye-catching

   
   




4. The picture quality of the 2MP camera is very good. Its almost as good as my Sony camera. One flip side is good pictures can only be taken if there is enough light. Night shots are full of noise.

   
   




5. The keypad ergonomics is very good.

   
   




6. Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP and USB v2.0 support

   
   




7. WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML(Net Front) and RSS feed facility

   
   




8. Sound quality is quite satisfactory. Though the sound quality while playing the radio is much better than that while playing a normal mp3

   
   

*Problem Begins:

One day out of the blue one limb of my headset stopped working. Since it was only two months after I had bought the phone, it was well within the warranty period. I took it to the service centre(situated in such a goddamn place that I spent half an hour just to locate it! It’s another story that the place looked just like a perfect Murder mystery scene) where they informed me, it would take a month to get a replacement. With no other options left I gave it to them(complaint Id – SES09KT211008, date-4.4.09).

Meanwhile my charger began to malfunction occasionally. I had to adjust it to a particular position and only then it would charge! Still it was fine till it was charging. I got a new headset on 9th may 09(Fault code -16, Action code – 12). The replacement was as good as the original one. So I was happy.

But my happiness was short lived. Yesterday(28th July 09) when I plugged in the headset I couldn’t hear a thing and I found out that again a limb of the replaced headset was not working! Will my miseries with this handset ever cease?

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