Sony Ericsson K850i: Putting the ‘camera’ in the camera phone

Sony Ericsson is not the first handset maker to offer a five-megapixel camera phone. That distinction belongs to Nokia, which was the first to offer this stunning image resolution in its N95 last year.

Late last year, however, saw the debuts of two 5-MP camera phones from Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

One of the advantages of being the latecomer is that you get to study the opposition and then hone your own arsenal against them.

The P23,990 5-MP Sony Ericsson K850i Cyber-shot is no exception. For one thing, it takes obvious inspiration from the Sony Cyber-shot series by inheriting several design cues from its digital camera brethren.

It has a dedicated power button and a slider that switches between camera, video recording and playback modes.

Even the slide-out cover located on the bottom of the device — where the battery and SIM and Memory Stick Micro cards are situated — is very similar to the battery/memory card compartments of compact digicams.

Fortunately, the K850i lives up to its illustrious Cyber-shot name. Pictures taken in low-light conditions show good, if not exceptional, clarity and brightness. This is made possible by the phone’s built-in Xenon and LED flashes; yes, the K850i uses two types of flash.

Other notable features on the Cyber-shot front are a 16x digital zoom, white balance, selectable ISO (Auto, 100, 200, and 400), image stabilizer, photo fix, scene modes, and metering modes.

Just like in some of Sony Ericsson’s later Cyber-shot-branded handsets, the K850i also features the BestPic function which takes nine photos with one click of the shutter and lets you select the best shot from the group.

A nice and useful touch is how, when holding the camera mode, the “3,” “6,” “9,” and “#” keys light up and four icons appear — one on each key — as shortcut buttons for camera settings.

The chunky K850i’s glossy black surface looks classy — but is unfortunately a smudge magnet. This can be troublesome for the lens as a layer of clear plastic protects the automatic lens cover.

You have to make sure to wipe the plastic cover if you don’t want fingerprints ruining your shots.

The user interface is intuitive, even for first-time Sony Ericsson users. My only caveat is the four-way navigational pad, which is thin.

The pad wraps around the “2” and “5” keys — and to select an item, you need to move your finger away from the pad and onto the touch-sensitive selection buttons at the lower edge of the display. Although these touch-keys are responsive, they’re tiny and may take a while to get used to.

The media interface of the quad-band K850i has been redesigned to resemble the interface of Sony’s own PSP handheld gaming console.

A sensor detects if the phone is held vertically or horizontally and adjusts the image display to portrait or landscape accordingly.

The phone also offers access to PlayNow (a music download service that lets you listen to samples before downloading the song), Track ID, FM radio, voice recorder, HSDPA/3.5G connectivity, Bluetooth with A2DP, USB connectivity, and Java games.

The 40MB onboard memory can be expanded via M2 or microSD cards.

All things considered, Sony Ericsson’s K850i is easily one of the three best camera phones available on the market today.