Sony Ericsson K800i Cyber-shot

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Performance And Image Quality
When we first powered up the phone, we were faced with a series of setup instructions to get our handset going. The phone is rated for 350 hours of standby time and 7 hours of talktime. During our battery test, we left the phone on an active call and managed to clock exactly 7 hours of talktime as claimed by the manufacturer. However, we have to quantify that other factors have to be considered (for example, the user's relative position to a base station) when testing for battery life. You can also expect the juice to deplete faster as you use more features.

We didn't encounter any major issues while reviewing the K800i though we felt that the phone's menu took a while (about 2 seconds) to load. Voice call quality was decent but the speakerphone volume was a tad too soft during video calls.

The K800i produced surprisingly high-quality day images for a camera-phone. There was no way to select the ISO settings, but from our test images, it seemed the sensitivity level started from ISO 80 and went all the way up to a maximum of ISO 400. Noise was well contained though slightly more evident at higher ISO settings. For a small sensor, it's inevitable that there would be some barrel distortion at the corners of our pictures, which resulted in buildings looking a little slanted and purple fringing in heavy backlit shots. Colors were otherwise rich and vibrant.

Even though the camera's performance still needed a little tweaking to be on par with dedicated digicams, it wasn't crippling. We turned on the camera in just over 3 seconds after sliding down the lens cover. The unit was able to lock focus in most conditions in about 2 seconds, although it took a bit longer in more challenging lighting environments.

There's no optical zoom on the K800i's camera which we'd have loved to see. Its 16x digital zoom did make up for the lack, though at the expense of deteriorating image quality. We didn't know how far we had zoomed in on an image since there was no indication on the display; but we figured picture quality started to drop off somewhere at the middle of (we're guessing 8x) the status bar.

Obviously, having an onboard Xenon flash has its advantages and one very minor disadvantage. During our review, the built-in white light had an effective distance of about 3m and helped produced better-exposed pictures. However, for those who have a tendency to use their phone's LED photolight as a torch will have to look elsewhere or settle with the glow from the mobile's display or the infrared illuminator.

Of course, this camera-phone isn't perfect (yes, we're nitpicking) despite its full-featured offering. We could save as many pictures as we wanted, as long as there's enough memory space, either on the phone or on an M2 card. What is missing compared with digicams were exposure compensation and ISO controls, along with a histogram display during playback. We figured it would be too much to ask for aperture- and shutter-priority settings at this stage on a camera-phone.

Overall
The Sony Ericsson K800i is a competent camera and phone rolled into a sleek form factor design. Decent day images are what surprised us most, though there's still ample room for improving night snaps and general camera performance. Still, the K800i performed beyond our expectations and with the only lapse being the lack of a bundled Memory Stick Micro and the sticker price.