Sony Ericsson K618i

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By Luke Anderson, CNET.com.au
Oct 16, 2006

Sony Ericsson's K618i is a 3G phone exclusive to local operator M1. Only available in black, the K618i won't win any style awards, though we wouldn't call it an ugly duckling either. We think it's a clean, easy to use handset that will appeal to a broad range of users.

Editors' note:

This is a review based on the V630i unit in Australia. According to Sony Ericsson, the K618i and V630i sport the same features and looks but comes with a different branding and box design. The V630i is built exclusively for Vodafone in Australia. In Singapore, the K618i is available exclusively from mobile operator M1.

Design
Weighing in at 91g, the K618i just scrapes in under the K610i's weight. It's a reasonably compact, pocket-friendly handset, too, with dimensions of 102 by 46 by 17 mm.

The K618i looks a lot like the K610i. The size, layout and overall look of the phone mirrors its sibling, with the black-and-charcoal finish differentiating it from the K610i's white, silver and red casing.

The phone sports a bright, 176x220-pixel screen that supports up to 262K colors. It sits above the menu buttons which glow orange when pressed. The side-mounted volume rocker and music button as well as rear speaker are accented in orange.

Features
The K618i has plenty of features, though most are pretty standard in any 3G phone today.

A built-in 2-megapixel camera can be accessed via the side-mounted camera button which flips the screen on its side for a landscape view, to take photos. The panorama function is a good addition, allowing you to merge three photos taken side-by-side into one panoramic photo. Photos can be sent via MMS, Bluetooth or, alternatively, the included mobile blogger application allows you to upload photos to a Blogger.com account.

QuadraPop and WPT Tennis are pre-installed games, as well as several demos, including Tetris, Pac-Man, Ridge Racer and Extreme Air Snowboarding.

On the connectivity side of things, the K618i has Bluetooth, GPRS, and tri-band support. The USB mass storage feature lets you drag-and-drop files straight from your PC. E-mail support is also included.

The NetFront browser is built-in for Web access, which works fine on Vodafone Live but doesn't suit regular sized Web pages that aren't designed for mobile screens. Any Web page with too much content will become a burden to scroll through. A RSS reader lets you keep up-to-date with your favourite RSS feeds.

In addition to being a phone, Sony Ericsson is pushing the K618i as a music device. As such, an integrated MP3 player is included as well as a stereo headset. The main menu button and left and right navigational buttons double as play/stop and forward and back buttons respectively, when playing tracks. The playback functions are marked clearly with corresponding icons.