Sony Ericsson S500i

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Features
Because it's not part of the Walkman or the Cyber-shot series, the S500i's multimedia features are rather Spartan. The onboard music player allows sorting of music by artists, tracks or playlist and comes with some preset equalizers and stereo-widening features. It doesn't have album art or other nifty features found on the Walkman phones. Connection to the PC and portable charger is via a proprietary port on the right edge of the phone and we could drag-and-drop files from our PC to the handset, and vice versa. Supported audio formats include MP3, AAC, AAC+, E-AAC+, WAV, WMA and m4a.

There's a 2-megapixel camera behind the top lid on the S500i. Again, you won't find fancy features like built-in flash, self-portrait mirror or even a dedicated shutter button. Maximum resolution is 1,600 x 1,200 pixels and you cannot zoom at this setting. The camera's auto white balance faltered under tungsten lights, which is a common issue even for digital cameras. Colors looked nicely saturated for our snaps in the day and the highlights were rather nicely controlled for a basic camera. When viewing up close, there's a bit of watercolor effect due to lack of details, but we don't see a big issue if it's for Web purposes or printing in 4R.

The S500i comes with a quadband GSM radio with support for Bluetooth stereo. An internal memory of approximately 12MB available to the user is supplemented by a Memory Stick Micro card slot. There's also an Access NetFront Web Browser with RSS feeds, onboard apps for quick correction of images and putting together short video clips, voice recorder and Bluetooth remote control facilities.

Performance
The S500i is rated for up to 9 hours of talktime and 15.4 days on standby. On moderate usage of making calls, sending text messages and listening to music, the 930mAh Lithium-polymer battery lasted about 2.5 days. Audio quality was decent, likewise when we channeled it through the onboard speakers.

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