With the wide variety of mobile phones available on the market, a phone needs to have something truly remarkable to set it apart. The Sony Ericsson C150 doesn’t exactly exude originality or innovation but it is a solid little handset that is sure to please.
It is a mid to low end phone with fairly simple but effective features and a blistering fast interface. In additional to an attractive design, it also has an intuitive, flashy and colourful interface that makes it look cool while also being highly functional.
Its biggest selling point is a 3.2 megapixel Sony Cyber-shot camera. The lens and flash are hidden behind a metal plate which slides back, effectively switching the phone over to camera mode. The picture quality is very good for a 3.2 megapixel model but suffers from noise issues under low light making it less than ideal to take snap shots while clubbing. Since it has a fixed lens there is no zoom features when taking shots at three megapixel but if you are prepared to drop down to two megapixel or less, you can achieve a certain level of digital zoom – although the results are naturally going to pixilate the more you zoom in. It also has face detection, various image editing features and digital filters. The flash is only a basic LED and as such doesn’t work as well as xenon flash based phones.
For a candy bar phone it has a good number of applications including a web browser, Google maps and multimedia tools like Video/ Music Jukebox and MusicID. Even though MusicID is a few years old now, it never ceases to amaze. All you need to do is take a recording of a piece of music and it is sent to a server which tells you what you are listening to. The web browser works well but isn’t quite as speedy as the Opera browser found on the iPhone.
The number pad on the face of the phone is quite small, so if you have large fingers you will probably find yourself using fingernails to type. The navigation buttons work well and on the whole the phone feels quite sturdy. The screen is a good size for this type of phone and allows for excellent resolution for on-screen elements like icons and video. The internal speakers are adequate but don’t produce enough volume to project clear audio such as music without a measure of distortion. When it comes to alarms and ringtones, the speakers do a great job of jolting you out of a deep sleep or irritating its fair share of peak hour commuters.
Battery life is quoted at 400 hours of standby time and 10 hours of talk time using GSM, or 350 hours of standby and 4 hours of talk time using 3G.
On the whole the C510 is a good all-round phone. It doesn’t have an insane number of features but it has enough to make it a worthwhile purchase. It isn’t the best camera phone out there either but as a mid-range model, it is a worthy purchase. It may not be high end but that is the beauty of it – It’s not trying to be. It holds ground for those that want a great looking camera phone that does the basics with a few bells and whistles but doesn’t cost the earth.
The C510 is available now for the recommended retail price of $389.
