Is the Sony Ericsson K750i a good upgrade?

I’ve had a Nokia 6320 or something like that for well over a year so I think it’s about time I treat myself to a mobile phone upgrade on my Meteor account. My brother bought a Sony Ericsson K750i, I had a brief play with it and I’m impressed. This review from last year paints a rosy picture also but it’s only one of a number of phones available from Meteor.

What do I need my mobile phone to do besides the basic calling functions?

• A half-decent camera would be nice. I don’t want a 1.3MP sensor! The K750i has a 2MP sensor. That will do nicely.
• I’d prefer a radio to an mp3 player but having both would be a bonus.
• A messaging system that deletes all reports with one push of a button is very desirable. Some of the Nokias make you delete the delivery reports one by one!
• I don’t like clam shell phones, but I could be swayed.
• I don’t care about owning the newest and greatest phone on the market and I’m price conscious. As my bills are low each month I want to go for the cheapest call package which Meteor offer. That would be Meteor 60 I think.

Decisions, decisions. I probably won’t get a chance to go into a Meteor store today but maybe sometime over the next few weeks.

Update! I bought the Sony Ericsson W810i. Here’s my mini review and initial impressions. There’s not much between it and the K750i that I can see except:

• It comes with speakers which could be useful for the radio/mp3 player but probably not.
• It has a 512MB memory stick duo card.
• Battery life is reduced.
• The styling is a little different. The camera doesn’t have a slide-open cover.

Initial impressions are good except:

• When texting, the predictive text engine, T9, pops up a small window with a choice of words or symbols by default. I turned that off. Choosing a new word requires the use of the small joystick instead of the * key. Something I’ll get used to, but so far it means I need to type 2-handed.
• Delivery reports are switched off too, but that’s been the case with every phone I’ve owned. As Donal said in the comments, the report doesn’t go into my inbox! Woo!
• The SPACE character shares the # key instead of the 0 key. It’s a minor niggle but I find the space in the middle of the keyboard is easier to tap with my large hands.
• The SIM card is a pain to get out requiring 2 fingers to push and pull it out.

Those are mostly minor problems, and some are from familiarity with Nokia phones. My first phone was a Panasonic and it had the space character on the # key too so I know it’ll become second nature to me eventually. I like the camera. It’s a 2MP sensor, adjustable exposure value, white balance and even has an illuminating light. Movies are stored in 3gp format but I’m sure there are ways of converting them to an online-friendly format if I look. The Walkman app looks promising and I’ll play wih it a little more once I’ve added a few mp3s to the memory stick.

The W810i has a handy panorama feature where the phone will stitch together 3 photos to make one larger image. It displays a semi-transparent portion of the previous image on the left of the screen for overlap purposes to allow you to line up the next shot. It works quite well too. Here’s a shot from O’Brien’s Sandwich Bar in Blackpool shopping center this morning.