Here is my mini review of the Sony Ericsson K750i.

I took the sim out of my K700i and put it and the battery into the K750.

First impressions
When you open the box and see all the bits and bobs you feel that you have everything you need. Normally the data cable is an extra and the 64mb memory card would be a tiny 8mb or 16mb, if you are lucky. So in all you have 100mb of memory to start with. When you pick up the phone and put the battery and sim into it (the memory card was already installed) you get a feel for the solid and tactile design. The aluminium slider over the lens is cool in your hand and gives a satisfying click. It even had a 75% charge in the battery so I could have a good play with this new toy before charging it overnight.

You turn it on and the screensaver, which can be changed to you own personal image, springs into life in 19 seconds, then the main wallpaper and desktop screen appears. Another 9 seconds and my BT Genie logo appears and I can make a call.

The phone functions
As this is primarily sold as a phone I guess I should discuss that first, although the first thing I actually did was try the camera. On dialling a number you get the first feel for the new keypad. The buttons have a soft feel with a positive click. When the number starts to dial the left soft key says SPEAKER and the right is CANCEL. This is a great new feature as it saves you digging through the MORE menu for the correct option. Call quality is very clear through the phone ear piece, the hand free and the speaker.

The Camera
The main reason I wanted to upgrade from the K700 to the K750 was for the 2mp camera. I take approx 2000 photos a year between the k700 and my Minolta Dimage 4mp digital camera, having a 2mp camera in my pocket will help me catch some of the "moments" that I currently miss or only have a VGA copy from my K700.

You can select if you want the images to go to the memory card or the phone memory.

From Standby even if the keypad is locked you just have to slide the aluminium lens cover open and the camera function activates. Within 3 seconds the camera is ready to take pictures. Using the 1,4,7 and * keys you can select Settings, macro, night and light functions respectively. You then half press the shutter button and you see the white rectangle in the centre of the screen change to green when the auto focus has worked its magic. Then by fully pressing the button the shot is taken. Within 5 seconds the image is saved and being displayed on the screen. You can at this point send it or by clicking the shutter button again the camera is set back ready to take a follow-up photo. Once you are back ready to take the next photo you can then go into the view mode using the top soft key and browse all the images in the memory.

There is a burst mode that takes 4 photos at the 640 x 480 on Fine or Standard) resolution with ~1.5 sec interval between shots. Panoramic is similar to the k700 and the frames allows you to add frames to you r images for a bit of fun.

You can also have a date and time stamp. It puts a very small date and time stamp in the bottom right corner of the image.

You can change the image quality from the 1632 x 1224, 640 x 480 or 160 x 120 and 2 quality settings of standard and fine. I will personally only use the highest setting for all pictures as I have a 512mb memory card. You may be saying to yourself tat this will then stop you from sending the image as an MMS, but I found that when you try to send the image the K750 prompts you that "message is too large resize picture?". When you click yes the original ~500kb is reduced to ~50kb ready for sending. You then add any other content, add a recipient and send. Simple as that.

Macro mode is just superb, I have taken photos from 2 inches to infinity in macro mode and they all turn out in focus. The close ups are just amazing. Crisp clear shots.

The digital zoom if a good gimmick but as it reduces the overall quality of the image I don't see the need to have it. The file size reduces to about 25% of the non zoomed image and software you can get for the PC will do a better job of cropping the image and keeping some of the quality.

The picture light is a twin LED on the k750 so it gives a lot more light than the K700, but it is still good for close-up work but you will need the accessory flash for reasonable pictures. The lights start bright but when you fully press the shutter button they increase in brightness by more than double as the shot is taken.

Using the light I took a full quality/size image of a form in macro mode. This image could be kept as a copy and is readable. so it can also be used as a scanner/copier.

The video.
There are 2 sizes of video capture 176 x 144 and 128 x 96 which are limited to 10 seconds. I think this is the limit for sending a video as MMS. But if you select the 176 x 144 size you can then set the quality to high and you can record unlimited length, depending on your free memory. If a video is recorded on high quality you can FF and Rewind it as you watch. Again this is a great gimmick and has some fun uses.

MP3 player
The second main reason for upgrading the k700 was the lack of memory for the MP3 player. I am no music expert and the actual quality of the sound is not paramount to me. I typically rip cds at 40b/sec and the quality is fine. At this level a typical track is just over 1mb so on the standard 64mb memory card you could have 60 tracks (5 albums). Once you have some tunes loaded you are ready to go.

The volume and quality of the sound from the headphones is better than the K700i. Using the equalizer helps improve the sound a little more, but as I said I am no music expert and I could improve things bit using a higher ripping setting.

When the phone is in standby and locked you must have the headphones plugged in to use the quick keys. Just 1 press starts to play the last music you were listening to, this can be changed in the settings to either the radio, MP3 or the last thing you were listening to. You can change the volume and also skip the tracks by holding in the up or down volume buttons.

When in the media player you can create playlist by simply selecting tracks or albums from the music folder.

Entertainment
Games - It comes with Aero Mission, Puzzle slider and super real tennis. VideoDJ - You can compile your own compilation of video clips or you can create a video of still images, add a soundtrack and text. PhotoDJ - You can edit you photos on the move, add text and lines etc. You can zoom and crop the photo too. MusicDJ - make your own sounds.

Accessories
alarms, calendar, tasks, notes, sync, timer, stopwatch, light, calculator, codememo.

My Shortcuts
The new button between the 2 soft keys has a programmable shortcut menu. You can add what you want to this list from the standard menus. You can't pick everything from the menus but it takes you part way there. At the top of the shortcut list you can see what applications are currently minimised and skip between them like the Alt Tab function on a PC.

The light is accessible through this as standard and it allows you to turn it on for 1 minute, on, off and SOS where it flashes the dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot until you turn it off. Nice touch.

Charging
You can charge the phone with the wall charger obviously, which I will leave in the house and at my desk at work I will use the USB cable as this also charges the phone when it is connected.

In summary, this phone is a seriously good camera, MP3 player and of course a phone. The battery life so far is ok, I managed to 60% drain it during the first 48 hours.