Sony Ericsson T700 Cup of T GSM Cell Phone Review >> Part 3

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The Media Center we know and like
In this Sony Ericsson T700 Cup of T GSM Cell Phone Reviews Part 3, Sony Ericsson T700 runs the flash-based Media Center, where you can find the Music Player 3.0 - a slightly abridged edition of Walkman player 3.0. The player supports numerous file formats, including MP3, AAC, AAC+, E-AAC +, WAV, WMA, M4A and MIDI plus the MegaBass equalizer preset and Stereo widening. The player can naturally be set to run in the background. Sound is rich and crisp - as long you're using the player with a good headset, that is. If you are not willing to use the media player step-by-step structure, you can directly play a track through the file manager with its classic flat tree structure. The interface colors of the Media center vary across different themes. The video player in the media center supports fast-forwarding and rewinding, while the interface is simple and stylish. The video files are accessible via the file manager too. The Landscape mode can be set from both menus. Fullscreen mode and screenshot capability are some other extras at hand. You can save a frame of video and add it to the gallery. The Media center menu lists the Photo, Music, Video, TV, Games, RSS feeds and Settings icons. The settings menu is simple - you may opt for portrait or landscape modes. The Photo gallery stores the shots you've taken and prebundled or uploaded images, and offers some extra options like mark as favorite and photo feed. Latest Photo provides quick access to most recent photos. Camera Album is a thumb list for each month of the year. When a month is open, it reveals a 3 x 4 grid of photo thumbs. Scrolling down shows all the photos taken in the corresponding month. The highlighted photo is a bit larger for better viewing. The Pictures section opens again as a 3 x 4 grid of thumbs with non-camera images, such as the preinstalled wallpapers. When exiting the full screen view of a picture, it smoothly zooms out to thumb view. Generally, the Photo gallery is a powerful tool for conveniently managing a vast collection of camera photos with great customization capabilities. Photo Tags is a feature for displaying previously marked favorite photos. The Up key on the D-pad offers quick access to sending options like: send as Picture Msg, as email, to blog, via Bluetooth. Other than that, you can set a photo as wallpaper, screen saver, startup screen, and contact picture straight from the gallery. The well known Pan and Zoom and slideshow feature are also on board. Finally, the T700 is capable of putting standard GPS coordinates in images based on cell tower triangulation. Accordingly, picture browsing via the classic file manager is still possible, but kind of pushed aside with the timeline view missing. Now, that's a miss compared to T650. PhotoDJ, videoDJ and musicDJ are signature features for all Sony Ericsson phones, and are available here too. You can zoom in to the actual size of the picture or even beyond, yet extreme zoom in won't really do any good. Browsing full-res images didn't involve any lags at all, while zooming does take its time. The magnified section of the image loads in low quality, to only appear in full res after a couple of seconds. TrackID is accessible through its original location in the entertainment menu. The service itself has seen several changes to include features like "Find similar Music", "Send music info via SMS", "TrackID charts" and a very extensive "Artist info" section.

Adequate 3.2 MP Camera
Sony Ericsson T700 sports a 3.2 MP fixed-focus camera with LED flash. Image quality is the nice surprise we're saving for later on. The 3.2 MP camera offers a basic range of features but includes geotagging (based on cell-ID). The camera is capable of maximum image resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels with average file size of about 1 MB. The most notable feature in the interface is probably the Cyber-shot styling. Settings on toolbar with pop-up submenus and the Multi Menu are well known since K850 and do help the user experience. Traditionally, the viewfinder toolbar lets you control shoot mode, scenes, picture size, flash, self-timer, white balance, effects, and settings (Multi menu). Sony Ericsson T700 doesn't have GPS on-board but is capable of putting standard GPS coordinates in images based on cell tower triangulation. This seems to work quite fine with accurate GPS data in dense city areas, where cell towers are closely positioned. We are somehow uncertain about this level of accuracy in other areas with cell towers quite apart. When browsing tagged images in the gallery, you have access to a "View on map" tab from the options menu, which displays your location directly on the preinstalled Google Maps. If you pair the phone with an external GPS receiver, the geotagging feature automatically starts to use it to collect exact GPS coordinates for the images. That the toolbar is only enabled for one-way scrolling is a certain drawback. To put this straight - in order to reach the Multi Menu you have to pass all the other settings on the toolbar, as it's the last item there. Looped browsing of items on the toolbar should be an option, as with the camera interfaces of competing brands. The limited camera features and the lack of autofocus may have made you rush to a conclusion about image quality. We for one were pleasantly surprised with the images T700 produced. What you'll notice is pleasingly mild sharpening and the so typical Sony Ericsson purple fringing well under control. The levels of fine detail are relatively low though. In some images we see strange patterns around the corners of windows or walls comparable to the effect of strong level file compression. Generally, the camera samples of T700 are a bit above average compared to most of the other 3MP camera phones we've reviewed until now. T700 is also capable of capturing video but is strongly limited to the unacceptable QVGA resolution at 15fps recorded in mp4 format.

Web browsing
Sony Ericsson T700 has an Access NetFront browser v3.4. Elaborate web pages are rendered well and there are lots of configurable settings too. There is also a dedicated fullscreen mode. The other view modes include Landscape, Text only, Pan and Zoom, and Zoom page. The Panning/scrolling speed is also up to standard. The Sony Ericsson T700 web browser offers a virtual mouse pointer, which is a real pleasure to work with. Another interesting and practical feature is the "Find on page" option. It searches the loaded web page and the first match is immediately listed as soon as you type a letter. If are still not satisfied with this browser, you can always count on the superb OperaMini browser.

Connectivity on par
The connectivity options of T700 are quite up to the browser standard. Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and 3G with HSDPA are all on board, so there is virtually no spot on earth where you will be unable to connect. Besides the network-based connectivity, Sony Ericsson T700 offers the usual Bluetooth v2.0 and USB options. Bluetooth comes with A2DP support allowing listening to music on a stereo wireless headset. Last, but not least, there is also the M2 card slot which might just turn out to be one of the quickest means of transferring data on some occasions. The T700 supports local and remote synchronization of contacts and calendar events. Outlook and PC are covered, but you also get synchronization with remote servers. USB connectivity has four modes - one for file transfers and one for USB Internet - to put it simply, the second one is for using the phone as a modem. The third one is media transfer, which directly connects to the Windows media player, and gives full access to tracks placed on your phone, synchronization, play or sorting in playlists. The last one is for direct printing of images.

Getting organizing
In this Sony Ericsson T700 Cup of T GSM Cell Phone Reviews Part 3, the Sony Ericsson T700 offers a wide range of time-management features. There is an Organizer icon in the main menu and it contains several applications: File manager, Applications, Video call, Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Synchronization, Timer, Stopwatch, Light, Calculator, and Code memo. The Calendar offers monthly, weekly and daily views. When you add a birth date in the phonebook, the phone prompts adding it to the calendar. Tasks can be two types: simple Tasks and Phone calls. Notes are written similar to messages; the T9 dictionary can be used here as well. Alarms are part of the main menu. There are five alarm slots available. Each one offers a lot of options - you can choose to repeat the alarm on chosen days of the week or everyday. Text and a picture can be added to the alarm. Furthermore, the alarm behavior can be defined in case the time it is due to go off comes while the phone is in silent mode. The Voice recorder has no limit to recording length, making the free memory available the only restriction. The Calculator is the regular Sony Ericsson one. The stopwatch and countdown timer are also the well known basic applications. The LED light on the back of the phone can also be used as a torch, thanks to the Light application. The LEDs can be on continually or for a period of one minute only. They can also blink out an SOS signal. Some other applications include MusicDJ and VideoDJ. VideoDJ is for making your own video clips by mixing already existing ones with still pictures, text and a variety of effects or for making basic cuts using special transitions and adding background music. MusicDJ is a very simple application for creating custom polyphonic melodies.

Applications
As far as the additional applications are concerned, the Sony Ericsson T700 comes with several applications preinstalled: AccuWeather.com, Converter, Dictaphone, and World Clock 3D. The AccuWeather app gives you up-to-date weather information for locations of interest to you. It provides detailed information about the current weather conditions in the selected region, as well as a 3-day forecast. You should bear in mind that it requires an internet connection and data charges may apply. The Converter handles seven different types of measures. It works with distance, volume, temperature, speed, weight, area as well as Tip calculator. It also has support for five different languages. The other very practical application is DictaPhone, which we see for the first time in a Sony Ericsson handset. The app is developed for Sony Ericsson by Communology and is available as a free download at the Sony Ericsson Fun & Downloads portal. DictaPhone records voice messages, which can then be edited and mixed, and you can even play with pitch and tempo. Sadly, it cannot be used to record a call. And finally, World Clock 3D allows you to spin the globe searching for a time zone. You can zoom in and out as you please. Of course you can also search by a city name.

Games are cool
The game section features three titles: JewelQuest2, Minigolf and Super Breakout. We found the Super Breakout to be the most entertaining among the preinstalled games. It has decent graphics and is full of block-breaking action over diverse levels and bonus stages you can unlock.

Location services and knowing your way around
Available for free download and compatible with a variety of mobile OS and Java-enabled handsets, the Google Maps for Mobile comes preinstalled in the T700. With Location services you can get help finding your way, view information about your current location and save your favorite locations. To use all features of the Location services internet access is a must. After defining a start and end location, the possible routes are being calculated with overall guidance, based on the available information in the database. With the GPS Enabler HGE-100, plugged in, Location service gets full GPS functionality, as well as A-GPS for faster satellite lock. This makes it possible to use navigation on the go, with turn-by-turn guidance. Two different view modes are available - Satellite and Map view. Traffic information is another important feature here. The user interface is nice and intuitive. With a plugged in GPS receiver, the Status info application displays the current activity in km/h for a 60 minutes period. The GPS connection status is indicated on the second tab of this application. Of course, saving your most recent routes is as easy as it could be. Within several clicks, a title, description and position is all you need to save a favorite location.

Final words
It may look like Sony Ericsson are playing the cheap easy way with T700. All it takes is dress up a Walkman, take here, add there, now scramble and there you go – a new launch. Dodgy as it sounds, it works more than fine with the latest T-series handset if you are willing to forgive the loss of design inspiration or if it's your first Sony Ericsson bar. The design team has done a great job in making the T700 an excellent bar true to the Sony Ericsson heritage. The only place they've failed is making it stand out among its own. When you set your eyes on it, you immediately recognize it as a Sony Ericsson handset. But guessing exactly which model, would be a difficult task for the not so keen eyed among us. No matter how you feel about the design reused over and over again, the manufacturer seems to have a point. The T700 styling seems capable of inspiring a more mature and sophisticated demand than the thin Walkman W890, which means a firmer foot in the midrange for the company. Being part of the T-series is an honor that comes with obligations and the T700 is up to the task. The exceptionally friendly handling and probably the best feature phone interface give it a definite edge.

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