On the other hand the front of the handset is a little more exciting, containing, as it does, the camera, and the touch sensitive controls and OLED display that allow the user to control music playback when the handset is closed. This is important because the bundled headphones offer no advanced music controls so this interface will be the primary means of controlling music whilst you are on the move, but we’ll look at that in more detail later. The camera is a 1.3 mega pixel effort, another sign that this is a lower end handset and also that this is a handset that is focused on music. I’m not going to talk too much about the camera here so we’ll leave that for now.
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The only other feature of note on the outside of the handset is the speaker, situated next to the camera on the top of the handset. It’s isn’t exactly a Bang & Olufsen affair we’re dealing with here, but then few handsets produce a decent sound through their speakers and especially not at the lower end of the market.
Opening the handset up we are presented with a simple layout of keys and an adequate, if not especially large, 176 x 220 pixel 262.144 colour screen. There is a thick black border surrounding the screen and one feels that this space could have been better utilised in providing a larger screen. The screen itself is clear enough, being comparable to other recent Sony Ericsson handsets and is neither spectacular nor abysmal. It’s a good enough screen for general use e.g. navigating the UI, reading texts, watching the odd video clip, etc.
The keypad is elegantly laid out, with clear spaces between the buttons, and the buttons clearly labelled. The keypad continues the simplicity motif in that it doesn’t look cramped or over crowded. The navigation buttons at the top of the keypad have a metallic finish and this serves to highlight them in the keypad and gives them and ties in with a more tech/futuristic look.
To get into figures for a moment the handset measures 92 x 49 x 16 mm and weighs in at 100 grams on the nose. The battery is a BST-39, which holds 920 mAh of goodness.
