Sony Ericsson's new Z600 clamshell boasts a 16-bit colour screen, integrated camera and Bluetooth - all at a comfortable price. Find out what Sindre Lia has to say about it.
Review summary of the Sony Ericsson Z600:
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 Price: $400.
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Full Sony Ericsson Z600 Review:
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Not too long ago, prices frequently ran into both the $600 and $700 USD ranges as soon as a mobile phone offered a clamshell form factor rather than the more common candybar design. Following the advent of smartphones, however, the status of clamshell phones isn't what it used to be, which has resulted in a much-anticipated reduction in price for such handsets. Sony Ericsson is right now making endeavours into this space with its low-end Z200 and the high-end Z600: we've put the latter under our looking glass.
 | Sony Ericsson's Z600 features exchangeable front and back covers
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Exterior
The Sony Ericsson Z600 is a clamshell phone measuring 90 x 48 x 27 mm when closed, and is 156 mm long when opened. In other words, it takes up quite a bit of space, and at a weight of 110 g it's not hard neither to notice nor feel in your pocket.
On top of the front of the phone, we find a monochrome status display with blue backlighting, showing call and messaging information, battery and reception levels and a clock. Below this, at the very bottom, we find the integrated digital camera with an adjacent vanity mirror; a hardware button for this is placed far up on the right side of the phone, while volume control buttons have their place on the left side. Incidentally, both the front and back covers of the Z600 are exchangeable.
A main attraction of clamshell phones is the natural protection offered for the main screen when folded. Sony Ericsson's Z600 is equipped with a bright 16-bit colour screen capable of displaying up to 65,536 vibrant colours - easily ranking as the most positive trait of the handset.
Ergonomics
Offering a spacious keypad with large buttons, the Z600 lies well in ones hand - although the aforementioned buttons are somewhat noisy in use despite being of the plastic kind. Virtually no adjustment is required to adapt to the keypad, however it is less than optimal for gaming: no wonder Sony Ericsson has brought forward a dedicated gaming controller for the Z600, dubbed 'Gameboard'.
Features
A long list of features are hidden behind the deceptively simple-looking Z600, including standard GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz WAN connectivity coupled with HSCSD and GPRS for data transfers. What's more, there's built-in modem functionality, an infrared port and Bluetooth, while serial and USB connections are also supported albeit there's no cable included. PIM applications such as a calendar, note book and phone book with room for approximately 500 contacts are all easily reached from the menu, which is an exact copy of that found in the much-lauded Sony Ericsson T610.
Furthermore, the Z600 offers support for concatenated SMS messages, MMS, e-mail (POP3, IMAP), WAP 2.0 and polyphonic ringtones, while other entertainment features include the Mophun gaming engine, J2ME support and an integrated digital camera with CIF (288 x 352 pixels) resolution. Although the current selection of games aren't much to write home about, the digital camera offers up quite a bit of fun despite its relatively poor resolution. To gain full advantage of the excellent main display, however, pictures taken at higher resolution than the built-in camera can offer should be retrieved.
Performance
During our testing period, the Sony Ericsson Z600 proved easy to use in all but a few cases. All main functions are quickly retrieved, and pictures taken with the digital camera can be sent to peers by means of a few key presses. The interaction between the keypad and the software of the phone for the most part performed well, but the message editor isn't always up to the task when inputting text as rapidly as possible. Also, the memory capacity proved to be somewhat restrictive at certain occasions.
The listed battery life of the Sony Ericsson Z600 is up to 8 days of standby time and 6 hours of talk time; our handset fell short of these claims with a standby time of approximately 5 days and 4 hours, respectively. Annoyingly, the Z600 does not signal when the battery is low - just when it's akin to empty.
Availability
The Sony Ericsson Z600 is now available throughout Europe and North America, and sells in the 425 USD range without a subscription.
Price and availability
The Sony Ericsson Z600 will start selling for $400 () in November 1999.
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