Pretty, curvaceous, a little slow - meet the bimbo of the phone world. Join Anthony Newman as he eyes up the Sony Ericsson Z200.
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It was a bit of a departure for Sony Ericsson late last year when it announced an exciting, stylish new clamshell design to join its phone portfolio. Aimed at fashion-conscious consumers with no need for advanced features, design was clearly a priority for this phone. But is the Z200 all style and no substance?
 | Sizeable but still sexy; the Z200 wins on looks, but is short on features
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Exterior
Sony Ericsson has gone all-out to make the Z200 gorgeous, and they've succeeded. With the main shell finished in white, with silver highlights and black buttons, it stands out in a crowd. The sturdy clamshell form-factor is itself not common for the company, and with its curvy figure it's both unique and attractive.
An external aerial takes the form of a loop, reminiscent of a car's spoiler; changeable covers for the flip are included in the box in stunning crimson and pearly white. But the most obtrusive feature of the Z200 is its circular, external display, complete with pale backlight.
In size, the Z200 isn't light (at 98 g), nor small (at 96.4 x 52 x 25.4 mm), and the curves make it feel bulky. But it is well-built, with a sturdy and positive flip and only a little creaking.
Once open, the curves are replaced by a squarer layout. A small, square screen is framed in chrome on the top side, and the buttons face it across an expanse of white and pale silver. It's not as pretty inside as out, but it's far from ugly.
Ergonomics
Sony Ericsson's buttons have never been awful, but rarely great, either. Because it's a clamshell, the Z200 has more space inside, meaning the keypad isn't cramped. Little silver keys sit flush with the surface, and give consistent feedback with a soft click. Backlit in orange, they're fairly visible in the dark, too.
The directional pad is odd. The central action button is recessed within a ring of four direction keys, all finished in reflective metal. It looks uncomfortable and unusable, but is actually spacious and easy to use. Lastly for the buttons, a volume rocker in black plastic sits on the outside edge.
Features
Featuring tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz and GPRS with a WAP 1.2.1 browser, the Z200 has standard radio connectivity, complete with an IR port. Two screens grace the unit: inside, a 128 x 128 12-bit (4,096 colour), which is a pleasure to behold, very clear and bright. Considering it's only 12-bit, the colours are great, and so we'd applaud this as one of the best screens of its type that we've seen.
Outside is a unique circular LCD (well, the LCD is square but its portal is circular) in monochrome, which scrolls useful information and displays an analogue clock when idle. Its backlight is a pale colour that really shows the screen off.
In terms of audio, the Z200 features pretty average 40-voice polyphonic ringtones, with 1 MB of storage for downloaded or composed tones, as well as wallpapers for the colour screen.
We were surprised to find that the Z200 doesn't support MMS. And although it allows users to download Mophun games, Java games are out. Consequently, it's some way behind the leading edge even for consumer handsets. Comparable phones from Samsung et al have more features in a smaller package.
Other features include a decent organiser package and the usual utilites. OS features of note include profile changing for events, attractive themes, melody composer, the great Sony Ericsson phone book, and three included games.
Performance
Despite the external aerial, the Z200 gave us fairly poor GSM reception. Voice quality was pretty good, and the alert and ringtones had decent volume and quality.
In use, the menus were generally responsive and pretty, however, a critical flaw was rapidly exposed, one that didn't plague its ancestors. Text input has always been slow on Sony Ericsson handsets, but the case of the Z200 is particularly poor as the phone actually loses letters if the user types too fast as opposed to just catching up in its own good time. In the case of T9, this makes for misrecognition and incredible frustration. Furthermore, one needs not be a speed demon to overwhelm the handset.
Battery life was average, as we're used to from this manufacturer. The battery is a Lithium Ion Polymer unit rated at 670 mAh and gives approximately three to four days of moderate usage.
Availability
The Sony Ericsson Z200 is available now in a range of markets - although not the USA - and sells in the 200 EUR range without subscription.
Price and availability
The will start selling for TBA () in November 1999.
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