Quite possibly the ideal size for a business phone, the Sony Ericsson M600i is but a hair's width from scoring full marks in the messaging, productivity and browsing departments, hampered only by the smaller-than-the-competition sizes of its otherwise excellent touch screen and thumbboard. It also delivers a solid impression in every other department, with the near-sole disappointment being its lack of a bundled USB cable and USB charging support. Add good battery life and nice touches such as a scroll wheel, stereo Bluetooth audio and a clever, agenda-style standby screen, and what emerges is a winning recipe. Release: July 2006. Price: $500.
Pros: Compact size; great call quality; stereo Bluetooth included; convenient scroll wheel; solid battery life.
Cons: Lack of bundled USB cable; no USB charging.
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84% VERY GOOD
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Full review of the Sony Ericsson M600i:
Competition
Find out how well the Sony Ericsson M600i competes with similar business phones:
Better late and good than early and buggy; Sony Ericsson's P910i successor, the impressively petite M600i business phone, arrives slightly later than scheduled yet still in time to pick a serious fight with the Nokia E61.
Messaging - Very good
A number of factors combine to render the Sony Ericsson M600i an ideal device for enterprise e-mail, the most prominent of which is the unusual yet surprisingly well-working thumbboard - complete with a near 90-degree learning curve.
Hot on its heels follows Exchange ActiveSync support, which can be configured either for true push e-mail or scheduled retrievals, while a scroll wheel and the brilliant screen chime in for terrific, thumb-driven e-mail triage.
Naturally, SMS and MMS are also present and accounted for (although sending picture messages is out of the question due to the lack of an integrated camera), and non-Exchange users can take solace in excellent POP3/IMAP4 support.
Calling - Very good
Although video calls aren't supported, the M600i offers outstanding voice quality as well as a capable loudspeaker, Bluetooth support for headsets, decent signal reception and on-the-fly refinement of contact searches.
PIM - Very good
The M600i juggles appointments, contacts and tasks with aplomb, synchronizing either (slowly) with a local PC or over-the-air with Exchange ActiveSync, while a notes application comes in handy for quick jots, sketches and lists.
Productivity - Very good
Reading e-mail attachments is a breeze with the built-in viewers for Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Acrobat documents, and particularly so when the screen's landscape view is enabled. Also present: Word and Excel file editing.
Laptop sidekick - Very good
3G and Bluetooth serve as a springboard for getting ones laptop online, but despite USB modem support, the lack of a bundled cable means users won't get full throttle out-of-the-box - plus there's no USB charging.
Browsing - Very good
Surf's up with Opera 8 and landscape viewing, and despite slight performance issues when loading heavy web pages, the M600i makes light work of both reformatting web pages and displaying them full-size on the superb display.
Battery life - Very good
Clocking in at 5 hours of talk time and 10 days of standby, the M600i performs slightly above par, but prospective users should keep in mind that heavy use of its advanced feature set will take its toll on battery life.
Price and availability
The Sony Ericsson M600i will start selling for $500 () in July 2006.
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