10 legendary Sony Ericsson mobile phones

Let’s remember our old legendary phones. Let’s remember the revolution Sony and Ericsson did when they joined their efforts. Both companies were quite experienced in making mobile phones before formation their joint venture, so no surprise they designed and manufactured really good and popular devices.

It all started after the Philips factory in New Mexico burned into ashes leaving not so bi chance to rebuild. The factory supplied Ericsson and the Swedish brand had to look for another partner. And they met Sony and a new brand called Sony Ericsson came to life. The started selling Sony Ericsson phones in 2002. In 2011 Sony acquired the Ericsson part  and started selling phones under the name Sony.

Sony Ericsson T68i

First let’s take a look at Sony Ericsson T68i designed in 2002. It was actually Ericsson T68 (their first phone with color screen and very successful model). They changed logo, name and some colors, the hardware remained the same. They updated firmware that was compatible with old Ericsson phones. It was a classic phone with 101x80 px 256 colors STN display. T68i supported SMS, EMS, MMS, Email, WAP 2.0, xHTML. It had Bluetooth 1.0b and IrDA ports. The device didn’t have its own camera but if you would wish you could connect one.

Sony Ericsson T610

The next phone in our review is very popular Sony Ericsson T610. Many have this phone in working condition even now. It sported the market in 2003 with all features the mass market user needed at that time. Nice design of three color schemes: red, black, blue, and silver keyboard with buttons volume control, camera launch and WAP browser. The phone featured 129x160 65k colors STN display. It as the first phone on the market with built-in camera to make 352x288 pictures. Other features of T610: MIDI, screen wallpapers, Java, GPRS, WAP 2.0/xHTML, email, IrDA and Bluetooth 1.0b.

Sony Ericsson K700

K700 was a model of the very successful K line. It featured 220x176 65k TFT display that could output 7 lines of text. UI was reworked. Configuration wizard explained what elements did what and made it easy to configure the phone at the start – setting date, time, copying SIM card data to the phone book etc. The phone could play MP3 and 3GPP but the lack of available memory of 42 Mb could not help while external cards were not supported. K700 featured Java (MIDP 2.0) and 3D engine so you could play some basic 3D games, 0.3 mpx camera (640x480) could record video with sound. ItDA and Bluetooth were also available.

Sony Ericsson K750i

Our review would not be complete without the legendary K750i that came to the market in 2005 and was recognized as the best cameraphone of 2005. It featured 2 mpx camera with autofocus, LED llight and video option and had a protection cover. The phone supported the proprietary Memory Stick Duo and Pro Duo  flash card format upto 2 Gb, so the phone could be used as a player. It also featured 220x176 px 262k TFT display, buttons for volume controls/photo zoom and player. Other features: Bluetooth, IRDA, WAP 2.0 support, GPRS, HTML and POP/SMTP email client.

Get refurbished Sony Ericsson K750i on AliExpress.

Sony Ericsson K790i/K800i

In 2006 K790i/K800i followed the ideology of K750i. Both were almost the same but K800i supported UMTS and featured front VGA camera for videocalls. Both cameraphones went to the market as members of the Cyber-shot brand. Both had 3.2 mpx main cameras with autofocus and xenon light and protection cover for the camera. Display size and resolution reached 2 inches and 320x240. The phones could play MP3, AAC, MIDI, WAV, AMR, M4A, RA(Real Audio) and supported Java MIDP 2.0 applications. Both featured built-in data modem, IrDA and Bluetooth ports and FM radio.

Get refurbished Sony Ericsson K800i on AliExpress.

Sony Ericsson W800i

W800i has the same system hardware as K750i. The main alterations were the design, firmware and equipment kit. It was their first phone in the Walkman line. Beige color with bright orange elements and Walkman logo. Equipment included headphones. The software player was quite advanced and some specialists proceeded to install W800i firmware into K750i phones.

Get refurbished Sony Ericsson W800i on AliExpress.

Sony Ericsson P990i

Sony Ericsson had a lot of devices working on Symbian OS with UIQ user interface. All of the belonged to the P series, featured various types of QWERTY keyboards and sensor displays. P800, P900, P910 and P990 had flip keyboards while P1i was proud to have a very special type of QWERTY keyboard with swinging keys. Later they offered M600 (known as the smartphone of James Bond) with no camera. P990i was the last one in the line featuring Symbian OS 9.1 with UIQ 3.0. It featured 240x320 px 262k 2.76 inches display (240x256 px with flip closed), the main camera was 2 mpx with autofocus and mechanical shutter. IrDA, WiFi, Bluetooth, and of course JogDial.

Get refurbished Sony Ericsson P990i on AliExpress.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness X5

Despite it had Xperia marking this Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness X5 was hardly called a smartphone. But it was really an interesting phone by design. It featured a transparent display the could impress everyone even today. The phone had quite ordinary features while outstanding design emphasized it on the market. Features were standard: WAP, GPRS, EDGE, MP3, AAC, FM radio.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 was the first so-called communicator designed by Sony Ericsson, the first one in the Xperia line and its operation system Windows Mobile 6.1 was not very friendly to users but offered X-Panel to make user experience better. The smarphone was positioned on the market as a business solution. Metal case, side moving QWERTY keyboard opened at some degree to make it more comfortable in use. The smartphone featured 3 inches resistive sensor display with 800x480 px resolution, 400 Mb built-in memory, MicroSD slot, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) and GPS interfaces and 3.2 mpx camera.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10

Let’s end up our review with this device featuring Android OS. Xperia X10 saw the daylight back in 2009 and featured Android 1.6 Donut with later upgrades to 2.1 and 2.3. TOday there are a lot of custom firmwares including Android 4.0. Xperia X10 featured 4 inches capacitive display with 854x480 px resolution. Despite theoretical capacity to provide multi touch functionality it was not offered till 2011. The new firmware issued in 2011 supported some gestures but the stability was questionable. The hardware looks now pathetic: 1-core Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 1GHz CPU, 384 Mb RAM and 1 GB built-in flash memory expandable with MicroSD cards.

Get refurbished Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 on AliExpress.