Sony Ericsson S500i first impressions

When we here at Know Your Mobile set eyes on the S500i we had a bit of a giggle over Sony Ericsson’s penchant for choosing new and interesting names for the colour of their phones. However, now we’ve got our hands on the phone, it seems that they may have the last laugh.

The S500i is available in Mysterious Green and Spring Yellow. We got our hands on a Mysterious Green model and found that like many Sony Ericsson phones it’s attractive, easy to use and features plenty of useful applications as well as a few special extras.

The ‘mysterious’ aspect of the ‘green’ is that the phone itself is black, but slide it open and a green keypad emerges, with the circular navigation button on the front of the phone glowing green too. And just to complete the effect, the default theme is a grassy green effect. All in all, it’s as green as an insanely jealous Robin Hood in a solar powered car.

One of the most interesting aspects of the S500i is its use of ‘mood lights’; when the user receives a call or text the front and sides of the handset lights up in a wave motion that flows down the front of the phone, lighting up the screen, navigation button, the side of the phone and the keypad. If green isn’t your thing, you can change the colour scheme of the side lights to one of Apricot, Fire, Orange, Love or even Disco; it’s enough to keep you entertained for hours.

If being entertained by a mobile phone is your thing then the S500i has a dedicated Music Player menu button with a good quality speakerphone and an Entertainment button that features games, a video player, VideoDJ, PhotoDJ, MusicDJ and a Bluetooth remote control. When using the Internet you can upload images directly to an online blog or use the built-in RSS reader - all pretty nifty.

There are only a couple of real problems with this phone; one is its camera, which at 2.0 megapixels just doesn’t seem big enough for a mid-range handset. The viewfinder only takes up half the screen too, and combined with a lack of flash it’s difficult to obtain a really great image. That said, the camera and video camera do offer a wide range of shooting modes and effects, so for those not wanting high-res images from their phone this will be a trifling issue. The second issue is that of memory – in short, there isn’t any! Only 12MB of memory is built-in, so if you actually want to use any of the S500i’s multimedia applications, you’ll need to invest in a Memory Stick Micro.

This relatively lightweight slider phone looks fantastic; with dimensions measuring 99 x 47 x 14 mm it’s seriously neat and a rubberised back that curves towards the bottom of the handset ensures you will always have a good grip. In addition to all this it features the traditional Sony Ericsson interface which a trained monkey could use effectively, and in its Mysterious Green form at least, it should appeal to the majority of mobile phone users regardless of age or sex.

You can pick up an S500i SIM-free from £190.

Sony Ericsson S500i at the Sony Ericcson E Store