Sony Ericsson Elm Review

Written on 4/14/2010 01:28:00 PM by poison_ivy

Reviewed by Roger, translated and worded by moi.

Vodafone has a new phone in its portfolio: The Sony Ericsson Elm. Now while the Sony Ericsson Elm may seem overshadowed by the likes of the HTC Legend, Nokia N900, Xperia X10 and HTC Desire, I'm sure it will find some sort of following for those who've missed the traditional candy bar mobile phones.

Design

The Sony Ericsson Elm is part of Sony Ericsson's Greenheart line and from its name, you can certainly glean that this phone is environmentally friendly. According to Sony Ericsson, the Greenheart line will be made from recycled plastic and eco-friendly materials, plus it will be packaged using recycled materials too.

The mobile phone's facade is almost similar to most Sony Ericsson phones such as the T700. The phone is made up of a combination of plastic and aluminum. The keys have a nice tactile feedback unlike the Sony Ericsson Yari's keypad which is flat. The Sony Ericsson Elm has a curved back and you can remove the battery cover by popping it open.

There's nothing revolutionary about the design except maybe the curved back, the addition of the aluminum has somewhat made the Elm look more sophisticated compared with Sony Ericsson's older models.

Features

In terms of features, the Sony Ericsson Elm reminds me of the G705 because it has 3G, WiFi, and GPS, something you won't be able to find in most candy bar mobile phones nowadays.

The homescreen is also similar to the Sony Ericsson Yari as it now has widgets. The Facebook widget is easily the most useful and you can leave it running on the homescreen so that it automatically downloads updates. It’s just too bad that the screen is small, this would have looked much better on a 2.5-3 inch screens.


The speakers are okay but audio quality tends to degrade in high volumes though you have to listen very closely as the volume is not that loud. Everything is much better when using a headset, even the headset provided with the phone has great sounds so it means you don’t need to buy expensive headsets to enjoy your music as the Sony Ericsson Elm is a really good music player.

The Sony Ericsson Elm has a 5 megapixel camera and for what it’s worth, it’s actually a pretty decent cameraphone. It has autofocus, face detection and smile shot but it’s not these camera features that wowed me but the image quality. Colors are well saturated and you don’t need to tweak any white balance or exposure in order to capture great pictures.


The browser is also similar to the Sony Ericsson Yari and pages render fast so I don’t miss Opera Mini that much.

Conclusion

As someone who’s not into touchscreen phones, I welcome the fact that Sony Ericsson made a traditional candy bar phone with features that match most of the popular touchscreen mobile phones today. Sure, as a smartphone maker, it seems Sony Ericsson is destined to fail but once in a while, they do something right and produce a gem like the Sony Ericsson Elm.

Posted in cellphone reviews, mobile phone reviews, Sony Ericsson, Sony Ericsson Elm |

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