We’re not quite sure of the market that the new Sony Ericsson T715 slider is aimed at, but its blurb talks about staying connected, and that seems to translate into having large SMS or IM text on a tiny device, with calendar reminders, web browsing and a large keyboard. It is described as credit card sized.
We figure it is quite business-like, but not an enterprise phone, more for the lady who lunches, than the man about town who has so many appointments that he misses lunch. We position it as a woman’s phone because of size, finish, available colours and its sophisticated look. It also has pop up reminders on the desktop, so you can’t stay too long at lunch and miss meetings.
It weighs a lot less than a smartphone say, at 96.5 grams, but the screen is just QVGA at 240 x 320 and it doesn’t have the top of the range 16 million colours, far less in fact at 262,144 and it is just 2.2 inches across. The phone dimensions are 91.5 x 48 x 14.9 mm and it’s available in the fourth quarter in Silver or Pink (told you it was a lady’s phone). It has all the normal music features we have come to expect from a Sony Ericsson phone, including media player and TrackID. No prices yet.
The Access NetFront browser is supposed to show entire web pages, but we suspect that at that size it will require considerable on page navigation, but the phone does connect to HSDPA networks, so internet connections should be quick. Sony also says that the screen will stand up to direct Sunlight, and yet it’s not an OLED, so we don’t really believe it.
The T715 looks like a follow on to the popular T707 and comes with Google Maps and includes local directions and AccuWeather which gives a three day weather forecast.
The phone comes with Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and can talk to PC based messaging systems and send picture messages. Finally it has a 3.2 megapixel camera, which sounds rubbish compared to photo phones, but when you remember that this is all the iPhone has, it must be good enough for most photo applications.
