Se-lifestyle Blog

Subtly priced, Sony Ericsson C510 phone is an astonishing gadget packed with features like a 3.2 megapixel camera, smile and face detection, autofocus and picture editing techniques. . It even looks like a flagship device, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Sony Ericsson C902.

Design

The C510 is a smart-looking candy bar design, with a low-key front panel and some nice contrast silver and dark blue edging on the black version of the phone we tested (there’s also a silver version with grey trim). It has a slimline build, with dimensions of 107(h) x 47(w) x 12.5(d)mm, and a respectably solid 92g bodyweight. It feels good to hold and operate, the numberpad nicely set up with large, well defined and responsive keys a pleasure to press.

Unlike the more popular Walkman series, the C510 is also the forefather of Cybershot range, having adopted the index number 5**

Sony Ericsson has also added another delight in this phone for its decdicated users and that’s called the Smile Shutter utility. It is a fascinating function that recognizes the point when a person is smiling and photographs it up automatically.

You can also make use of the Snapfish orientation that can allow you to print pictures. This feature has been especially added by the HP allowing you to give print commands from the phone itself. You can also print them by uploading on the PC which well, is an old feature

ADVANTAGES

Its major advantages inclue a UMTS / HSDPA 2100 (tri-band for the US), up to 3.6 Mbps,which can enable high speed internet connections. Moreover, one can send emails wherever they are with an Email client. It’s a hi-fi technological device with quad-band GSM phone.

The Sony C510 can empower you with the latest technology loaded with features like high speed downloads and data and feature uploads.It holds a  really sleek and slim design with that oh-so-cool silver look. It is a light weight model, like W580, but slightly thicker than its brother  C902, measuring 107.0 x 47.0 x 12.5 mm – quite but looks more elegant.

The  ability to turn-off the LED while focusing and  shortcuts at the keypad are certainly nice features, so very thoughtful of Sony Ericsson for a mid-tier phone like C510

The Smile shutter is a fantastic addition to pull crowds. The affordable price is a full-on BANG. Check for the innovative and really interesting lens cover which keeps it clean from any kind of dust and water.

Moving on to the screen features, the 2.2″ TFT display that is featured on the front side can display up to 262.144 colours. The borders are flush with the rest of the body, as the screen lies underneath a glass-like plastic cover, along with the rest of the top part of the phone. be careful not ot drop the phone! Clear display and colours!  Legibility under direct sunlight is largely hindered by the screen coating, which is rather unfortunate

CAMERA AND BLOGGING

For those really into blogging and related stuff, this model comes as a welcome relief.

The C510 shoots videos with a 240×320 (QVGA) resolution at 30 frames per second. The LED flash can be used as a torch in low-light conditions.

Since its a C-series, so its better we take a more comprehensive look at the camera-

Technically speaking, the shorter the Exposure time is, the better the ability to hold the camera phone still, and more crispy the snap is. C510 snaps with 1/13s exposure time while the old but robust K790i takes 1/25 easily

ISO level and Noise reduction

The C510 ISO – 125, K790i ISO – 200. But still, more ISO doesn’t make the K790i picture noiser. C510 detailing in low-light is bad! Hope is ISO depends on the camera module and we are talking of low-light conditions where C510 loses. Remember, it has NO XENON FLASH! And the xenon flash is not important due to its luminosity – it’s important due to high exposure time while shooting with it in low-light conditions!

The LED flash itself is used as a focus assist light, as a photo flash and as a video light. Its luminance can be rather blinding when the person who is taking the picture is focusing.

The Document mode of the C510 was a clear failure. The idea behind the development of this mode was that when in this mode, you will be able to capture sharper, more contrasting photos of texts or drawings. However, I didn’t see any noticeable improvement, other than the image appeared a little brighter.

The night mode performs much good. Standard mode shoot-out at 1/10s, ISO 640. Everything is kinda green, creepy, noisy and so on. The file size in standard mode is 808Kb. The night-mode one – 176Kb! So you got to depend more on this mode for everything

When using the camera, the ‘3’, ‘6’, ‘9’ and ‘#’ keys illuminate blue highlighting the fact that they double up as shortcut keys.

The picture blogging function of this phone can be used to send pictures via Facebook, Orkut and hi5 . Make the snaps look astute and crispy.  With a face-detection feature, the camera itself searches for the face and establishes the focus. Cool, eh?

KEYPAD

The alphanumeric keypad is a pleasure to use. Nicely separated and slanting towards the  screen for comfortable usage.  Due to the screen position from the top of the body, the keypad shrinks a little, and the gaps between keys is decreased.Tactile feedback  is excellent. Soft-keys and directional pad are great too. The keypad lights up in beige.

MUSIC

Its not simply a camera-centric phone like the W890, T700, W980 and even the newly-released W705. This has some brilliant music features added to it. The music is your constant companion with a FM radio in this phone. The radio player supports RDS. Tune in to set your favorite channel, save up to 20 favourite frequencies and enjoy the tracks.

It’s basically a less-featured version of the Walkman v.3 player, lacking novelties suck as Shake control, SensMe; some useful filters, like Year and Genre and the Clear Audio and Clear Bass technologies from the higher-end walkmans.  It supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, RealAudio 8, and several WMA file formats.Features album art as well. There’s also the popular plug-in, TrackID, onboard – Sony Ericsson’s free music recognition service

It holds a  5-bar equalizer, which includes MegaBass – a feature that heightens the basses but diminishes the trebles, and activating stereo widening, which gives the sound a “deeper feel” at the cost of the bass volume.

BODY

The right side of the phone features the volume/zoom rocker and the camera key. The Fast Port connector can be found on the right side along with the Memory Stick Micro slot for hot-swapping memory cards is a good update as it comes less in way of functionality! There’s also a lanyard eyelet at the bottom right corner.

Around the back, the C510 sports a slick but unobtrusive camera lens cover panel that slides down over the bodywork to reveal the lens towards the top of the handset. It’s tidily engineered, so the back panel is flat when the cover is closed. Opening it up automatically fires up the camera.

CONTROL PAD

A conventional control pad set up includes a prominent square navigation D-pad that’s raised slightly proud for suitably easy operation. The contoured softkeys mostly work well, and are easy to press. In camera landscape mode you may find them slightly more fiddly because of the way the onscreen options are lined up – the Back option can bring fingers close to the call End button – but a little care is all that’s needed to avoid mis-pressing.

The A2 platform runs on a high speed and is highly stable. Hence it  does not hang like the Walkman series!  The Menu Navigation is fast.

The  Accelometer works as fast as the phone interface at all. It’s easy to catch up.

GAMES AND OTHER APPS

It comes preloaded with Bubble Town, NitroStreet Racing and the popular Sudoku

Apps include AccuWeather, Photo Mate, World Clock 3D and Youtube.

Geo tagging via GPS functionality is also appreciative

Messaging

The C510 supports the use of SMS, MMS, EMS, e-mail and voice messages. While tapping in some text, there are small icons under the text-input area. So you don’t need to use an Option softkey to insert picture or emoticon. The emoticons kit became wider.

There’s a new feature conversation messaging, which displays all your messages with a certain contact in speech balloons under each other. Very fun and comfortable. It helps to reveal all the emotions of the sms conversation.It has, obviously included in it, the T9 input

Calls

The C510 can hold up to 1000 contacts or 1700 phone numbers.

DISADVANTAGES

Unfortunately, like everything else in this world, the model has few disadvantages It does not have a  HSUPA support. So no 3G. It includes no xenon flash, quite like the older Walkman series. Hey, what was the company thinking while they made a cybershot without Xenon The limited video recording is another turn-off! The sound quality is average Na! Here’s more- The company probably forgot to include USB cable in the box. HUH?!

BATTERY

Sony Ericsson’s BST-38 lithium-polymer battery included in it has a capacity of 930 mAh. Battery performance is quite average, lasting maximum 3 days 

Overall Ratings:

Style & Handling- 4/5

User Friendliness-3/5

Feature Set-3/5

Performance-4/5

Battery Power-5/5

SOURCE:

techradar

se-nse

semc

Regards

Sony Ericsson LifeStyle News Team