Hi-Mobile.net sent us over for a review the first ever phone that ships with UIQ 3.0: the Sony Ericsson M600i. This 3G SymbianOS 9.1 smartphone is one of the most popular this summer (selling at below 375 USD) and so we decided to give it a whirl too. Read on for more info, pictures, screenshots and a video of the device, the P990's little brother.The phone supports UMTS 3G, tri-band GSM, it sports a 2.55" touchscreen 256k QVGA LCD, has a rocker-style qwerty keyboard and a scroll wheel, supports the new Memory Stick Micro (M2), has Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support (no EDR), SIR-based IrDA, a 900 mAh battery, 18 MBs of internal storage, USB 2.0 and it runs the newly released UIQ 3.0 on top of the Symbian OS 9.1. The phone came with a box that also included a 64MB M2 Card, a travel charger (european and US adapter), 1 stereo handsfree unit, a user manual, its driver CD and a USB data cable. We updated the device on its latest official firmware before we conducted the review which it proved extremely stable to us.
The first thing you will notice about this device is that it's surprisingly small. In the pictures online it looked like a medium-sized device, mostly an optical illusion because of the full keyboard. But when you actually keep it in your hands for the first time, the device looks and feels extremely sleek, thin and not particularly big. While it has similar height measuraments with my QTek 9100, the M600i is significantly thinner and easier to hold steady with one hand. Overall, the M600i is just a tiny bit bigger than my iPod Mini and the smallest device in the market that sports a thumbkeyboard.
The second thing that will impress most users is the user interface. UIQ 3.0 has seen a complete overhaul and it looks way better and more modern than UIQ 2.1. There is anti-alias text now throughout the user interface, on-screen handwriting support, predictive text when using the keyboard or the virtual keyboard, support for a second language, and a choice between at least 20 more languages in the virtual keyboard. Writing using the hardware illuminated keyboard is a joy. It's really fast to do so, especially with the help of the predictive text.
You can navigate throughout the UI either with your thumb, stylus or the wheel button on the side of the device. On the other side there is a "web" hardware button that you can modify it and make it carry over another function instead. Below the wheel button there is the "Back" button that minimizes the currently active application. Unfortunately, in order to completely shut down an application you have to bring up the Task Manager and "kill" the app from there. This is several clicks though, and it would have been easier if UIQ had implemented a "long press" for the "Back" button to shut down the app instead of just minimize it. Shutting down apps is important, because UIQ 3.0 is unusually memory hungry. When booting you will have only 19 MBs of RAM free out of 64 MBs of RAM (with UIQ 2.1 you had 15 MBs free out of 32 MBs of overall RAM). There is a need for a quick shutdown of apps on a regular basis, especially because after a bit of usage you will end up below 14 MBs of available RAM because of un-freed memory chunks and/or memory leaks.
Speed-wise there is no problem though. There is even good Java 3D support for games (the included 3D golf game runs adequately fast) and applications load quickly. The device somes with a lot of useful business applications: QuickOffice with World and Excel documents (Documents to Go also available for purchase now), PDF viewer, Email that supports Exchange ActiveSync, POP3/IMAP and Gmail, MMS/SMS, ability to make notes, voice recording messages, assign tasks with recurring alarms, speed dial, Calendaring, VPN PPTP support, a units converter, a simple calculator, time for two different timezones and more. In the "Today" front-screen of the device you can get a summary of emails, tasks, appointments, missed calls and five icon shortcuts (modifiable) to Contacts, Calendaring, Speed Dialing, Messaging and Main Menu. You can use SyncML to sync your phone with your Windows desktop, but there's no support for Apple's iSync just yet (it should arrive soon enough though). Finally, I was delighted to see a full-fledged File Manager on UIQ 3.0. This was an app that was truly missing on most UIQ 2.1 devices.
The M600i also comes with great multimedia support: a music and a video player. It supports AAC, MP4, MP3, 3GP and RM/RAM formats. Real Player streams can be saved as links and then played back via the "Online Player" application. Unfortunately this application does not support PLS files for online mp3 streaming. The music player is very good, it has EQ support and I found the sound quality of the included stereo headset extremely good (only problem is that they fall-off my ears as they are too wide). The video player was really good too, it can go fullscreen and do landscape. You can replace the 64 MB M2 flash storage stick with a 1 GB one and put more music and videos in it to watch when travelling ("flight mode" is supported on this phone).
We tried the M600i with our Anycom BSH-100 Bluetooth Stereo headphones (my review) which worked perfectly in all modes. We had no dropouts and audio quality was commentable in stereo mode. Listening to music or watching video without wires is truly one of the coolest things around. However, AVRCP is not supported in the M600i. When using the Bluetooth Obex File Exchange facility speed peaked at around 50 KB/sec, which is good performance.
- "M600i review, Page 1/2"
- "M600i review, Page 2/2"
