Flip phones are a great design format, popular with customers who like a compact phone with large keypads, and good sized screen. But, when it comes to Sony Ericsson, they are generally not good at making such handsets. With the announcement of the T707, it is time to see if this has changed. There’s a certain market for the Sony Ericsson T707. Firstly, you need to like shiny. If shiny is your thing, then you are going to love this phone. If shiny is your thing, and you like to match your accessories to your outfit, then you are really going to love this phone. At the launch event, Sony Ericsson asked tennis ace Maria Sharapova to endorse the product – they see her as stylish with substance, a message they are keen to link to the T707.
When the phone rings, the T707 will light up. Shiny. Not only that, you can customise the light show, with a different setup for each of your friends; a custom ringtone for friends and family is so last year, these days it is all about the lights. But that is not the only shine, oh no. The T707 can be co-ordinated to any outfit you may wear, (can you see a pattern here?) as it comes in a rainbow range of three colours. Another shiny option is the changing theme wallpaper, so even that can be co-ordinated to your outfit. The theme display will also change depending on the time, as day moves into evening. Perfect for all the night-clubbers who want a shiny phone to call their friends with.
The Sony Ericsson T707 sees the return of gesture control. These days some phones can be put into silent mode or calls can be rejected, just by flipping the phone over. With the T707, you can just lazily wave a hand over the phone to silence any inconvenient incoming calls. Not only that, you can also put your alarm into snooze mode with a similar lazy wave of the hand. This feature first appeared on the Sony Ericsson R520, way back. So, not just shiny, but gimmicky, too.
Under the cover, the T707 isn’t actually a bad phone, with some nice features. Firstly, the handset has a 3.2 megapixel camera, with support for geo tagging. There is no built in GPS receiver, so location is registered via network triangulation. This will work well enough in built up areas, but may be fairly inaccurate when used in more rural settings. Blog support is included, so any pictures captured can be swiftly uploaded to the web, to sites such as MySpace or Facebook. Upload speeds are neatly dealt with thanks to the handset being HSDPA compatible.
A full media player is included, with support for a wide variety of digital music formats, including the ever present MP3, AAC and WMA. The video player will replay video content in MP4 format, and also supports Microsoft’s WMV format. Also, one of the redeeming features of Sony Ericsson handsets, Track ID, is also included on the T707. Messaging is well covered on this phone. I think it’s clearly been established that the T707 is for young girls, who like to keep in touch. To that end, as well as a built in email client, the T707 offers a threaded SMS view, so text conversations are presented in a similar manner to conversations that are had over MSN or Yahoo messenger.
Design wise, the SE T707 is a compact little handset, weighing in at just 95g and little more than 14mm thick when closed. The inside screen is a 2.2 inch QVGA display, supporting up to 256,000 colours. The outside display is a much more simple monochrome offering, covered in scratch resistant glass. Less chance of it being damaged when flung to the bottom of a handbag, I guess.
This phone is going to have a limited market appeal, and the market it focuses on is very fickle. I doubt whether even the endorsement of Maria Sharapova is going to be enough to help the Sony Ericsson T707 sell in any great numbers. Expected release date June/July 2009.
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12:50 pm
I would not recommend this phone. Mine is eleven months old and cuts out all the time and most of the paint has peeled off from the front cover.