The Sony Ericsson K530i - Martin's Quick Review

The Sony Ericsson K530i is a practical phone. It provides the standard calling and text messaging features of any mobile phone but goes one further by offering 3G. So even if it is not a particularly high tech gadget phone, you may still enjoy the benefits of 3G, such as video calling and fast internet browsing. It is also the first Sony Ericsson mobile phone to feature the GPS accessory, the HGE-100, a wired stereo receiver that can detect easily detect GPS satellites.

Sony Ericsson's K530i is almost exactly like the W660i – almost. This can be either good or bad, depending on how you prefer your mobile phone, but upfront, what the K530i has over the W660i is that it is a highly competent 3G phone at a more affordable rate.

The W660i is special in that it is under the Walkman series of Sony Ericsson. Still, the K530i's music player and FM radio does not trail behind the walkman component of the W660i. For example, the K530i has the TrackID feature, which tells you the name of a song by recording a snippet of it on your phone with your voice recorder, and the PlayNow feature that helps you download the ringtones you want without much ado. The major difference, perhaps, between the two phones is that the W660i has the special MegaBass feature.

But of course, there are other aspects of the K530i that make it truly special on its own. It is definitely one of Sony Ericsson's more attractive mobile units, available in either Thunder Black or Warm Silver, both looking rather spiffy for a mid-range phone. The sturdy candy bar unit is an ideal 102 mm tall, 46 mm wide and 14 mm slim, with an adequate TFT type, 262 thousand colour screen, which is a definite must have for any phone that offers video calling.

Aside from video calling, the 3G phone offers high speed Internet on broadband, and you can surf rather easily on your K530i using the Access NetFront web browser or the WAP 2.0 browser. Data transfers with the Sony Ericsson K530i is as fast as 384 kbytes per second and you'll be able to save on Internet charges on your phone bill. The biggest complaint about the K530i is the 2 megapixel camera, which is not bad but then other phones are already equipped with 5 megapixels, therefore making the K530i seem wanting.

As it's not meant to be primarily a music phone, the memory allowed on the K530i is sufficient for most users who would appreciate a music player on their phone, but not sufficient enough for music aficionados, at 16 MB of internal memory, expandable only up to 1 GB with a microSD memory card. Still, this is enough memory to store music for you to enjoy whilst traveling on a plane, which the K530i is perfectly capable of, given that it has flight mode, meaning you can enjoy your K530i's other features even if the call transmitters are turned off.

It is not a smart phone by a long shot, but neither is it your basic bare-bones call-and-text only mobile either. And it's a 3G phone to boot. Sounds quite practical, definitely.

You can buy free mobile phone contracts and low price deals, and a range of free Sony Ericsson K530i monthly contract deals within a few clicks if you spend some time researching online. A bit of effort can save you a bundle on high street prices.