RutSum

What Is Wrong With The Sony Ericsson K530i

Its been around 2 months since I bought the Sony Ericsson K530i, and it is by far the most feature laden phone I have ever owned. It is 100% value for money, but there are obviously some things that don’t stop bugging you even if you have the best out there. I made a list of some of the common things that annoy me while using my phone.

No in-phone security options – You can set a passcode which would prevent anybody else from using your phone IF it was switched off, but there is simply NO normal security. You can’t lock out individual folders on your memory card, you can’t set passwords for access to different applications such as messaging or the camera, you can’t set permissions for files (how difficult is it to add a chmod function?), and you can’t even get your phone to ask for a passkey to unlock its keypad. So in case your phone gets stolen or gets into wrong hands, so does all your private data and contacts.

Can’t change basic display functions – One thing that most of us use our phones for is checking the time. I needed an option to set a clock as a screen saver, or at least to keep the display permanently on , and at a lower brightness. I know it drains battery, but hell, its my phone. I should be given the choice to decide if I want good battery life or not. So to check the time, I have to press a button which is really difficult to press usually (the volume control button on the right side of the phone).

No zoom in 2 MP camera – The only zoom available for stills is 2.5x and that too in VGA mode. It really makes me wonder that why would anyone click a picture in a horrible VGA quality when he has the option of 2 MP. And I really don’t think that adding digital zoom is that big a deal. It really comes in handy sometimes. Though the camera quality is really good, but you sometimes feels paralyzed without a flash and zoom.

Crappy and intrusive file management – If you want to move a picture file to a custom folder in your memory card (in the top-most directory), you can’t. You have to put it either in the ‘Camera Album’ folder or the ‘Pictures’ folder or a subfolder of these. If you want to do it otherwise, the only way is to connect your phone to a computer using the data cable, and doing it manually. Also, I found no way of getting the newly clicked images and videos to be put in a custom folder in memory card. I can only select which memory is to be used, the phone memory or the memory card.

Limited information space for contacts – You can add only a maximum of 5 numbers per contact, which though is sufficient in most cases, but can turn out to be irritating in special cases. Also, these 5 numbers are divided into categories – Mobile, Home, Work, Fax, and Other, so if you have a guy who has 2 mobile numbers, you are forced into putting his other number in a non-relevant category, which causes confusion later. There is no way to modify this scheme of contacts or to increase the storage capacity for contacts.

Bugs in the music player – There are few bugs in the music player, the biggest one relating to the display of names of tracks. Some of the tracks (around 60% of mine), though are named and tagged properly, with clean ID3v2 tags, the music player displays only half of their names. For example “Destroyer” is displayed as “Dest” and the artist “Static X” is displayed as “Stat”.

Can’t turn on the phone without inserting a SIM card – So if you don’t have a SIM, it makes all the features of the phone like the camera, the music player, the FM radio – useless.

Irritating sticky alerts – Missed call alerts should be smart. This phone even puts the calls that you manually rejected in the ‘missed calls’ category. Moreover, just viewing the list of the missed calls doesn’t make their alert go away. You have to take an action – Either call the person back or delete the entry from the missed call list to make the alert on the standby screen go away.

Can’t do anything during Bluetooth transfers – If something is already in progress, like a music track being played or the FM radio is on, then it continues. But you cannot initiate anything new during a Bluetooth transfer. Except for receiving calls of course.

Phone gets switched off during data cable transfers – If you select the Data transfer mode on plugging in your phone through a data cable, the phone gets switched off and goes into a new mode where only alarms and alerts can be received, and all other phone functions are deactivated.

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