Sony Ericsson is positioning the Sony Ericsson C510 as something completely new in mobile photography. I wonder what is so new in this device? It will not be easy to surpass the popular models of this manufacturer in the segment of 3.2-megapixel camera phones, but the Sony Ericsson C510 model is equipped with a 3.2 megapixel camera module and, most likely, was conceived as a continuation of the development of these particular mobile devices, which today are practically not found on mobile market. But guess what, we read this review.
Sony Ericsson C510 package contents:
- Sony Ericsson C510 mobile phone;
- standard battery BST-38;
- charging block CST-60;
- wired headphones;
- cable for connecting a mobile device to a personal computer;
- a disk with the necessary software and drivers;
- instruction manual for the mobile device Sony Ericsson C510;
- warranty card.
Design Sony Ericsson C510
The device turned out to be quite pleasant to look at and touch. The exterior is quite calm and traditional - a simple rectangle-shaped body, without any frills. The body of the device is quite thin (its thickness is only 12.5 mm), while the weight of the device is only 92 grams. Such a compact mobile device can be easily carried in almost any clothing. The device is also comfortable in the hand.
As for the practicality of the body of this device, apart from the screen area, everything is perfect here: practically no prints or scratches remain on the hard matte surface. The same can be said about the metal shutter that covers the camera's eye, which takes up almost half of the body (it is quite easy to scratch it even though it has a texture that mimics raw metal).
The device is available in two colors, namely black and silver. The screen coating is quite easily soiled, but it has protection against scratches, which is specially noted by the manufacturer.
The build quality of the device is generally quite good. True, over time, the battery cover will begin to creak a little and give a slight backlash, but many mobile devices of this manufacturer suffer from this problem. The cover can be removed quite easily with a simple downward movement. The SIM card slot is located under the battery. It will be very easy to replace the SIM card.
The earpiece speaker, in addition to excellent speech quality, has a good volume reserve. As for the external speaker, it has 64-tones polyphony, it does not wheeze when playing music even at maximum volume. On the other hand, the low frequencies are lacking.
Keyboard Sony Ericsson C510
At first glance, the keyboard seems to be quite comfortable. After a while, such a thought disappears. On the other hand, the manufacturer was able to protect its users from incorrect clicks (for this purpose, the horizontal row of buttons is located with teeth, and the vertical row of buttons has dividers). But the number keys are very long and narrow, which makes them inconvenient to press. Pressing the keys itself also requires a lot of effort. And one more drawback in the digital block is the very small size of the characters that are printed on the keys (although there could not be anything else on such narrow keys). But to some extent, the situation is corrected by a rather bright green backlight, nevertheless, the buttons of this device are unlikely to be liked by users with low vision. The applied symbols are made by cuts in the cover, all keys are completely made of plastic - the color of which depends on the color scheme of the device.
As for the navigation side, I would like to note that the navigation joystick with an inscribed confirmation button for the selected action is quite convenient to use, which is a plus. The unusual solution of the combination of the relief of soft buttons and keys cut into them for working with calls takes some time to get used to them. Below the soft keys are the keys: menu, My links and corrections / cancellations. By the way, if you have previously used phones from other manufacturers of mobile devices and decided to change them to the model Sony Ericsson C510 - be prepared for the fact that at first, out of habit, you will press the correction key, when you want to go into standby mode - this will happen due to the fact, the button is located non-standard. From my point of view, it would be best to place the keys for working with calls below the soft-buttons and not on the sides of them.
Navigation key arrows are programmable for quick launch of certain functions. The keypad is locked traditionally: by simultaneously pressing the asterisk and the right soft-button. Exactly the same combination is used to unlock the keyboard.
On the left side there is a rocker key, which is used to adjust the volume of the sound and perform the zoom function when shooting with the camera; here is also the camera launch button, which also serves to release the camera shutter. In operation, these buttons are quite convenient.
Battery Sony Ericsson C510
The set with the abundant phone includes a BST-38 lithium polymer battery with a considerable capacity - 930 mAh. According to the manufacturer, the device can work up to ten hours of talk time and up to three hundred and fifty hours in standby mode. It takes about two and a half hours to fully charge the battery.
At medium load, the battery can work up to three days without additional recharging.
Screen Sony Ericsson C510
The screen in the device is quite good, one can even say that it is excellent - it is made using TFT technology, has a diagonal of two inches, a resolution of 240x320 pixels, and is capable of displaying up to 262 thousand colors. The graininess is, of course, noticeable, but the quality of color reproduction is at a high level, the viewing angles are also quite good. The stock of brightness also made me happy; it has a five-level adjustment.
As a design for the interface of a mobile device, you can use preset background images, splash screens, greetings - everything is standard here. The phone has six pre-installed themes. The screen supports the auto-rotate function, the implementation of which did not cause me any complaints.
Sony Ericsson C510 camera
I started this part of the review with special impatience - it was very interesting to know what this time the new Cyber-shot phone will delight us with. When you open the shutter, the camera starts up automatically, the shutter is quite large, it is very convenient to open it with your thumb, it is tightly fitted and does not play, while the opening mechanism is not very tight. In a word, everything is as it should be.
With the shutter closed, if you try to launch the camera from the menu, it will start, but the phone will still ask you to open the shutter. In addition to the lens, there is a xenon flash under the shutter. The camera has a horizontal interface, which is pretty nice, the viewfinder takes up the entire display. At the bottom left side you can see the icons of the settings you have chosen, on the right - the Options and Back commands, as well as switching between shooting modes and switching to the Pictures folder (the desired item is selected using the arrows of the navigation joystick).
As for the parameters, they are standard for the devices of this line.
The big drawback of the Sony Ericsson C510 is the lack of a night mode. For a camera phone, the lack of this function is generally unforgivable. The maximum that we can have is shooting in evening conditions, that and that it is sharpened only for the landscape.We add here the fact that the flash can only work in automatic mode (that is, at the discretion of the mobile device itself) - and as a result, you can not count on high-quality photos in dark conditions. All other modes are relatively effective. If you add macro mode to document mode, you can take beautiful photos in which the text will be legible and clear. In the automatic shooting mode, the macro mode does not give a special high-quality effect. The face recognition function does its job with a bang.
I would like to highlight another drawback in the zoom. Because it can only work when the image size is 0.3MP.
As for the obtained photos, they are of good quality, although I expected more from this device. You have to experiment with camera settings to achieve the best image quality in all shooting conditions.
About the video is a separate conversation. Let's start with the options: the duration of video recording can be limited to eighteen seconds for MMS, in the settings you can turn off the flash and sound recording. The odd thing is that in video mode, you can use the flash as a flashlight, although in still mode this is not possible. At the same time, the phone has a night shooting mode for video, but it does not exist for a photo mode.
The quality of the videos, strangely enough, turned out to be pretty good. True, you can find small noises on the display, but this phone does not have such a phenomenon as frame deceleration, which is available in 90% of mobile devices of this manufacturer. An additional camera model, which is located on the front panel, is reassigned only for making video calls, but not for taking self-portraits. This module has a resolution of only 0.3 megapixels.
Of the features, I would like to note the support of the Snapfish service, with which you can send an order for printing photos directly from your mobile phone, after which the printed images will be delivered to your home as soon as possible. Just to begin with, I advise you to familiarize yourself with the tariffs of the system in order not to be disappointed later.
Examples of images taken with the Sony Ericsson C510 camera:
Sony Ericsson C510 Menu
The menu is analogous to many modern devices from this manufacturer. The icons in the menu are presented in the form of a 3x4 matrix, this type of display of icons is standard, in addition, the icons can be displayed in the form of a ring or icons in the center with a panel of others on the right. All submenus are presented as vertical lists.
All arrows of the navigation button can be programmed for quick access to applications; this can be done by going to the Options - General menu. To make it easier to work with applications, your phone has a menu called My Links, from which you can easily switch between running applications. To return to the point back, use the right soft-button, and exit to standby mode by using the reset key.
Phonebook Sony Ericsson C510
Here, oddly enough, some changes have appeared. The directory is designed for 1000 contacts, but now you can enter up to 2500 phone numbers for them, plus up to 250 phone numbers can be stored in the SIM card memory. Another of the innovations can be called the fact that the first item in the reference book is the line My state. This menu contains various personal gadgets.
As for the rest, the phone book has not changed in any way: it is possible to create groups (there are no initially created groups in the phone), almost any sound file stored in your phone can be used as a call signal, phone book entries can be transferred via Bluetooth, and you can also back up the phone book. The phone has a speed dial that can contain up to nine phone numbers.
Call log in Sony Ericsson C510
The call log consists of four tabs, namely: general, received, dialed and missed calls. A special icon marks where the contact is stored in the phone memory or in the SIM card memory, and the type of call is also displayed by an icon, next to which the date and time of the call are indicated. During a telephone conversation, a timer is displayed in the lower corner.
Messages in Sony Ericsson C510
You can create messages of various types in the phone, namely: SMS, MMS and voice messages. The message center looks standard. It is possible to create your own templates, but there are no predefined templates. When entering text by pressing the asterisk key, you can turn on and off the input mode using T9 dictionaries, with a short press on this button, the character size is changed from small to large and vice versa. A long press on the pound key changes the input language, a short press adds a space or starts typing on a new line. The display can fit up to seven lines of text and up to those service lines.
Internet in Sony Ericsson C510
The mobile phone supports GPRS and WAP 2.0. The device has a preinstalled NetFront browser, which is implemented as standard. It has support for SmartFit mode, with which you can view the Internet in full screen mode. The browser supports streaming video viewing.
Memory and file operations in Sony Ericsson C510
The phone has quite a lot of its own memory: 100 MB, the memory is dynamically allocated over the phone. You can expand the memory using an M2 memory card with a capacity of up to 8 gigabytes, a memory card slot is located at the bottom right end. It is covered with a plastic cap, which is attached to the body of the mobile device on a ribbon cable.
The device has a preinstalled File Manager, with which you can manage files and view the state of free memory. By the way, File Manager is located in the Organizer menu. The dispatcher has a standard implementation. Use the Options menu to view the memory status. In the file manager, you can move, copy, rename files.
Communication capabilities Sony Ericsson C510
The phone connects to a personal computer using four modes: Phone, Media Transfer, Photo Print and File Transfer. When connected in the latter mode, the device is recognized by the personal computer as removable media. Among the shortcomings, I would like to highlight the fact that when the device is connected to a personal computer in this mode, the functions of the phone cannot be used. In addition, it takes about one minute to switch between modes. In other modes, the phone functions are not disabled.
The cable connector is located on the right side of the mobile device: this is all that irreplaceable Fast-port. The cord is conveniently inserted into the connector and holds tight.
As for the Bluetooth module, you can go to the control manager through the settings of the device. The manager has a typical interface. The module supports all popular connection modes. There were no problems when communicating with other devices.
Applications in Sony Ericsson C510
Almost all standard applications except the alarm clock and voice recorder are located in the Organizer menu. The calendar is pretty big and nice. In it, you can view events for the day, week or month. You can delete events that are more than one day old. There is a search by events.
To access the alarm clock, you must use a separate item in the menu. Whether such a decision was justified is difficult to say. In theory, a quick function for this was, much better, why it was necessary to occupy a separate icon in the main menu of the mobile device, it is not clear why the developer did this. There are only five alarms in the phone, for each of them you can set a different response time and melody.
Music player in Sony Ericsson C510
I expected that the music player, first of all, will be present in the main menu of the phone - according to the manufacturer's tradition, but the icon for launching the player is located in the Entertainment menu. But I couldn't find it there. In this case, going to the Multimedia menu when selecting the Music item, you immediately find yourself in the music library of the music player, from which you enter the playback mode. Although this may be due to the fact that in this review we considered the pre-sale version of this mobile device. Most likely, in commercial versions of the phone, the player can be launched directly from the main menu.
In any case, the player's interface is typical. In the center there is an album icon, on the right side - an indication of the current action, a scale for adjusting the sound volume, the total number of songs in the playlist and the sequence number of the track being played. The timeline is slightly lower. Below the scale is the name of the music track being played and the name of the artist, and at the very bottom there are graphical controls for the music player. The horizontal arrows of the navigation key are used to rewind music tracks, and the vertical arrows are used to switch to the playlist and navigate through it. When you press the button to confirm the selected action, play or pause.
Sound volume control is eight-level, each level is a step, so we can assume that there are only sixteen of them. The volume margin is pretty good. As for the playback quality, it is quite good in standard headphones, and most importantly, even at maximum volume, the phone's speaker does not wheeze.
In your music library, you can sort your tracks by title, album, genre, and playlist. Podcasts and audiobooks are highlighted as a separate item. Selected music files can be sent directly from the player via Bluetooth or e-mail.
FM radio in Sony Ericsson C510
You can start the radio using the quick function or the quick function. The quality of radio signal reception did not cause any complaints, to move around the range, use the horizontal arrows of the navigation key, each step is equal to 0.1 MHz. Switching between saved radio stations is carried out using the vertical arrows of the navigation key. The player supports automatic search for radio stations, in addition, it can store up to twenty radio stations - no longer allows you to store the memory of your mobile device. The radio supports the RDS function, which means that text information can be broadcast through the radio channel. With this function, for example, the name of the radio station or the weather forecast can be displayed on your display while listening to the radio.
The radio itself, like the music player, can work in the background, when an incoming call is received, playback automatically stops, and after the call ends, it automatically resumes. Oddly enough, the radio supports the TrackID function, using this function you can identify the recorded fragment of the song. If you have heard a song and want to know who the performer is, then simply record a fragment of this song from the air, and the application will prompt the name of the performer of your recorded fragment (if, of course, it finds it in its database). Supported automatic search, it will take about ten seconds.
Games in Sony Ericsson C510
The Sony Ericsson C510 comes with three preinstalled games: BubbleTown (in this game you have to shoot down balls), NitroStreet Racing (regular street racing), Sudoku (a popular Sudoku puzzle). Games can be minimized as the phone supports multitasking.
Navigation capabilities of Sony Ericsson C510
This mobile phone uses the well-known Google Maps software for navigation.
Competitors Sony Ericsson C510
It was rather difficult to find a competitor from mobile devices from Nokia.The Finnish manufacturer does not have a separate line of camera phones as such; the manufacturer focuses on powerful multimedia devices. Perhaps, we should take the Nokia 6500 Slide as a competitor: the camera module in it is also 3.2 megapixels, and even with optics from Carl Zeiss; in terms of the quality of photos it can quite compete with the hero of our today's review, but the video quality in Sony Ericsson C510 is much better than in the Nokia 6500 Slide. But the Nokia 6500 Slide has a stylish metal casing, excellent build quality, and a screen capable of displaying up to 16 million colors. On the other hand, Sony Ericsson C510 has five times more memory, while the battery capacity is practically the same.
With Samsung, the situation is much simpler. In terms of functionality, our hero is similar to the SGH-L811 model. The camera has 3 megapixels, but the difference is most likely formal than qualitative. As for photos and videos, the Sony Ericsson C510 is the leader in all respects. The SGH-L811 has three times less memory than the Sony Ericsson C510, but it supports microSD memory cards. True, the battery in the SGH-L811 is much weaker than that of the Sony Ericsson C510. For all other parameters, the devices are almost the same.
The results of the review of Sony Ericsson C510
Taking a picture of excellent quality has never been so easy as with the Sony Ericsson C510 - this speaks to the official description of this mobile device. But this is not true at all: in this respect the device turned out to be not entirely successful, but strange if we take into account the positioning of this device. But the disadvantages of photography to some extent compensate for the good quality of video.
Pros of Sony Ericsson C510:
- quite compact and practical body;
- Convenient implementation of the camera shutter;
- high-quality screen;
- excellent video recording quality.
Cons of Sony Ericsson C510:
- very easily soiled screen;
- controversial button ergonomics;
- shortcomings in the organization of photography.
You can buy the Sony Ericsson C510 phone in our online store at a special price.
