Sony Ericsson K850i Candy Bar 3G mobile phone handset reviews and tariffs

+ * Amazing camera
* Good mp3/mp4 player
* Excellent software for music/photo/video transfer

- * Touchscreen and d-pad navigation can take a bit of getting used to

+ I got this phone mostly for the 5mp camera. Ideal if your into photography but have left your camera behind. Has most feature you would find on a compact camera and it has shortcuts to the most used features on a compact, flash, multi shot etc. These shortcuts light up in funky blue when in camera mode so they are easy to find in the dark. The macro photography is quite impressive. I have a DSLR camera (Nikon D80) and it isn't always practical to drag it out when you spot something interesting like an unusal bug as by the time you've set the camera up the bug has gone. Flick to camera mode on the K850 and it's ready to go almost instantIy. I would recomend getting a bigger memory card when purchasing this phone as the standard 512mb card that comes with it soon get's filled with photo's, music and video's especialy if you leave the camera on it's high setting's (5mp, Fine etc). Quite easy to navigate with this phone. Press the menu button and the keypad corresponds to what you see on the screen(see the bad points). One of the better features I'd like to point out is access to the sim card and memory card. You don't have to strip the phone down to get at them, cover off, battery out. You just flip down the trapdoor at the bottom of the phone (where the charger plugs in) and there they are. Ideal if you take lots of photo's and you find it takes too long to transfer by bluetooth or your short of USB ports. Whip the card out and stick it in a cardreader and way to go! If you do prefer to use a card reader you'll need an adapter as at the moment there are few cardreaders that take the mini SD card. All in all a good phone. Oh, you can make phone calls with it too.

- My gripes with this phone are few. Two in fact. The first is the touch sensative buttons at the bottom of the screen. They don't always work first time. You may find yourself pressing them several times before it does what you want it to do. The second is not so much a gripe but more of an observation. The navigation 'square' (the coloured bit of the key pad) can get in the way. If you have fat fingers like me then you may find yourself navigating to somewhere when you try to dial a number or going somewhere where you don't want to. Bring back the joystick!

+ Reviewer left no comment

- It freezes ALL the time especially wen messages come throu or im writting a message

+ All you can want in a phone! The features are exceptional and the design of the phone is very sytlish!

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+ an all round nice phone

- accidently launching web browsing (the live! button) and not being able to deactivate it

+ all round easy to use phone

- battery life

+ very easy to use and find everything you need

- the directional keys can be quite painful on fingers if using alot

+ overall a nice phone

- dissapointed with battery life, no where as good as my last Sony Ericsson

+ Camera, sound quality and screen are excellent on this phone.

- Raised keypad and 3 touch buttons are difficult to use - they're functionally wrong and the ergonomics of the pad are wrong! Very disappointing handset.

+ it looks really nice and has a great camera. I like tha way the battery goes into the end of the phone.
I also like to auto-rotation

- It is quite 'chunky'
It can sometimnes take ages to respond to things

+ Easy to navigate menus, good quality camera, nice attractive phone when it actually works

- 1 Major bad point: the phone has a habit of 'freezing' and will not function at all for anything up to 2 minutes. This is a general fault with the phone as I have friends who get exactly the same problem. It becomes very frustrating when you can't call others or they cannot contact yourself due to a total failure of the phone. WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS PHONE

+ The phone is very easy to use ans the touch screen is a nice attraction.

- I am constantly having issues with not being able to make phone calls as the phone needs downloads from the internet to update it. I also loose important messages because of this.
I chose this phone as the camera is a very important feature to me, but this does not operate correctly. The flash often ruins the photo by being to bright or it just doesn't go off at all, so you are left with a black picture.

+ Its like a standard Sony Ericcson, so fairly easy to use.

- The touch sensitive buttons are a pain. When on a call, they register that they have been touched as I am holding the phone to my head, and they send blank messages to my contacts. Had I known about these issues, I wouldn't have got the phone. Also, the phone keeps dying and cutting out, and saying that there is an inactive Sim in it.

+ Looks nice and lots of good phone options.

- Keys and central navigation fiddly especially for texting- I wouldn't recommend this phone because of this, also have had problems with the hardware and have been told that this is a common occurrence.

+ Good camera good screen

- keys hard to press, software too slow you arent sure if a key press has worked and so you do it again then seconds later it does both presses and you are in the wrong place. also its too big.
I prefered my W810i. Can i have a W810i with this camera in it please

+ The phone itself is good enough - plenty of features, a good quality mp3 player and is realtively easy to use.

- I find it very fiddly - i have large hands and the keys are very small. The central rocker switch is hard to use without hitting the keys around it. The touch screen is a real pain with the internet access being activated just by touching the bottom right hand corner of the screen. I have ended up browsing the net time after time after time just becasue i inadvertently touched the screen when i picked it up. The camera is rubbish. No zoom, other than digital and the resolution seems to be awful. I am a pretty keen photographer (with digital) so I know how to use a camera but i find this is very poor indeed. Difficult to access certain files and to change wallpaper. Basically it is a very good phone but is let down by poor design and excess complexity.

+ I've moved from Motorola to Sony Ericsson and like the simplistic nature of the phone. The actual phone functions are superb and earpiece very clear. The camera is excellent offering up to 5mp, which is great to keep in your pocket for those impromptu moments!! MP3 player is also very good, and would recommend upgrading the memory card to a 2gb Sandisk Premier Micro SD, as this not only allows you to store a lot of music / photo's but also increases the saving time for photo's between shots.

- The battery life never seems to last as long as it should, but that said, this is common with many phones. If you're lucky enough to live next to a transmittor and never use your phone for anything other than standby or calls, then that's the only way you will achieve this. Text messaging "recently" used list is painful as you don't seem to be able to erase this.

+ Great phone overall, looks nice, takes fab photos, sound is good.

- Too easy to connect to internet - keep doing it by accident when wanting to lock keys as screen very sensitive, and waste time and money when not actually wanting to be connected. hard to turn to speaker phone - doesn't ring for long enough to turn to loudspeaker, would be better to have shortcut key to answer straight to loudspeaker.

+ The touch pad for functions media, menu, live

- The camera even though it is 5 mega pixel it is not the quality I was expecting. I send alot of text messages and I cannot delete the list of people I have sent messages to as there is no function to do so

+ The camera is excellent, the quality of the pictures is outstanding.

- The software has lots of bugs. The touchscreen keys are frustrating. Sometimes it crashes when messages are recieved. Occasionally turns itself off. Had it a little over two months and mine has already been back to the workshop!

+ The phone looks nice, it's easy to use and has a very good camera. The media player is good, and so is the speaker. The auto-rotate option is very useful but can be a bit slow at times. The phone has a nice clear screen, with lots of colour.

- The phone can be slow and freeze sometimes. A few times the phone has reset the theme and background and i have had to change it back which can be very annoying. Sometimes when listening to music it freezes and pauses the song for a few seconds which can also be annoying.

+ Camera, radio, looks good

- The touch screen means you sometimes press the wrong thing by accident.
The complicated connector for the charger breaks easily.

+ Nice, slick phone with brilliant camera

- Easy to hit browser accidently!!

+ Fabulous camera.

- Can't think of any - I love it!

+ The camera is really good - the quality of the photos is indistinguishable from an actual camera! The video is not as clear though. The synchronisation with other devices (I use bluetooth) is also really efficient.

- The battery life isn't go great - I have to recharge every other day because I use it a lot. I think, however, that if it isn't used a lot and left on standby, the battery would last for a very long time. It's also a little annoying during calls because your cheek will inevitable touch the touchscreen keys - it doesn't hang up, but the screen changes. It also takes a while getting the hang of the keys because they're really small - but that doesn't take long and it's really easy to use afterwards.

+ cant think ov any very dissappointing

- buttons on keypad small and sharp...touch screen slow and unresponsive...battery life poor ...very dissappointing have now changed for Nokia N95...far better choice!

+ If has a good camera, good applications and entertainment.

- Software has some problems. For example, When download a flash games they work but for a while then it says Operation failled when try to open games or applications. I tried master reset and up date the softwate but never sort out this problem.
Also, it sometimes restarts all in a sudden,

+ Reviewer left no comment

- Build Quality for a Sony ericsson is Poor. Screen Freezes now and then buttons become unresponsive. Also when loading between items such as images can be painfully slow. Camera can be abit hit and miss.

+ The camera is of a high quality, and music sounds great on this phone!

- The battery life is short, and it seems to run into software problems alot. I'm now on my second K850i because my first one couldn't be repaired due to severe software issue's.

+ High m pixel camera

- Keypad is too small and awkward

+ Touch screen

- went wrong in 3rd week

+ It's an 'intelligent' phone, capable of doing everything I need. All the usual benefits of a Sony Ericsson. Good camera quality (although fiddly to use), I like being able to change over the SIM without turning it on/off every time, battery is great as always.

- The tiny keys are very awkward to use, even now I've had it for a few months. The touch screen bits are still active when I'm on the phone so I keep writing texts with my cheek while I'm talking. The three-way camera/video/pictures switch is less convenient than the usual system, and when I view pictures, the screen times out and the whole phone seizes up for several seconds, which gets very annoying when showing friends your pics.

+ The 5 megapixel Camera function is what I really bought on, It is good and has some nice functions, but if you can improve on this a little more then I will buy the next one,

- no too happy with the keys as like most people I tex more than speak, would like a larger battery like the K800i had (or it may be the W800i)

+ My Sony K850i is easily the best phone i have used, in terms of looks and design it's a good looking phone, in terms of usage it's easy to use, the camera is fabulous and i would recommend the Sony K850i to anyone.

- Battery life is poor, not enough memory.

+ Great camera, great video, fantastic screen resolution, very easy to set up and generally use, good internet access

- Poor touch screen area - doesn't always respond, unable to switch between flight mode and phone mode without switching phone off then on!

+ The phone is a fantastic piece of kit the camera is great and it has really good sound quality.

- You can sometimes catch the touch screen buttons and end up going on the internet whilst the phone is in your pocket if you forget to lock keys.

+ looks good, easy to use, great camera.

- n/a

+ The camera is great, really clear photos.

- I often end up sending text messages when in a phone call, i presume through the touch screen.

+ Can't find any!

- I really regret getting this phone! The keys are too small. The touch screen is either too sensitive or not sensitve enough depending on what mood it is in! I loved me sony ericsson K750i and want it back! The camera is not very good and getting on-line I find tricky. Save yourself and get something else!

+ camera is as good as i need it, possibly this is my lack of knowledge/imagination but it would be nice to beef up other functions first. i want a phone that does everything. one piece of tech that has it all. not much to ask eh.

- no specific call blocking(samsung), menus at times fiddly(combo of touch and key fine but sometimes you run through several touch pad options running the increased risk of deleting that pic of your son doing his frist whatever), would be nice to attach a microphone to make dictation easier, would be nice to have gps(nokia etc.),

+ It's got a light.

- 1. The flash on the camera dosn't seem to do anything thus producing a black picture!
2. When talking on the phone, it seems that the touch screen is positioned right where your ear is so you start going through to different menus on the phone without realising! So once you hang up you have to scroll all the way back to the main screen!!

+ The screen is great, like the touch screen part of the phone, great camera good for music, great features, nice shape.

- the keypad could have been a little smarter,it should have come with a cloth to clean the screen as it smudges easily..

+ Phone is great! Battery life is excellent, can go almost a week without chargin and i use the phone alot! The picture quality is fab so is the video. I dint bother taking a camera on hols i jus took my phone instead, and took around 200 pics thats just the phone memory too.

- Reviewer left no comment

+ the phone looks great and real easy to use. The camera is a real pleasure with 5.0 megapixels, perfect for those unplanned snaps.

- only bad point i've found is the keys are very pronounced so it's tricky to text

+ its such a good phone to be able to provide a small touch screen part which is really impressive

- its juz the touch screen parts are too sensitive

+ its a good quality fone

- turns its self off sometimes for no apparent reason

+ Great camera and screen. Messaging really easy to use and bluetooth facilities good.

- Battery life disappointing, even without using features other than phone or sms. Also software bundle not compatible with Mac computers.

+ easy navigation; excellent bluetooth activity.

- screen difficult to read in sun. easy to change activity inadvertently with touch screen.

+ Camera gives very good quality pictures

- Touch screen navigation can be temperamental. Ignoring you one minute then over selecting another minute.

+ Extremely good lookin phone, loads of features, great music playback and a brilliant camera.

- The keypad is fine, but it does takea little bit of getting used to - the keys are very tall and squre, so aren't as comfortable as some phone.

+ the camera is very good and the design is good .

- i dont like the touch screen part of the phone and if the phone is in crystall case it wont take any photos

+ the photo quality is excellent.

- if u forget to lock it, because its a touch screen, its sent a few blank msg to the first person in my phonebook.

+ good photo quality.... like the touch screen feature

- it cuts out whenever it feels like it.... and wont turn back on for a couple of minutes!!!

+ The k850i has all the features of the older models, and some very nice new ones, like the screen changing when u put it on its side. The themes also react to what angle u have the phone, friends and i spent hours playing about with them to see what it can do. It has the clock display when the screensaver is off, from what ive done and know, it has all the features that people say it doesnt. :P

- The camera is the only bad point, cool beans to it being 5mp, but boo to the flash, if the lights not right, instead of the flash making it lighter and better, it makes it black. Its like the flash is to powerful! So im not impressed.

+ Cracking phone, loads of features, looks good, very very good camera and video is excellent, far better than the days of 3GP video on older phones

- the 'touch screen' is rather annoying, very hit and miss!

+ the phone its self is good for camera and video and listening to music

- the one bad point is some times the tuch screen dose not respond

+ I needed a camera I could take around with me easily. This is compact enough and the camera is good quality.

- I have had to return twice already as the software for the touch screen went wrong. The touch screen worries me...once the touch screen software goes you can not do anything with the phone.

+ nice phone easy to use good quality loads of features superb signal strength

- battery runs low to quick, when playing music it aint all that loud and the headphones dont give true sound

+ Nice ligthweight phone easy to use and looks good

- Battery life

+ Reviewer left no comment

- Keys far too small to allow for accurate texting. 80% of the time theTouch screen does not always work first time

+ easy to use, camera

- software crashes alot, phone won't send messages

+ Music player. video/camera quality

- Constantly crashes. Battery does not last i have to charge it two times a day

+ Good camera

- buttons are too small on keypad

+ Reviewer left no comment

- The camera is terrible compared to the previous model the K800i.
I was lied to regarding the monthly cost of renewing my contract with yourselves, something i regret doing and will never do again once this one has expired.

+ It's cool and stylish, easy to use keypad, brilliant colour and camera quality. Can have any ringtone and message tone. Good sound quality. I had been waiting since early summer 07 for this phone to come out, and finaly got it in Jan 08. Very pleased with it, what i expected and more, just wish it had what ive put in the bad points, but i expected it not to have them unfortunately. I am very happy with the overall product and wouldnt swap it. Also love the make, Sony are excellent quailty!

- Not quite loud enough. Needs an option for extending the ringtone and message tone, I find it hard to get to my phone before it stops ringing, and if i dont hear a message alert i dont have the choice of having it either continuously or every couple of minutes going off until i hear it and veiw the message. The media function hasnt been designed very well as i didnt want all my pictures accessable in one folder. I put them in several folders and hid some private pictures in file manager, but they all appear randomly in the media section.

+ Looks great, Easy to set up emails( easy to use when on the move, but you can only download from one account at a time, so separate accounts need to be downloaded individually), Good camera, Set it up to work through my laptop, worked fine. ( not a feature I would use much, but it may be handy in an emergency) Draws in the signal well in poor reception areas.Bluetooth easy to set up and use.

- Battery is not as good as expected..Having to charge it every couple of days now, but it was better a couple of months ago when it was new). Keypad is a little stiff, and long messages can be a bit of a pain. The whole text message system could do with some sort of update, but once you get used to it, its fine.

+ good looking. 5 mega pixel camera. Buttons well spaced.

- The bottom of the phone (where the battery and sim go in) can become loose causing battery and sim card to come away from connections leading to inactive sim or frozen screen ! VERY annoying. Also, 5 megapixel camera but needs other features to make the best use of it.

+ Looks good. Very easy to use. Excellent photo quality. Like the touchscreen buttons

- Keys are quite small and the navigation pad is awkward to use. No web access directly from the keypad - you have to search through menus to find it

+ People say that the touch screen is rubbish but I have had mine for nearly two years and still no problem. The camera is very good and so is the general navigation. I particularly like screen orientation when in the Sony Ericsson media center.

- Battery life is quite poor and you may need to upgrade the firmware.

+ the camera obviously being 5.0 megapixels is the highlight off the phone, as well as all the media options such as videos and music.

- the keypad is often awkward, when you are a fast texter like me, i type too fast for the phone it doesn't keep up and often makes mistakes which is sometimes annoying, and the touch screen pad is often slow to react, and takes pressing a few times before working... also very annoying.

+ I heard some terrible reviews about this phone from other people, but I have had not problems, Fab Camera/video, great Mp3 player, nice looking chunky phone

- The touch screen is occasionaly a bit slow to respond, the keys get some getting used to when texting

+ camera is good. looked nice on pics

- the navigation its difficult. its a brick

+ Reviewer left no comment

- I have to keep reseting the phone also i keep losing programs i have instaled.
also phone runs stupidly slow if an aplication is running in the background.

+ 5mp Camera

- Fiddly buttons, a proper smart phone would be better

+ Brilliant Camera and sound quality.

- Poor battery life, hard to navigate to a particular item ie difficult to use. Touch screen is a great feature but can be slow to respond to touch but can also be easliy knocked when when talking on the phone. Also have had several problums with the software on the phone, has been replaced once and repaired twice since purchase in November and 12 Feb!!

+ Excellent quality camera

- Touch screen buttons keep freezing, I have 2 of these phones, one has suffered a total firmware failure & is of less use than a housebrick, the other has had repeated problems with the touch screen buttons locking making it unusable, I wouldn't have another, I've gone back to my K800i !!

+ its agood phone all round buttttttttttt

- you keep knocking it on to the internet it is easy to unlock when its roaming a roung your pocket or your bag and by the time you've noticed it's cost you money for roaming

+ easy to use

- broke down once:- would turn its self off.

+ Its smaller the previouse K800, better camera
It does not have any anoying thing like dodgy keys, random unlock ect.
It does Phone, Mp3 and Camera Second to none and any extra features on other phones is unpracticle and never used as its 2 advanced for UK current infrastructure.

- Processor is slow on it so navigation graphics is laggy, they chose this processor since faster processor saps battery life so I thing they made the right choice.

+ Excellent mp3 player and superb camera quality. All round a superb phone

- keypad can be a bit fiddly and on 5 megapixels the camera is a bit slow to react but does take very good pics.

+ Good camera.

- Annoyingly small buttons. Feeble battery life. Irritating pseudo-touchscreen.

+ Trendy and stylish and easy to use

- Battery life not long enough

+ Camera is brilliant! The music is really good as well

- Reviewer left no comment

+ light, but packed full of superb features. The best 'phone I've had

- None really - to choose one would just be picky

+ Excellent camera lovely design intuitive phone use

- to many software glitches,several times a week am required to remove battery and restart phone.often goes dead, vol controls freeze.,sound on phone goes dead,and this is even after updating to latest software