So, as my old Nokia had served my for almost half a decade, I decided it was time to retire it, and what I found was the Sony Ericsson S500i in the contrasted copper color shown in the image. And besides the first one being a lemon that I had replaced due to a glitch at the top of the display glass (looked like a good entry point for pocket lint and stuff), I’m happy with it. I think the model has been around since fall, which I guess makes it close to ancient in the tech market, but that might mean it’s a good time to look for special deals on it.

It’s marketed as a “design” phone, so I’ll start from the outside by saying that I think it does in fact look nice. Not incredibly eyecatching, nor overly minimalistic but with nice clean lines, open space between the features and a bit of nice accents. Some have labeled it as feminine design – that might be true of the gold-green or purple version, but unless you’re the kind of guy who immediately gets the hot babe theme or one sporting your car/team logo, you might find one you like in the other color options which in my opinion are pretty neutral. When it comes to construction, I think it feels pretty solid for a mostly plastic design, and the action of the slider bit is good.

I have to mention that I haven’t seen much point in clamshells or any other designs including joints or covers with the size mobile phones reached around the turn of the millenium… but with larger displays and need for larger navigation keys I guess hiding the number pad is a good compromise until even the most affordable phones are chrome framed touchscreen lozenges. At least as long as I don’t have to open it to see the display or call up a number from the phone book.

The phone also comes with lighting effects – something which didn’t sound too appealing in writing, but it is quite subtle in practice. Besides a selection of pulsating effects for incoming calls, the lighting also changes color to match that of the themes (which themselves alter with time of the day and season, depending on theme). It’s an interesting attempt in combining the design of the software with the hardware, and it works well.

If there’s anything to complain about design wise it’s that the navigation keys, though not terrible, might be slightly affected by a form over function compromise. I also don’t find the right side placement of the Fastport optimal – when a headset or charger is connected the largish plug is right where I want my index finger to be and makes the set a slight bit awkward to operate with my right hand. And while a tap on the two softkeys unlocks the keys, there is no similar way to lock them again so you have to either open and close the phone or access an option in the power button menu.

So, to leave the design and go into the device, I guess I can summarize the featues as pretty decent, but not special. It connects over GSM (850/900/1800/1900) with GPRS and EDGE, and has Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP and USB for more local communication. The 2 inch display has a 240×320 resolution and 262K colors, and it’s bright and clear enough that I don’t have any problem using it with the backlight turned down to 50% on most occasions. On-board memory is 12MB, and expandable with Memory Stick M2 up to 2GB. The 2Mpix fix-focus camera isn’t any wonder, but I guess it’s alright for snapshots. It has a panorama mode, digital zoom when set to VGA resolution or video, and basic white balance and effect settings. The built-in speaker is alright for speaker phone and game audio but not so much for music. To conclude the hardware overview I must say that battery life seems a bit so-so, but then I’ve been playing around with it a bit too.

Software wise, it’s pretty much what you’d expect as well. Online capabilities include browser, email with push support and an RSS reader. The audio and video players do their jobs, and then there’s the organizer and other aides as well as a pile of basic software for video and photo editing and ringtone composing and so on.

All in all, it’s a decent mid-range phone with just about everything you need in an, in my opinion, attractive package. I paid SEK1300 (About EUR140/USD210), a bit less than regular shelf price of SEK2000-2500 since it was sold with a pre-paid card and locked to the carrier I already use, and for that price I think it was a great deal.

Update: Seems there are plenty of comments on the internets complaining about the number keys breaking. While mine are still whole, I agree that they do in fact look a bit on the flimsy side.

SonyEricsson S500i product page
S500i Mysterious Green at amazon.com
S500i Mysterious Green at amazon.co.uk
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