the Sony-Ericsson z710i

The Sony-Ericsson z701i is a quad-band GSM clamshell phone that’s loaded with lots of features like a good-quality 2 megapixel camera, built-in MP3 player (with external buttons), GPRS/EDGE, and as you’ll soon see, excellent audio and RF characteristics.
I really don’t know where Sony-Ericsson’s thinking is in this regard. They give you only one ringtone that even remotely approaches a standard ringer. The rest are relatively faint (though nice-sounding) MIDI files. The volume of the one ringtone that actually has a bit of volume isn’t that great, and so you’ll probably want to load something loud yourself. Sadly, Fido’s version of this phone disallows the use of MP3 files as ringtones. This seems to be one area where all the Sony-Ericsson phones I’ve tested recently fall flat.


The internal display is 176 x 220 pixels with 18-bit (262,000) color. The backlight is bright and the overall use of the screen by the phone’s UI is generally quite handsome. The outer display is 128 x 128 pixel monochrome screen with 4-level grayscale. The outer display uses reverse (white on dark blue) and it’s rather difficult to see in bright sunlight. The inner display works well in bright sunlight however and the graphics engine in the phone seems more than up to the task of providing smooth animated effects.


To test the provided MP3 player I had only the provided stereo earbuds, as the phone used a proprietary connector and it did not come with an adapter for standard 3.5 mm headsets. The quality of those provided stereo earbuds was sub-standard to say the least. They could generate a fairly decent amount of bass, but their overall reproduction was poor. I therefore couldn’t judge if the MP3 player was all that great. I certainly wouldn’t use those earbuds for phone calls, as the overall quality was well below that of the native earpiece.


I really like this phone. Not only does it have exceptional RF and audio capabilities, it also provides a lot of great features, a half-decent phonebook, a good camera, and nice ergonomics. It now stands as my choice as the phone I WOULD USE if I had to abandon Telus Mike and switch to Rogers/Fido. Yes, the phone is locked to Fido, but I’m sure it can easily be unlocked to work on Rogers or 7-11 (same network, different price plans).
The price is a bit steep for pre-paid and month-to-month users (at $325), but if you don’t mind signing up for a 3-year contract with Fido the price falls to a very reasonable $75.