Sony Ericsson K790i

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Sony Ericsson K790i

Frazier Barretto, Oct 30, 2006 1900 hrs IST

Riding on the waves of the previous success, Sony Ericsson released the K790i, which is truly a feature packed piece.

Classy design, Large screen, 3.2 MP CyberShot, Xenon flash, Great camera function, Smooth and easy Interface, Bluetooth v2.0, A2DP support, Good connectivity options, Expandable memory.

Slightly bulky, Bit cramped Net Browser and Function hotkeys, QCIF video (176 x 144).

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Camera

The K790i has one of the most brilliant cameras that can be found in a phone currently. The camera is Cybershot-branded and lives up to it. The camera lens is neatly covered with a slider; previously in K750i, the camera-cover would slide UP/DOWN to reveal the lens or to protect it. This time the cover slides Left/Right preventing the camera lens from opening while sliding the phone into your pocket or while getting it out.

Behind the cover is a 3.2 megapixel camera with Auto-focus and a Xenon flash above the camera to assist excellent photography. The Xenon flash is really powerful; it can make a dark room look like it's brightly lit-up; so much so, it will blind you for a couple of seconds. Images captured are of 2048x1536 pixels in resolution. It also has 16X Digital Zoom; but the image just gets bloated if you push it too far. The phone has two buttons above the screen which are solely for camera purposes and to view the pictures. These two buttons give a host of modes and options to capture the best image automatically as well as manually.

Keeping in mind that the phone is used side-ways when being used as a camera; all further details will be provided keeping in mind the same orientation. The lower button for the camera lets you choose between the Normal, BestPic, Panorama, and Frames. Only under the Normal mode can you access the options present in the button above.

Normal
The Normal mode via the button above lets you choose from the standard camera features. There are 8 modes; Auto, Landscape, Portrait, Twilight Landscape, Twilight Portrait, Beach/Snow, Sports, and Document. According to the mode, you choose the other options such as Flash/Red Eye Reduction, Macro/Infinite focus, Image Stabilization, Lighting Conditions (Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent, Incandescent.) In the normal mode, all the customizations are accessible to manually get the best picture. Further, sample pictures are available in the .ZIP, which can be downloaded.

BestPic
BestPic is a trademark technology that lets you capture nine images in one second with one press of the camera key. Four of the resulting images are shot immediately before the camera key is actually pressed to complete the shot while the next four immediately after the actual camera key-press. To get to the BestPic mode, you have to click the lower camera button and choose BestPic. When you capture a photo using BestPic, you can save all the nine pictures differently instead of just one of them. In the downloadable .ZIP file, there is a folder within it which provides all the nine photos captured in BestPic mode.

Panorama
Panorama is a feature seen even in the earlier models of the "K" series. Panorama is a mode wherein you capture three views in one shot i.e. left, center, and right-view. It's basically a wide-view like your wide-angle lens seen in digicams, though it's not a prefect replication of the same and requires a very steady hand. The whole Panorama shot completes after three clicks. You click each time in three different directions and then the final image is displayed.
The picture below is the sample image.

In the sample Panorama picture, you will notice that the photo towards the right is a little off and because of which there is some ghosting noticeable at the tail of the Esteem in the picture while the first and second picture is stitched perfectly.

Frames
The Frames mode provides with a number of frames to capture people in different environments. You can even add more frames. This feature is available in most cameras seen from the time of even VGA cams; so, there is no need to educate you any more bout it.

Burst
In this mode, the camera lets you choose how many pictures you want and clicks in just one shot. You can capture up to 8 replications of a single image depending upon the size that you choose.

Video
The K790i has the best picture reproduction when compared to other 3 MP camera phones available. This same camera, when considered for video recording, falls short miserably. Being a 3 MP camera, one would at least expect video recording to be CIF i.e. 320 x 240 pixels at 20 fps. The video recording for the K790i is the same old ancient 176 x 144 pixels at 15 fps. This is similar to the K750i, which makes that extra 1 MP a total waste. The quality is pretty much acceptable in terms of QCIF, but can't be compared to other phones which offer CIF recording. Even the X820 from Samsung with its 2 MP camera provides good video resolution.

Its 3 MP camera compared against the N80 from Nokia is very poor. The thing I felt missing was the capability of the phone to have the flash light ON when taking a clip in bad lighting. Now, keeping the Xenon flash ON would kill the battery and asking for a spare LED would be too much. The night-mode of the camera isn't any great especially without the LED seen in the K750i.