The Sony Ericsson K800i, and its variant, the Sony Ericsson K790, are mobile phone handsets manufactured by

Sony Ericsson Sony Mobile Communications Inc. ( ja, ソニーモバイルコミュニケーションズ株式会社) was a multinational telecommunications company founded on October 1, 2001, as a joint venture between Sony Group Corporation and Ericsson. I ...

. Launched in July 2006 (for the K800i in the UK market; others may vary), the phones are the successor to the

Sony Ericsson K750i The Sony Ericsson K750, introduced in June 2005, was a high-end mobile phone, the successor to the now discontinued K700, and which was succeeded by the K800i in Q2 2006. Before official release, K750 was known by its codename Clara. There al ...

. Both of the phones feature a 3.2-

megapixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the smal ...

digital camera A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile device ...

complete with a

xenon Xenon is a chemical element with the symbol Xe and atomic number 54. It is a dense, colorless, odorless noble gas found in Earth's atmosphere in trace amounts. Although generally unreactive, it can undergo a few chemical reactions such as the ...

flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Barry Allen) ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Wally West, the first Kid ...

, a protective

lens cover A lens cover or lens cap provides protection from scratches and minor collisions for camera and camcorder lenses. Lens covers come standard with most cameras and lenses. Some mobile camera phones include lens covers, such as the Sony Ericsson W ...

, and a new "BestPic"

bracketing In photography, bracketing is the general technique of taking several shots of the same subject using different camera settings. Bracketing is useful and often recommended in situations that make it difficult to obtain a satisfactory image with ...

feature, and are the first to be tagged with the

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

Cyber-shot Cyber-shot is Sony's line of point-and-shoot digital cameras introduced in 1996. Cyber-shot model names use a DSC prefix, which is an initialism for "Digital Still Camera". Many Cyber-shot models feature Carl Zeiss trademarked lenses, while othe ...

branding. The new "BestPic" feature takes 9 full quality snapshots of a subject in quick succession, allowing the user to choose the best shots from them. On the entertainment front, the phones have a media player supporting

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

AAC AAC may refer to: Aviation * Advanced Aircraft, a company from Carlsbad, California * Alaskan Air Command, a radar network * American Aeronautical Corporation, a company from Port Washington, New York * American Aviation, a company from Cleveland, ...

/AAC+/eAAC+ and WMA music files and

3GP 3GP (3GPP file format) is a multimedia container format defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for 3G UMTS multimedia services. It is used on 3G mobile phones but can also be played on some 2G and 4G phones. 3G2 (3GPP2 ...

MPEG-4 MPEG-4 is a group of international standards for the compression of digital audio and visual data, multimedia systems, and file storage formats. It was originally introduced in late 1998 as a group of audio and video coding formats and related tec ...

video files. The phones also feature a RDS FM radio, and a Memory Stick Micro (M2) slot for expandable solid state memory (up to 16 GB). The K790/K800 models are also the first Sony Ericsson mobile phones to use ATI's Imageon 2192 graphics engine, which delivers a full 3D gaming graphics for Java and full support for its 3.2-megapixel camera. It is the phone used by

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...

in the 2006 Casino Royale film and trailers. The difference between the two phones is that the K790 supports

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as ...

and

EDGE Edge or EDGE may refer to: Technology Computing * Edge computing, a network load-balancing system * Edge device, an entry point to a computer network * Adobe Edge, a graphical development application * Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed by ...

, while the K800 supports

UMTS The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the Inte ...

and

. As a result, the K800i features a

QCIF CIF (''Common Intermediate Format'' or ''Common Interchange Format''), also known as FCIF (''Full Common Intermediate Format''), is a standardized format for the picture resolution, frame rate, color space, and color subsampling of digital video s ...

(176X144) resolution front-mounted camera for 3G video conferencing. According to the official Sony Ericsson specifications (to be found on their

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...

), the K800's talk time drops steeply from around 7 hours when using GSM to about 2 hours 30 minutes whilst using

. A modified version of the K800i, the Sony Ericsson K810i, was released. Its successor is the 5-

Sony Ericsson K850i The Sony Ericsson K850i is a high-end mobile phone when released in October 2007. It was announced in June 2007 as the flagship product in Sony Ericsson's K ("Kamera") series, with a 5 megapixel CMOS camera sensor. The K850 was the first Sony Erics ...

Design and features

The K800i/K790 is a "block" (or "candy bar") style phone that weighs 115

gram The gram (originally gramme; SI unit symbol g) is a Physical unit, unit of mass in the International System of Units (SI) equal to one one thousandth of a kilogram. Originally defined as of 1795 as "the absolute weight of a volume of pure wate ...

s, with its buttons operated by the

thumb The thumb is the first digit of the hand, next to the index finger. When a person is standing in the medical anatomical position (where the palm is facing to the front), the thumb is the outermost digit. The Medical Latin English noun for thumb ...

. It has the "dual-front"

design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' ...

common to most Sony Ericsson mobile phones since the

Sony Ericsson K700 The Sony Ericsson K700 was introduced in 2004 as a high-end mobile phone, and as a successor to the T630. It was succeeded by the K750. Features The K700 features Bluetooth, IrDA, GPRS (4+2), Java ME support, and a 640x480 (VGA resolution) dig ...

, with the back of the mobile phone designed like a digital camera and intended to be held sideways to take photographs. The central

joystick A joystick, sometimes called a flight stick, is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. A joystick, also known as the control column, is the principal cont ...

button is used for selecting options and navigating menus, with the "C" button as an undo or delete key, and the arrow-labelled button as a "back button". Sony Ericsson K800i Silver

The two buttons labelled by white horizontal lines, known as ''hotkeys'' or ''soft keys'' perform the function of making decisions with only two choices. Such decisions are labelled on the phone's display. The button in between the right soft key and the "C" button acts as a shortcut key, which brings up a user-customisable

shortcut Shortcut may refer to: Navigation * Rat running or shortcut, a minor-road alternative to a signposted route * File shortcut, a handle which allows the user to find a file or resource located in a different directory or folder on a computer * Key ...

menu when pressed. The two "A/B" buttons on either side of the earpiece are used for horizontal

game A game is a structured form of play (activity), play, usually undertaken for enjoyment, entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator s ...

s support, as in the Sony Ericsson W550/ W600. The on/off button is located on the top of the phone. The

Memory Stick Micro M2 The Memory Stick is a removable flash memory card format, originally launched by Sony in late 1998. In addition to the original Memory Stick, this family includes the Memory Stick PRO, a revision that allows greater maximum storage capacity an ...

slot is located on the left-hand side of the phone. On the right-hand side of the phone there are three keys: two for controlling

volume Volume is a measure of occupied three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch). The de ...

, skipping through tracks in the Media Player, changing radio channel, and zooming in and out when in camera mode. The third button on the right is the camera shutter button which operates the phone's key feature, a 3.2-

. In amongst the speaker at the top of the phone is a small camera used for video calls. Located next to this is the

IrDA The Infrared Data Association (IrDA) is an industry-driven interest group that was founded in 1994 by around 50 companies. IrDA provides specifications for a complete set of protocols for wireless infrared communications, and the name "IrDA" also ...

port.

The phone has a standard minimum user-available internal memory capacity of 64 MB. The external memory capacity can be extended by using a

Memory Stick The Memory Stick is a removable flash memory card format, originally launched by Sony in late 1998. In addition to the original Memory Stick, this family includes the Memory Stick PRO, a revision that allows greater maximum storage capacity and ...

Micro M2, intended to support both the camera and the media player function of the phone. The phone can be connected to a computer for data transfer and recharging. Communication is made using either the built-in

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

wireless or the supplied

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad v ...

data cable, which connects to the phone using Sony Ericsson's proprietary

FastPort The FastPort was a proprietary polyconnection interface used on all Sony Ericsson cellphones between 2005 and 2010. Designed in response to Nokia's proprietary Nokia Pop-Port, Pop-Port, FastPort provided data transfer, charging, headset and speak ...

connector, which is located on the bottom of the phone. The phone can also be used as a Bluetooth or USB

GPRS General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a packet oriented mobile data standard on the 2G and 3G cellular communication network's global system for mobile communications (GSM). GPRS was established by European Telecommunications Standards Insti ...

/ 3G

modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by Modulation#Digital modulati ...

. K800i/K790 cellphones feature full support for USB mass storage recognition. This means that there will be no need for driver installation on modern operating systems such as

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

, as the phone will be automatically recognized as an external storage device upon connection. Data retrieval also includes the ability to output files by infra-red and Bluetooth (as well as in network-transmitted messages) to other devices. Although typical of many recent Sony Ericsson devices, support for outputting files other than over the mobile network has been variable with other brands. In the calendar, a new feature is supported for recurring event notifications on a yearly basis, which the predecessor K750 lacked. The calendar is closely compatible with

Microsoft Outlook Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 software suites. Though primarily an email client, Outlook also includes such functions as Calen ...

. Mac OS X v10.4.9 added support for calendar and contact syncing under

iSync iSync is a defunct application developed by Apple Inc., which syncs iCal and Address Book data to SyncML-enabled mobile phones, via Bluetooth or by using a USB connection. It was first released on Jan 2, 2003, with technology licensed from fusion ...

2.4.

Variants

* K800i - International version: Dual-mode

(2100 MHz) &

(900/1800/1900 MHz), with

W-CDMA The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project), UMTS is a component of the Inte ...

and

- for all regions except Mainland China * K800c - Mainland China version: Dual-mode UMTS (2100 MHz) & GSM (900/1800/1900 MHz), with W-CDMA and GPRS * K790i - International version: Tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900 MHz), with

- for all regions except Mainland China and North America * K790c - Mainland China version: Tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900 MHz), with EDGE * K790a - North American version: Tri-band GSM (850/1800/1900 MHz), with EDGE

Technical specifications

Platform technology

Built on the U250 from

Ericsson Mobile Platform Ericsson Mobile Platforms (EMP) was the name of a company within the Ericsson group that supplied ''mobile platforms'', i.e. the technological basis on which a cellular phone product can be built. The main office was in Lund, Sweden. EMP was one ...

Imaging

* 3.2-

CMOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss", ) is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFE ...

with

auto-focus An autofocus (or AF) optical system uses a sensor, a control system and a motor to focus on an automatically or manually selected point or area. An electronic rangefinder has a display instead of the motor; the adjustment of the optical system ...

and Macro mode * 32x

digital zoom Digital zoom is a method of decreasing the precise angle of view of a digital photograph or video image. It is accomplished by cropping an image down to an area with the same aspect ratio as the original, and scaling the image up to the dimen ...

Xenon Xenon is a chemical element with the symbol Xe and atomic number 54. It is a dense, colorless, odorless noble gas found in Earth's atmosphere in trace amounts. Although generally unreactive, it can undergo a few chemical reactions such as the ...

with mF illuminator assist * Shutter button with auto-focus (press half-way to auto-focus, fully to capture) * Red-eye reduction *

PictBridge PictBridge is a historical computing industry standard introduced in 2003 from the Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA) for direct printing. It allows images to be printed directly from digital cameras to a printer, without having to conn ...

DPOF DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) is a format which allows the user of a digital camera or other device such as a mobile phone or PDA to define which captured images on the storage card are to be printed, together with information on the number of ...

* Image Stabilization * BestPic - takes 9 successive images of the same subject in full resolution to choose the best shot(s) *

(176x144) resolution video recording at 15 frame/s in 3GP format

Network

* K800i / K800c ** Dual-mode:

at 2100 MHz, and

at 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz * K790i / K790c ** Tri-band

at 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz * K790a ** Tri-band

at 850 MHz, 1800 MHz and 1900 MHz

Price

Since the release of its successor the market price has dramatically fallen and, as of November 2008, it was available on a UK pre-pay network between £69.99 to £89.99.

Entertainment

* Media Player with Equalizer and Stereo Widening *

, WMA,

RealAudio RealAudio, or also spelled as Real Audio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks and first released in April 1995. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fid ...

8 and

/AAC+/eAAC+ audio (unlike the K750 and W800, the K800 implements the HE-AAC and HE-AAC 2 formats) * MP4,

and

RealVideo RealVideo, or also spelled as Real Video, is a suite of proprietary video compression formats developed by RealNetworks – the specific format changes with the version. It was first released in 1997 and was at version 10. RealVideo is supported ...

8 video * RDS FM radio * MusicDJ, PhotoDJ and VideoDJ * Sound recorder (saves records in AMR format) * Streaming audio/video * 3D

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

games * A/B buttons for horizontal games support and full-screen image preview modes * FaceWarp (pre-installed Java Application, not in all models) * Remote Control application (confirmed on K790i), allows you to use your phone as a

Human interface device A human interface device or HID is a type of computer device usually used by humans that takes input from humans and gives output to humans. The term "HID" most commonly refers to the USB-HID specification. The term was coined by Mike Van Fl ...

(like mouse or keyboard) via Bluetooth. Three button presets available: Presenter, MediaPlayer, Desktop. Supported on host computer natively by Bluetooth stack (vendor-independent).

Internet

* Access NetFront - Full

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

browser *

Download Manager A download manager is a software tool that manages the downloading of files from the Internet, which may be built: into a Web browser, or as a, usually more sophisticated program Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to: Bu ...

* Native

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

Reader *

Email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

(

POP3 In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. POP version 3 (POP3) is the version in common use, and along with IMAP the most common p ...

and

IMAP4 In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by . IMAP was designed with the goal of per ...

). With

Push e-mail Push email is an email system that provides an always-on capability, in which new email is actively transferred ( pushed) as it arrives by the mail delivery agent (MDA) (commonly called mail server) to the mail user agent (MUA), also called the ema ...

available for IMAP4.

Connectivity

* Infrared port (

) * Bluetooth 2.0 + A2DP * CSD *

HSCSD In communications, Circuit Switched Data (CSD) is the original form of data transmission developed for the time-division multiple access (TDMA)-based mobile phone systems like Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). After 2010 many teleco ...

(K790 versions only) *

(K800 versions only) *

USB 2.0 Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad v ...

Synchronization or Mass Storage Device Transfer Mode via Fast Port connector

Storage

* (M2) (Card not included as standard, up to 2 GB supported officially - unofficially up to 16 GB) * Minimum 64 MB Internal Flash memory (can be expanded to almost 75 MB through removal of preinstalled applications

Dimensions

* 106 mm x 47 mm x 20 mm (22 mm at the thickest part, which is the

lens cover)

Operating system

Sony Ericsson Java Platform The Sony Ericsson Java Platform is a set of profiles describing particular Sony Ericsson Java implementation. It was designed to help developers to focus on a platform rather than on a variety of different product names. Two platform branches exis ...

7 (Java ME)

Display

* ATI

Imageon Imageon (previously ATI Imageon) was a series of media coprocessors and mobile chipsets produced by ATI (later AMD) in 2002–2008, providing graphics acceleration and other multimedia features for handheld devices such as mobile phones and Person ...

2192 8 MB Graphics Engine (including support for its 3.2-megapixel camera for

High Color High color graphics is a method of storing image information in a computer's memory such that each pixel is represented by two bytes. Usually the color is represented by all 16 bits, but some devices also support 15-bit high color. More recentl ...

) * 2.0 inch QVGA (240x320)

TFT LCD A thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display (TFT LCD) is a variant of a liquid-crystal display that uses thin-film-transistor technology to improve image qualities such as addressability and contrast. A TFT LCD is an active matrix LCD, in cont ...

* 262,144 (18-bit) colors

Colours

* Velvet Black * Allure Brown * Royale Silver (

Casino Royale Limited Edition) * Concrete Silver

Specific absorption rate (SAR)

* 0.59 W/kg (right)

Startup failures and data corruption

For some users, the K800i can suddenly and unexpectedly fail to startup, and instead just show a flashing white screen repeatedly. This problem happens due to internal data corruption (caused by the phone), and can only be fixed by restoring ("flashing") the phone to its original software/firmware — meaning that all personal data will be deleted. On some occasions, this problem can be fixed by using the Update Service software that comes on the CD (or from Sony Ericsson's website). However, personal data will still be erased. Users are recommended to regularly backup their data using both a Memory Stick — for photos and contacts — and using the software

MyPhoneExplorer MyPhoneExplorer is a proprietary freeware desktop application allowing management of Android mobile phones. It is developed in Austria, originally for the Sony Ericsson mobile phone. Features MyPhoneExplorer can connect to a phone using a USB cabl ...

to back up text messages, calendar appointments and other data to a PC. A startup failure can be forecast by the following events: * All the custom words added to the dictionary are suddenly deleted * The phone duplicates some text messages in the Drafts folder * Many text messages in the Inbox are suddenly deleted Users should back up their data when any of these events happen.

Media device problems

Sometimes dependent on age of phone/operating system the K800i doesn't show in PC media player software even when it is visible as mass storage. A work around is to uninstall the phone via device manager and wait for the phone to automatically reinstall.

References

Engadget

Mobile-Review.com Review

ReviewsTeam.com - Index of Reviews for the K790/K800 Family

Sony Ericsson Overview

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:K800i Cyber-shot cameras Sony Ericsson mobile phones Mobile phones introduced in 2006 Mobile phones with infrared transmitter