First the bad news: There is no WiFi or US-compatible 3G (or EDGE) connectivity on the m600i. And, as mentioned, there's no camera to be found, either. Pile atop that documented firmware and battery issues that plagued early production runs of the phone, and it makes one wonder if SE rushed the m600i out the door before it was truly ready for the public.
Now the good news: The UIQ 3.0 interface running on Symbian 9.1 is perhaps the best interface I've ever used on a mobile phone. The QWERTY board and excellent handwriting recognition software allow for multiple methods of text input and accessing applications, messaging, and phone capabilities. Graphics and fonts are beautiful, menus are overwhelmingly logical and intuitive, and the "Today!" menu on the home screen gives easy access to calls, messaging, and calendar info in a DHTML-style collapsible list.
The UIQ/Symbian combo opens up a world of third-party applications to m600i owners with a user interface that's reminiscent of Apple's Mac OS X operating system. A customizable, icon-driven Activity Menu floats on the bottom edge of the home screen in a manner similar to the OS X dock, providing one-touch access to five favorite applications, contacts, Web pages, and/or documents. Pre-installed applications include support for viewing and editing MS Word/Excel/PowerPoint files and a PDF reader.
With the new w950i Walkman phone also built on UIQ/Symbian and housed in a body very similar to the m600i's, I can't help but wonder how far off the 600 media player application is from the UIQ version of SE's Walkman software. The 600's media player works very well with audio and video files of most every popular format including Macromedia Flash Lite. Video playback support is rated at a full 30 fps, and works very well so long as the number of applications running in the background is kept to a minimum. The music player has solid playlist support, a great equalizer that's applicable system-wide, was able to read ID3 tag information from most files I loaded onto the M2 stick (though it balked on some AACs), and even displays album art.
Sony Ericsson built 80MB of internal memory into the m600i, and the M2 slot supports up to 1GB of additional memory (though the M2 standard theoretically can support up to 32GB per stick). Symbian 9.1 is capable of multitasking, and while the m600i generally did well running and switching between applications, I did encounter some sluggishness here and there. I also never quite got the hang of making sure that I was closing applications instead of just switching screens while the programs still ran in the background. This meant some trips to the Task Manager app to end programs I didn't know were still running.
The m600i features support for Java MIDP 2.0 and 3D games. The sole pre-installed game, Vijay Sing Pro Golf, is pretty amazing. I'm by no means a hard-core gamer, but this didn't seem too far off from Tiger Woods 2005 that I played on a friend's PS 2 awhile back. The graphics are stunning and playability is quite high if you're into golf games.
The m600i does not have a camera. While on the one hand this could be seen as a nod to business environments that are increasingly fearful of corporate espionage, on the other hand it's too bad. Given that the p990 - SE's flagship smartphone - packs a 2 MP camera, it seems that SE could have also included one on the m600i in order to increase the breadth of its appeal.
Next: Display & Audio »
4.5
