Sony Ericsson V800

Discontinued
22nd September 2004

We've often bemoaned the fact that Japanese handsets are often far better than anything released in the rest of the world - until now. With the announcment of the Sony Ericsson V800, we have one of the first truly global launches of a handset which is more-or-less the same everywhere in the world.

The Sony Ericsson V800 is a 3G phone, to be sold as the Vodafone V802SE in Japan, is one of the more advanced 3G phones on the market, featuring a 1.3 megapixel camera with 32Mb of internal memory, expandable to 1Gb with Memory Stick Pro Duo cards, Bluetooth, MMS, Instant Messaging, a web browser and email client.

The V800 is pretty compact for a 3G phone at 102x49x24mm and 128 grams in weight. With a reasonably sized 176x220 pixel 262,000 colour display, the V800 is easy enough to use, although the screen is no particular improvement over most other 3G phones. In addition the V800's native 3G UMTS network, it also supports tri-band GSM and GPRS. Plus there's 3D graphics acceleration, and of course Java, polyphonics and PC synchronisation. The V800 also supports video calling with its rotating camera, and the high-speed 3G data link of up to 384kbps allows for easy video downloads, web surfing or other network intensive operations.

This isn't a bad 3G handset at all, but we've seen similar specifications (including the camera) and physical characteristics with the Nokia 6630. However, what is notable is that Vodafone have presumably largely aborted the general release of the Sony Ericsson Z1010 handset, because the V800 is hugely better.

This is a good 3G handset, and it includes decent features like a digital camera, as opposed to some 3G offerings that include odd things like GPS (global positioning system) support. At 128 grams, the V800 is only marginally heavier than some 2.5G GSM handsets. Assuming the Sony Ericsson V800 ever makes it to market, it should sell pretty well to high-end 3G users.

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