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 series, with a 5 megapixelCMOS camera sensor. The K850 was the first Sony Ericsson phone released outside of NTT DoCoMo to support microSD and microSDHC along with Sony's traditional M2. It also introduces the usage of three touch-sensitive softkeys right under the display and a new form of navigation button, omitting the classic joystick introduced with the Ericsson T68. The camera interface has been revamped to resemble the format of cybershot digital cameras. According to the manufacturer the UMTS talk time has been significantly increased to 3 hours 30 min over its predecessor, the K800 and K810.. It was Sony Ericsson's first 3.5G HSDPA supporting mobile phone, and was also the first 3G "global" mobile with supporting all major operating network frequency in the world including GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, HSDPA, UMTS 850, UMTS 1900, UMTS 2100.
Design and features
The phone introduces a new button in the Cyber-shot line: on the right side a switch allows choosing between photo, video and playback mode. The phone is available in the colours "Luminous Green", "Velvet Blue" and "Quicksilver Black". Key features include:
Memory Stick slot to expand the memory to up to 16 GB.
Camera Information
5.04 megapixel CMOS sensor, 16x digital zoom, natural color rendering, and built in xenon flash plus three additional LEDs for autofocusing and can be used for video recording. It also features Bestpic which captures nine images in a row then you can choose the ones you want to save. In camera mode the keypad is differently lit so the user can easily find the camera shortcut buttons. In common with the K810i and the K800, programs called Photo Fix, HP print and Face Warp are bundled with the K850i. Users can also easily increase the brightness and the contrast of the photo with PhotoFix and PhotoDJ. Video recording is QVGA at 30 frames per second. Supports Image and Video Stabilizer so videos and photos taken would be less likely to appear blurred and shaky. There have been major software problems in the past but now have been solved. Moreover, as in most Sony Ericsson phones, the camera software, called camdriver, can be modified to bring new features along with considerable improvement. The line of camdrivers known as Cybershot Xperience, developed by Hasaan Rafique is the most promising as it implements many additional features like Manual Focus, Contrast, Saturation, Colour Balance, ISO, Shutter-speed and so on. It also allows the user to increase the video recording resolution.
