I believe the newer SE models support up to 4 gig memory sticks now. I've got my eye on the W850 or the W900. Either of these two would be nice.
Yea the K800i is their latest model. It uses the M3 flash format, which are really tiny, and apparently will be able to hold 32 Gigs at one point. I love the 3.2 mp camera etc. But I just don't have faith in them expanding the M3 format to 32 Gigs any time soon. The phone has a fantastic screen though.
I used to have the K750i, which was a big step from their K700i.
If anyone is on a budget and needs a decent phone, I recommend the K700i. At less than $100 it is an excellent phone. It also features 40MB of internal mem, plus a decent 1.3MP camera.
The K750i had a 2.0 mp camera and was pretty awesome, except mine was defective so I had to replace it with a W800i.
All the phones from SE released after the K750i uptill the K800i have been rehashes of the K750i design.
There was the W800i, the first to use the Walkman brand. But it was basically the K750i with better packaging and a bigger mem. stick. The K710i, the W790i and the W810i all came later as rehashes.
I guess I am a bit bitter because Sony is the only company that does this with phones. They kept releasing the same product with minor changes and new prices. They didn't even bother changing the candy bar design.
So up till the K700i, Sony had only one flagship product and it was meant to do both.
Then they decided to have separate entities. The K series starting with the K750i was going to have a 2MP camera and a limited mem card in the packaging. The W series starting with the W800i, was basically going to be the K750i, but with a larger mem card as well as nicer mp3 support etc.
But till the K750i/W800i they were both basically the same product. You could in essence buy the K750i and turn it into the W800i with the software swap.
They've taken them in quite different directions now. There is the K800i on the camera side of things, while there is the W850i/W900i on the mp3 end. They are also totally different phones, so no longer can you take the K series phone and install the firmware of the W series or vice versa.
The K800i looks like a slightly bigger version of the K750i, except the camera is a lot sweeter and the mem capacity in theory should go to 32GB. It also uses the M3 flash card, which is where Sony is banking its future.
The W850i/W900i series are basically the return of the slider design for Sony. They tried that before, and it didn't work, but this time they have the Walkman brand which made the W800i a best seller. For memory they use the Duo Pro sticks that are able to hit 4 Gigs.
But the difference between the Duo Pro and M3 is that while M3 can in the future hit 32GB, it is a new tech. Duo Pro is much more mature and is already at its capacity. By the time the M3 hits its capacity, I'll probably be looking for a new phone.
The W850i/W900i is still in my opinion a rehash of an earlier design. They still use a 2MP camera, and the slider design looks very much like the S series they tried a while back. Like the K800i, the W900i is a 3G phone, which basically means video talk as there are two cameras.
The MP3 software is excellent though, and easily better than the K800i (which is good enough). The headphones are those really good ones that snugly fit in your ear – though he ones on my W800i gave me headaches. They are so snug, that when you drink a glass of water you can literally hear you throat muscles working.
The reason the W850/900i continues to be a rehash of past phones, and doesn’t use the K800i design, is basically because of the M3 format’s memory limitations. Like I said, the format just isn’t mature enough, and with the W series they are targeting a crowd that would love to store as many songs as possible. A 2GB Duo Pro card packaged with the W900i allows them to do that. Otherwise they would have loved to have offered a 3.2 MP camera on the W series as well.
Same time next year, I am pretty sure the next phone in the W series will use the K series design, with the M3 stick having matured a lot more.
Also here is an excellent site for phone review:
http://www.mobile-review.com/index-en.shtml
