The Sony-Ericsson press announcement for the K850i is already back from July 2007 but contains a revolutionary piece of information most haven’t yet noticed:
"[…] The Sony Ericsson K850 Cyber-shot™ phone is a Tri-Band HSDPA and Quad-Band GPRS/EDGE phone […]"
Tri-Band HSDPA! This is great news since most current HSDPA phones are either only usable in the 2100 MHz band in Europe and Asia or in the 1900 MHz band in the U.S. Few if any 850 MHz mobile phones (e.g. for Australia and the U.S.) have yet been spotted. These two phones will change the game. One model produced for all parts of the world.
It’s not only great for economies of scale but also for users as it allows global High Speed Internet roaming, which is not possible today with single band HSDPA phones. People coming to Europe will be able to use their phones for high speed Internet access with prepaid SIM cards for Internet access which are available in many countries. Still waiting for the first brave operator in the U.S. doing the same thing.
P.S.: I know HSDPA data cards are also dual or tripple band today but I dream of a single device doing everything for me (and that’s certainly not a data card).
Wow that was quick, good spotting.
It doesn’t strike me as “slim” even if they say it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_Lz8CHzCt8
They are on eBay already although I can’t see them officially released anywhere.
I’m sure the UMTS 850 (and 900) carriers will be happy, now they just need some low-end equivalents.
The K850i is on sale in the UK. I played with one in my local Carphone Warehouse a week ago, as I’m due an upgrade on my K800i.
Might have a great radio, but unfortunately it’s got a lousy user interface compared with its predecessor. It has these stupid touchscreen soft-keys in the first centimetre of the screen.
A shame, as I really wanted one as it has great features, but just not sure I can live with the keypad.
Separately, it’s worth thinking that HSDPA roaming at 3.6Mbit/s would equate to almost 0.5MByte per sec…. or about £3 / $6 per second for full-speed data while roaming at most of the UK operators’ rates…
Hello Dean,
great radio, poor user interface… The same can unfortunately be said about a lot of other manufacturers, too…
Concerning the cost: That’s why I mentioned the prepaid SIMs in the blog entry above. It’s a bit of a pain to build a collection (grrr…) but no I have prepaid SIMs for most of the countries I travel to so no more hassles. And for the rest I use a German Vodafone prepaid SIM which gives me 24h of Internet access for 15 euros abroad.
Cheers,
Martin