The Sony Ericsson Z750i was announced toward the end of Q1 2007 and it marked the Japanese-Swedish company's foray into the HSDPA market. At this time, if you're thinking the Z750i looks familiar, it is. In fact, you'll be hard pressed to find any major differences between the Z750i and the earlier Z610i.

Design

We have to admit sheepishly that we really like the stylishly designed Z750i. Part of the reason, we suspect is the Japanese "kei tai" (mobile phone) allure which has typically followed the clean and simple design philosophy.


Like the Z610i, the Z750i retains the seamless mirror-like surface with a hidden OLED screen. When activated, the screen illuminates to give the effect of a floating display on the surface. If you look at it from an angle, it appears as though the various "layers" of the screen extends into the handset, giving it depth and a three-dimensional feel. The OLED screen displays incoming message alerts and calls, music information and in idle mode, the time, battery level and signal strength.

The only cosmetic differences we find between both handsets are the Z750i's matte-plastic backing, taller spine (the part of the bottom lid that extends above the top cover), inclusion of call/end keys and the slightly different layout of the buttons.

That said, the buttons on the Z750i are easily one of the best in the market today. The alphanumeric keys are large and provide excellent tactile feedback. The rest of the control buttons are also adequately sized to provide reasonable sense-of-touch. There are three quick access music controls on the left edge of the handset. Two of these buttons double as volume keys.

The Z750i is not only aesthetically pleasing on the outside, the cascading flow of lights starting from the bottom of the keypad and ending with the lighting up of the 2.2-inch LCD screen is also a very nice finishing touch. Obviously, those with a chronic habit of wiping their handset may get deliverance with this Sony Ericsson, since the huge glossy surface requires constant cleaning.

Although the Z610i and Z750i are like peas in a pod on the outside, the latter is more advanced in terms of features. For example, the quadband Z750i is now on the GSM 850 frequency and it also offers triband HSDPA which add to its network compatibility in the US.

A little less known fact of the Z750i is that it comes with built-in A-GPS receiver. This is a little different from Nokia's N95, E90 and the 6110 Navigator which have built-in GPS chips. The Z750i relies on an assistance server such as a cell phone tower to triangulate the user's position. According to Sony Ericsson, this feature requires the telco operator to activate the A-GPS capability and, from what they understand, only Chunghwa Telecom in Taiwan has enabled this feature. They added that the A-GPS receiver can also connect to GPS satellites, although it will take a longer time to get a location fix. We tried the A-GPS feature during our review, but we never managed to triangulate our position. The way we see it? The proposition of the A-GPS here is somewhat dodgy and we recommend users to take this with a huge pinch of salt.

Source:http://www.bangkokpost.com/gadget/gadget.php?id=232&p=2