Customer Reviews

Sony Ericsson S710a Phone (AT&T)

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I bought this phone after a long dilemma between this and Razor, I am glad that I settled for this baby, Hats off for Sony Ericsson.

I'm one of those ppl who do a LOT of research before buying anything. And believe me, Razor does not even come close to this phone, its sleek thats it, and ofcourse, most motorolas are pieces of junk.

Everyone say this phone is expensive and big and bulky, ppl please see what the bloody thing is packing!!! The camera quality is amazing, the best I've seen so far and believe me I've seen quite a bit, even better that Nokia's 1.3. The only better thing might be the z800(if I am not wrong) which packs a better camera.

The Swivel action is so cool. But let me get this clear, it's "technically" 360 degrees rotational, but practically only 180. You can close ONLY the way you opened it, but i guess it helps to keep screws from loosening or something.

The screen, OMG, its beautiful, the clarity is amazing, and its huge. Please take care of it, its too vulnerable to scratches, get PDA protectors or something,

Fully functional MP3 player, its kinda boo that only 128 megs can be put in, but i can get like 6 128 mb cards for less than 30 bucks. But yeah lack of PRO support pisses me off. Most ppl think you cant do anything on the phone when the MP3 player is ON. but you can minimize your player and get on with your other stuff.The clarity is not like any cheap player, its almost as good as an iPod, the headset provided is decent, but the sad thing is you cant put in your own headphones, you'll have to use a sony's only.

I think they renewed the firmware or something, so the UI is not as slow as people say it is.

The reception is awesome, you wont know how good it is until you use it.

So yeah, want advice? buy it

This phone has finally just come out, and there's some good and bad:

Pros
- The screen is amazing-- big and bright.
- The phone is as stylish as it gets.
- The 1.3MP camera is one of the best phone cameras on the market.
- It has EDGE and BT
- It has external memory

Cons
- The UI is surprisingly slow (much more so than the S700)
- There is a bug where you cannot type in a WAP URL. You can only use Cingular's WAP portal or add a bookmark.
- The shutter sound cannot be turned off.
- It doesn't have the Symbian OS.
- It's bulky.
- No MS Pro support so you only get up to 128mb external.
- After delaying the release for 6 weeks, Cingular decided to raise the price to $450 with a 2 year contract.

So perhaps the s710a hasnt lived up to the hype. Right now this phone is not worth the cost, but hopefully they can fix some of these issues with updated firmware. If they can speed up the UI, fix the WAP URL bug, disable the shutter sounds, and lower the cost back to its original price, this phone would get 5 stars. Many of these technical issues were already fixed once for the S700i, so why they werent fixed for the S710a is disappointing.

I just got the S710a two days ago and it is a great phone. I bought it to upgrade from my recently defunct Motorola V400. The reception and sound quality blow the V400 out of the water. Also, the digi cam is fantastic quality, but you can't rely on it as your sole digital camera because it is only 1.3 MP, which the standard on cameras today is 3.2-5 MP.

The unit is larger than many cell phones. I would suggest that you check it out in the store prior to buying it online. It can def fit in a pants, shorts, and jackets. However, it probably won't fit in shirt pockets or tight jeans. I like the size and it is comfortable to use.

Pro:
Great reception (the third best for Cingular)
1.3 MP camera
Great bluetooth support (worked on my Mac)
Plays MP3s and AAC files
Can take pictures & video
Amazing screen

Con:
Large size
External screen might scratch easily (buy PDA screen protectors)
The videos it takes are very low quality

Finally, the camera makes a noise when pictures are taken. This *can* be turned off. Just start camera mode, click settings, find shutter sound, and then select none.

This is one the best phone that I have owned so far. The screen is unmatched and the speaker is loud and clear. Reception is comparable with Nokia which are known for the best reception in GSM. I like this phone a lot. Menu speed doesn't bother me and I am sure that a firmware release will remedy this. If you have used Nokia, Motorola, or any other GSM phone, do your self a favor and step up to this phone. It will blow everything else in the water. Swivel design is great and the camera really shines for a camera phone. Plenty of on-board memory and you can use Memory Stick Duo cards up to 128MB each if you need more space for pictures and MP3s. A lot of built in functions like calendar, timer, stop watch, notes, etc. Themes can be downloaded to make the phone look unique. There are plenty of free themes available at Zedge online. All you have to do is register for free. You can them transfer them to your phone wirelessly if you have a Bluetooth adapter. Sony Ericsson phones are known for their fully functional and excellent Bluetooth. Apple Macs and Sony Ericsson phones were made for each other in the Bluetooth world.

I am happy with the phone function as a phone--great reception, clear graphic display, and loud speaker phone. But what I enjoy most about this phone is its ability to connect with my computers: both Mac and PC. Address book import via Bluetooth is done in less than a minute. The memory stick (with multi slot USB reader/writer included in the box) enables the user to transfer files between the computer and the phone. So basically, I can transfer any midi/mp3 files from my computer to my phone and either play them or make them my own ringtones. With a Mac, it's even easier with the plug-and-play method. Picture files are also transferrable- importing and exporting pics are just as easy. I think it's a great buy for those who would enjoy the phone as much as its media functions. But if you want to buy a phone just for communication purpose , i.e., just for talking, you might be paying too much for the excessive functions you may never use.

I had this phone for about 3 weeks and even though I had a blast with it, I decided to turn it back in. All of the extras they've packed in are really enjoyable but I had three main issues that were enough to make me give it up:

1) I had awful call quality. Every person that I talked to said it was like I was inside of a barrel, but it got better when I used the phone's provided earbud. The phone's shape is more like a camera than a cell phone which made it almost impossible to hold in so that your ear was comfortably over the speaker. I knew that the phone wasn't worth the $300 I'd spent for it when I tried to call customer support from my office and the representative said "I'm sorry but you're cutting out".
2) The internet would never work. I would call support and it would work for 15 minutes after I talked to them, but after that it would stop. It might have been a problem with my area, but every time it happened they would have me shut off my phone so they could upgrade it.
3) The menu is so slow. The phone has to think about everything, and when you try to imbed pictures in an e-mail or multimedia message, it takes even longer.

Other than those three main problems, here are the other pros and cons I noticed:

Pros:
- Included accessories. It came with a flash card, card reader, software for the reader, and an earbud, all of which functioned very well.
- The screen. Enough said. If you've seen the pictures online, that's really what it looks like: stunning. It's so big and beautiful.
- You can talk without bringing out the keypad. That was great because it was really awkward to hold it otherwise.
- Appearance. This is a truly beautiful phone, and when I had it, everyone wanted to see it and marvel at it's glory.
- Sound. I used my favorite opera aria ("Der Holle Rache" from Mozart's Die Zauberflote) as my ringtone and it was beautiful and loud and clear. I worked well as an mp3 player, and the provided earbud actually had two speakers for when you listened to music.
- Video. The picture was beautiful just like the screen.
- You could use the memory stick to store any files you want, just like a flash/jump drive.

Cons:
- Even though it's a megapixel camera the quality wasn't that great, and when you chose a smaller picture size, the quality got worse instead of better. I found that I had to take pictures in a larger size and then reduce them on my computer in order to have a decent image.
- The way the memory stick's files were arranged was very weird and there wasn't a part in the manual to describe how to move files to and from the computer. For some reason, if I put a file in an incorrect place on the flash disk it immediately shut my computer down (and in the way like someone pulled the plug, insteaf of the friendly "windows is shutting down").
- You couldn't get rid of some of the stupid cingular preset ringtones and backgrounds, which were just annoying. I know that's a standard thing, but it really irritated me.

It's an excellent gadget box, and if that's what you want then you've got it. The camera could use a little work, but I really enjoyed the mp3 features. I had to recharge the battery every day, but that's because I liked to listen to mp3s with the phone's built-in speaker just because I could. It was a whole lot of fun to play with when the menu lag didn't drive you up the wall, but I couldn't keep it since it wasn't a good phone first.

Pros: No more buying Ringtones, you can record your favorite song yourself! Digital Camera is very clear, sound is good. works great, nice buttons, great big clear display, this is the phone of the future!

Con: wish the phone supported more than a 128mb Duo Memory Stick

I've been using my S710 for about a week now and thus far I have been tremendously impressed.

The clarity, brightness and color saturation of this superbly large display makes this phone really shine for people like myself who have vision problems and hate squinting at the little LCD or small color displays on most phones.

The camera takes excellent pictures for a cell phone digicam and is extremely easy to use. The user interface around zooming, cropping, manipulating and mailing pictures to others is excellent as well.

Another stand out feature is a really impressive array of Bluetooth profiles supported, and done right. If you have a Mac you will be pleasantly surprised at how seamless things like file transfer, remote browsing and ICal/Addressbook sync with ISync are. Being able to update the phone's address book from the Mac with a single button press is a joy.

This phone is one of the first with a big enough display and a solid enough J2ME implementation to make using sophisticated J2ME apps entirely palatable.

The only cons are very minor and actually quite understandable - I'm not sure how they could have been done any different. First, battery drain is fairly quick compared to phones with smaller displays, however it's not voracious or unusable by any stretch - just keep an eye on things and charge early and often and you should be fine. Also, the camera piece can be somewhat awkward to hold steady, but again being an amalgamation of camera and phone I'm entirely unsure as to how this could be improved upon.

Overall I love this phone, and would recommend it to anyone needing something more capable than the average flip phone.

After comparing the top of the line phones from different vendors I ended up chosing this one. I've had the phone for 2 weeks already and I love it.
The graphics on this cell are awesome, the menu is gorgeous and the phone design is really cool.

The camera quality is decent, NOT great, however I still havent a seen a cellphone that makes perfect pictures. It can also record video but the image gets distorted rather quickly by fast movements.

The menu also lags whenever you press a button, but I feel is a small price to pay given the high graphics. The battery doesnt really last that much either. On average, between playing with the camera, talking, and playing games on it I get about 2 hours worth of talk time spread out in 2 days.

This is a very good cell phone and Amazon.com gives the best deal. But, you can't transfer your old phone number from different provider to Cingular through Amazon.com. If you transfer your old phone number, you won't get your amazon.com mail-in rebate. Please read amazon.com mail-in rebate rules carefully!!!
You can read about how to transfer your number through this link : http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/508597/102-6686881-6992121