Sony Ericsson may have announced their first 8.1-megapixel camera-phone recently, but the budget end of their CyberShot range has more humble optics. The Sony Ericsson C510 is a straightforward candybar aimed at the free-on-contract market; even so, there’s still a fair amount of camera hyperbole. Digicam replacement or snappy pretender? We set to find out.
With CyberShot branding, it’s no surprise that Sony Ericsson are pushing the C510’s imaging capabilities before anything else. The 12.5mm-thick body hides a 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera with an dual-LED flash, and onto that the company have heaped Smile Shutter and Face Detection. These work reasonably well, but there’s more delay than we’d like in-between hitting the dedicated shutter release button and the shot actually taking. As for the LED flash, it suffers the usual problem of having a very narrow sweet-spot: it’s all too easy to get too close, and wash out the subject, or be too far away and not have enough light.
Once taken, photos can be viewed in portrait or landscape orientation, with the C510 flipping between them automatically, and Sony Ericsson load a few editing tools – including an automatic correction for light balance, brightness and contrast – to tweak shots on-device. These can sometimes eke a little more crispness out of a frame, but aren’t really comparable with even the most basic of Photoshop fondling. Happily the 2.2-inch QVGA 320 x 240 display does a decent job of displaying both images and video, the latter of which is recorded at 30fps.
There are a clutch of photo tools on offer, including a panorama mode which helps you line up your panned shots with translucent edge-previews, but it’s undermined by only working in VGA mode. Similarly, attempt to zoom in and the C510 won’t allow it, unless you’re down to just VGA quality. Internal storage is 100MB, with a Memory Stick Micro M2 slot taking cards up to 8GB.
Sony Ericsson preload Google Maps onto the C510, but with no true GPS it’s not something you’d want to rely on for everyday navigation. The C510 instead uses cell-tower triangulation to pinpoint your position, something that works better in densely-populated areas as they tend to have more active towers. Don’t expect accuracy to more than a few streets, however.
More successful is the YouTube client, and though you wouldn’t choose it over a desktop computer were one available, it’s certainly good enough for a casual distraction while out and about. The C510’s UMTS/HSPA 2100MHz support makes for speedy viewing, and the browser and RSS have neat integration with the phone’s homepage, new RSS feeds popping up in a discrete ticker.
Media playback is unchanged from most other non-smartphone Sony Ericsson handsets, with sound quality through the supplied headphones a little better than the average set. That’s good, because the company insists on using its own proprietary connector, rather than offering a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. Album art shows up and the TrackID song-title identification service is a neat addition, albeit one you may not actually use all that often, but Sony Ericsson’s confusing and sluggish PC sync software lets the side down.
Call quality, happily, is clear and strong, both through the earpiece and the speakerphone, and the C510 proved tenacious with a signal. The chassis feels sturdy and well put together, with little creaking or flex, and though the blue LED lighting might edge toward cliché it does stay just on the right side of tasteful. Battery life is quoted at 400hrs of standby or 10hrs of GSM talktime (or 4hrs 3G talktime); regular camera use will impact that the most, but if long battery life and ease of use are your top priorities then the C510 should appeal.
Overall, the C510 is a serviceable handset and slots neatly in among the ranks of budget devices. Its appearance – soberly well-judged, rather than glamorous or over-designed – make it a sensible choice, though the specifications don’t particularly stand out in the crowd and the CyberShot branding promises, perhaps, more than it can deliver.
