Sony Ericsson's K618i is a 3G phone exclusive to local operator M1. Only available in black, the K618i won't win any style awards, though we wouldn't call it an ugly duckling either. We think it's a clean, easy to use handset that will appeal to a broad range of users.

Design

Weighing in at 91g, the K618i just scrapes in under the K610i's weight. It's a reasonably compact, pocket-friendly handset, too, with dimensions of 102 by 46 by 17 mm.

The K618i looks a lot like the K610i. The size, layout and overall look of the phone mirrors its sibling, with the black-and-charcoal finish differentiating it from the K610i's white, silver and red casing.

The phone sports a bright, 176x220-pixel screen that supports up to 262K colors. It sits above the menu buttons which glow orange when pressed. The side-mounted volume rocker and music button as well as rear speaker are accented in orange.


Features

The K618i has plenty of features, though most are pretty standard in any 3G phone today.

A built-in 2-megapixel camera can be accessed via the side-mounted camera button which flips the screen on its side for a landscape view, to take photos. The panorama function is a good addition, allowing you to merge three photos taken side-by-side into one panoramic photo. Photos can be sent via MMS, Bluetooth or, alternatively, the included mobile blogger application allows you to upload photos to a Blogger.com account.

QuadraPop and WPT Tennis are pre-installed games, as well as several demos, including Tetris, Pac-Man, Ridge Racer and Extreme Air Snowboarding.

On the connectivity side of things, the K618i has Bluetooth, GPRS, and tri-band support. The USB mass storage feature lets you drag-and-drop files straight from your PC. E-mail support is also included.

The NetFront browser is built-in for Web access, which works fine on Vodafone Live but doesn't suit regular sized Web pages that aren't designed for mobile screens. Any Web page with too much content will become a burden to scroll through. A RSS reader lets you keep up-to-date with your favourite RSS feeds.

In addition to being a phone, Sony Ericsson is pushing the K618i as a music device. As such, an integrated MP3 player is included as well as a stereo headset. The main menu button and left and right navigational buttons double as play/stop and forward and back buttons respectively, when playing tracks. The playback functions are marked clearly with corresponding icons.


Performance

The camera does a reasonable job when adequate light is available. Photos taken in bright lighting conditions looked fine, but picture quality suffered in low light, resulting in grainy photos. Surprisingly no flash--LED or otherwise--is provided. A Xenon flash like the K800i would have been welcome addition.

Sound quality was decent during calls, but was a bit hard to hear in loud places, even at maximum volume. The onboard loudspeaker comes in handy during times when you need your hands free (or when playing music) though, as expected, it sounds a bit soft.

On a few occasions, connection errors were experienced when trying to make an outgoing call. Somehow, the handset gets the impression we were holding down a button and recommends a software restart to fix the problem.

Our phone came with a generous 256MB Sony Memory Stick Micro (M2) which, according to Sony Ericsson, can hold up to 230 songs. However, it should realistically fit around 60-70 standard 4MB MP3 files, which is good enough for us. Music fans who want to store more songs on the phone can purchase a larger memory capacity. We found the bundled stereo headset comfortable and adequate for music playback and making calls.

The menu worked well and was pretty intuitive. It was responsive and wasn't sluggish like some previous Sony Ericsson handsets.

The K618i doesn't have any particular features that stands out. At S$598 (without contract), it's a general all-round phone that should suit the needs of most users.