Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness review

The Xperia Pureness is a mobile phone which costs around £620, and for that you get nothing but the basics, you can make calls, text and recieve MMS and browse the web. Exterior wise, the phone has a see through glass panel screen and a glossy plain black keyboard, which lights up when taken off stand by. There also isn’t a camera.

Review

Let me get to the point; Aimed at fashionists, this phone would quite gladly sit alongside my old Sony Ericsson K800i and not embarass it – in fact, this phone has less going for it than Tim Henman had in Wimbledon, which isn’t saying a lot.

The main talking point of this phone is its see through screen which, although a nice gimmick, is the only wow factor this phone brings to the table. There is no camera, no mini USB port and certainly no colour reproduction from the display. The display actually uses twin LED’s around the edges to bounce the image around, which resulted in me finding it very hard to read in daylight < and I have 20/20 vision. Therefore perhaps this phone is best suited for a night out? To toss around your mates hands and see them gawp.

But that can’t be so, as with a £620 price tag i’m sure somebody on a dark night would happily shank you in the face, kick you in the nuts and tear your eyes out for this < vivid I know, but i’m just trying to be realistic.

This phone however isn’t all that bad. It has had a lot of stick over the last month – of which naturally I have just contributed to, but i’d like to stress some good points that some people have missed.

The main good point about this phone is that its battery lasts for yonks, as it has nothing to wear it down – the only thing that will wear it down is the squishy organic thing typing on it non stop. Baring in mind this was never meant to be a smart phone, this little device also texts really well and the call quality is crystal clear. I naturally compared it to my secondary phone, a Nokia 6700, and it felt sturdy and well built in my hand despite being partly made of glass.

This phone is also unique, completely original and should appeal to quite a lot of people – whether or not they can afford it though is another question. If you can afford one, and see this as more conveneient for your money than, say, an iPhone or Nexus One, then you can pick one up at Selfridges exclusively in Birmingham, Manchester and London.

I would be surprised if in the space of even 5 years we had smart phones with screens like this. I know how complicated it is to attach colour reproduction to a display that doesn’t have the internal components, I also know how expensive it is to produce these phones – at the moment I am happy with AMOLED screens as they offer the best feedback, and of course vibrant and vivid colour reproduction.

Would I buy one? Nope, never. I’d happily take one for free though, as then I could spend £600 + on something worth while. I have a feeling smart phones could become the norm soon enough, as the number of basic-functional phones being churned out are slowly dropping. My main phone is a Palm Pre, which I bought for WebOS – not the phone, and my secondary handset a Nokia 6700 which is mid range.

If you ask me the only manufacturer making good mid range phones is Nokia, and the only good ‘smart’ series Nokia makes is the ‘E’ series, primarily the E71 and the fantastic-better-than-the-blackberry-storm E72.

If you are in the market for this Sony Ericsson then get yourself a Nokia 6700, its a trade of between glass screen and an anodised steel casing though.