Sony Ericsson Zylo

Editor's Review of the Zylo

Announced in April 2010 and released two months after, the Sony Ericsson Zylo is a music lovers' dream handset with good features packed in.

The Zylo is a quad-band mobile phone that works on any GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 network, making it useable in just about any country you may visit or live in.

Measuring 103 mm. long and 52 mm. wide, the Zylo truly is easy to hold and operate with one hand. This is further enhanced by the handset's curved edges and back. Meanwhile, its thickness at 11.5 mm. ensures that you could easily put it in your pocket. This mobile phone comes in a variety of casing colours out of the box, namely Jazz Black, Swing Pink and Chacha Silver.

Six different buttons -- the call and end keys, activity and clear keys, and two other soft keys -- and the so-called d-pad shares the front of the Zylo with the 2.6 inch QVGA screen. The 240 x 320 pixel, scratch-resistant screen can easily display up to 256k colours and is decently visible under direct sunlight. There is an accelerometer sensor on board and a numeric keypad slides out from below.

The Sony Ericsson Zylo comes with 260 megabytes of internal memory that is good enough for 2000 phone book entries and call records. But it would not be enough for all your videos, music files or photographs, and that is why there is a microSD card slot included that supports up to 16 gigabytes of additional memory.

Being part of the Walkman series, it is to be expected that the Zylo would excel in music playback. In this regard, it does not disappoint. Zylo features Sony Ericsson's Walkman software v4.0, which is robust enough to let the user search for music by genre, artist, playlist or album. The speaker is very loud and even at high volumes; the sound is crisp and clear.

That being said, you could use the Zylo to listen to the radio or blast your list of FLAC, eAAC+, MP3 and WAV files. You can also play back H.263, H.264 and MP4 video files.

The Zylo comes with a 3.15 megapixel camera that takes pictures with resolutions of up to 2048 x 1536 pixels. It also features geo-tagging and can record VGA videos at 24 frames per second.

Internet connectivity is alive and well with the Zylo being able to connect to any class 10 GPRS or EDGE networks. High-speed Internet is also possible via HSDPA or HSUPA protocols. Further connectivity is provided by Bluetooth v2.1 and you can interface with any computer via the microUSB port.

Messaging features are great on the Zylo with a threaded SMS view, MMS, e-mail, instant messengers and even push e-mail. You can also play with the pre-loaded games, which includes games that are motion-based.

Other features on the Zylo include SensMe, a technology developed by Sony that detects tempo and mood, TrackID, organizer, applications for YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

The standard lithium ion battery provides up to 3.5 hours of talk time on a 3G network and up to 400 hours of power on standby.

Limitations

The Zylo is part of the Walkman series that features great sounds and continues Sony's old Walkman brands but, Sony Ericsson did not include a 3.5 mm. audio jack. The headset that comes with the package is not bad, however. It is mediocre when compared to other 3.5 mm. headsets available.

This phone's less than par camera could have been made better and more useful with the addition of an LED flash, to make it easier to take pictures in low light conditions or at night.

Further, the lack of Wi-Fi connectivity also limits your phone as it does not allow you to take advantage of free data connections in cafes and Wi-Fi hotspots.

Lastly, incoming calls are somewhat difficult to hear when you use the phone's ear speaker, even at full volume.