You could accuse Sony Ericsson of many things, but one thing you cannot deny is that the company knows how to work its brand extensions to the hilt. The Walkman and the Cyber-shot, both popular products in their own right (and time!), adorn millions of Sony Ericsson phones worldwide. Will this runaway success story continue with the launch of the latest entrants — the affordable Cyber-shot C510 and the mildly premium Walkman W705? Do these phones really earn their labels?

With the C510, Sony Ericsson’s taken the lessons learnt from the more expensive of its siblings, and instead of hitting the ball out of the megapixel park, has billed the 3.2 megapixel C510 as Sony Ericsson’s most affordable Cyber-shot phone so far. Its looks are far from budget-fare, with the slim candybar design that Sony Ericsson’s been getting right all these years. The front is dominated with the large 2.2-in 320 x 240 pixel display, which is sharp and bright, but in the process, the number pad has been compromised, with the keys a little too cramped for our liking. Shortcut keys abound though, again a Sony Ericsson standard.

But you’re really looking to see how the camera performs, right? What’s the fancy Cybershot branding for, if this doesn’t manage to pull something special out of the bag in the imaging department? It doesn’t take too long to find out — slide down the mechanical back cover to reveal the lens and dual-LED flashes.

Once in, you can fiddle around with a number of settings — shooting modes (normal, smile, panorama, frames, burst), scenes (auto, twilight landscape, landscape, portrait, beach/snow, sports, document), focus (auto, face detection, macro, infinite), and flash. Output from the camera was good though it suffers from the regular phone-camera shutter lag issue which means you could end up with blurred shots of a moving subject.

Colour reproduction was good, and results were sometimes better in the same conditions as higher-megapixel cam-phones. The much bandied ‘Smile Shutter’ mode worked well, only triggering when the subjects were grinning, but this was often hit-and-miss, and if they were no more than a few feet away from the camera. The geotagging feature works via cell tower triangulation, since the phone lacks an actual GPS chip, but it’s fairly good nonetheless.

The C510 does what it’s meant to (rather well for its price even), is easy to use and has a solid portfolio of entertainment features, and some unique camera features like the Smile Shutter and an auto-rotating screen. What’s really missing is a Xenon flash, which leaves the camera practically unusable in low light conditions.

Now while the C510 looks more expensive than it is, the W705 makes no pretence about the fact that it’s a rich-kid phone. The casing is a mix of silver, gold and brown, with a significant amount of the front face made of brushed aluminium and the back sporting a soft-touch plastic cover. The 2.4-in screen looks huge on a phone this size, and unlike the C510, the slider design lets the W705 have a decent-sized, albeit rather flat, keypad.

As a music-centric device, the W705 is well-featured, with the included 4GB card letting the phone almost replace your standard-spec iPod nano. The music menu isn’t quite as intuitive as the iPod’s, but one of the best we’ve seen on non-Apple devices.

Driving the Walkman branding home, the W705 employs Sony Ericsson’s “clear audio experience”, although what that means is anything but clear. Sure, it has dedicated audio hardware and comprehensive equaliser settings, but what does that mean to my music?

Nevertheless, the music sounded good on the included earphones, and although the phone lacks a dedicated 3.5mm slot on the phone, it makes up by way of an adapter, so you can use your favourite headphones. Also included is the rather strange SenseMe playlist creating software, which tries to create a playlist based on how it senses your mood to be.

Worth the buy then? If you’re looking for the latest gadgetry with your music phone, the Sony Ericsson W705 won’t deliver all of it — it lacks GPS, touchscreen and the camera performance isn’t the best that Sony Ericsson has turned out. It’s got bling though, and Wi-Fi’s certainly a plus. At its price though, the competition is very hot, and if you’re not hung up about buying a Walkman phone, there’re plenty of options to choose from.

Quick Specs:

Sony Ericsson C510

• Camera: 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera, Upto 3.2x digital zoom with Smile Shutter, Face detection, Photo fix, photo light, video light, geotagging, picture blogging, video blogging, video recording
• Screen: 262,144 colour TFT, scratch-resistant 2.2” QVGA display
• Connectivity: Bluetooth™, Modem, Synchronisation, USB mass storage, USB support, PictBridge
• Talk Time / Standby Time: Upto 10 hrs / 400 hrs
• Dimensions: 107mm x 47mm x 12.5mm
• Weight: 92gm lRating: 7/10 lPrice: Rs 12,195

Sony Ericsson W705

• Camera: 3.2 megapixel camera with photo light, geo tagging and option to blog on sites like Blogger, Picasa and MySpace
• Audio Walkman player, Clear Stereo, Clear Bass, Music tones (MP3/AAC), Shake control, SensMe
• Screen: 2.4” 262,144 colour TFT
• Memory: 4GB Memory Stick Micro
• Connectivity: Bluetooth; Wi-Fi; DLNA certified
• Talk Time / Standby Time: Upto 10 hrs/ 400 hrs
• Dimensions: 95mm x 47.5mm x 14.3mm
• Weight: 98gm lRating: 7/10 lPrice: Rs 17,786
• URL: http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/home?lc=en&cc=in

Let there be light

Could the humble flashlight be innovated on any further? Apparently it can, if you see Hammacher Schlemmer’s Infrared Flashlight Video Recorder. Under that heavy-duty flashlight garb hides 17 infrared LEDs and a video camera capable of capturing VGA (640 x 480) quality footage (with audio!) upto 13ft away from the device itself. While only 15 seconds of video can be recorded on the 128MB of built-in memory, the miniSD expansion slot allows you to add your own memory cards and keep going.

• URL: http://www.hammacher.com/publish/76550.asp
• Price: $399.95

Rock ’round the clock

Why so serious? Work getting you down? Put those omnipresent USB ports to good use and plug in the Riff Rocker USB guitar. It’s small enough to fit in your pocket, and all you need to do is plug the Riff Rocker in, download the two free games from the Riff Rocker website and start jamming! Sure beats those mind-numbing Solitaire sessions to escape from those spreadsheets, eh?

• URL: http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/new-arrivals/riff-rocker/index.html
• Price: $28