Sony Ericsson Elm deals & review

It is rare to find a non-smartphone that has all the connectivity options and most of the features we find in flagship smartphones but with eco-friendly features as well. The Sony Ericsson Elm joins the elite Sony Ericsson stable of GreenHeart mobile phones with one. 

It sports the conventional candybar form factor that comes in two color choices – metallic black and pearly rose. It’s water splash resistant and benefits from its noise cancellation feature called Noise Shield and an intelligent Volume Adaptation feature that promises clearer voice calls on the side. 

Earth-friendly features

Its GreenHeart features starts with a housing made of recycled plastics without harmful PVC and other hazardous chemicals. Even their sales package uses recycled and water-based ink for printing. It offers no printed user manual which you can access instead online. It gets preloaded with Walk Mate pedometer and a Green calculator to estimate your C02 emission savings. 

Features at a Glance

The Elm is a 3G phone on the dual band UMTS and a quad band GSM radio on the 2G networks. Data connectivity on 3G carries HSDPA at 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA at 2 Mbps while 2G carries class 10 GPRS at up 48 kbps and EDGE at 236.8 Kbps. 

It also supports local data connectivity with WiFi 802.11b/g with DLNA for hotspot surfing with Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and microUSB 2.0 for local data transfers. SatNav is supported from its integrated GPS receiver with A-GPS support, Google Maps and Sony’s own Wisepilot navigation system. 

Display is the most understated feature on the Elm but that can be expected from a body measuring just 110 x 45 x 14mm which can accommodate only a 2.2-inch TFT LCD screen with QVGA resolution and 256k colors. It even comes with an unnecessary gravity accelerometer for auto rotate viewing in portrait or landscape, as the screen sports an almost squarish aspect ratio.

Its imaging function is tops with a 5 megapixel autofocus shooter with LED flash, face/smile detection and geo tagging from its GPS. There’s VGA video recording at 24fps with video light. No secondary video call camera but the primary camera supports it.

Entertainment gets a stereo FM radio with RDS and the media playback facility for the popular audio and video file formats in the markets. You get Mega Bass with TrackID and access to PlayNow site for the latest music content. It has no 3.5mm audio jack but its A2DP profile on Bluetooth enables wireless stereo listening.

The internal memory of the Sony Ericsson Elm is a generous 280 MB with up to 2,000 phonebook entries but you get microSD memory expandability for up to 8 GB. With a 1,000 mAh Li-Po battery, you get up to 10 hours of talk time on 2G and up to 430 hours in standby.

It comes preloaded with the SNS apps for Facebook, MySpace and Twitter as well as media sharing sites like YouTube. It comes with NetFront HTML browser with RSS reader, IM, Email and Push Email client support.