Sony Ericsson Z750a Cell Phone Review - Multimedia
|
Alfredo Padilla Published on June 12, 2008 Comment on this |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| The Sony-Ericsson Z750a's music software is pretty and well organized, but it's not very fast to load. The same software also handles video playback, but it lacks the organizational features found for music. |
|
 |
|
Accessing Music Software (3.13)
It took us an average of 6.4 seconds to get a song playing on the Sony-Ericsson Z750a. This is pretty slow, you can see below that it's slower than average and amongst our comparison phones only the Samsung M520 performed worse in this test.
Music playing on the Sony-Ericsson Z750a.
We were most chagrined to see a time that's four times slower than what we saw from the Sony-Ericsson W580i. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Dedicated Music Controls (4.5)
The Sony-Ericsson Z750a has several buttons dedicated for music playback controls. Once you have music playing and the phone is closed you can use the volume keys both to control volume, duh, and also to skip to the next and previous tracks by holding them down. There's also a dedicated Play/Stop button, but all this seems to do is exit the music application, rather than just pausing the song. This seems like a silly function as once you have stopped the song you have to open the phone back up to get it playing again, so we only awarded half a point for it. Still, this button aside, the music playback controls on the Z750a are better than many phones we've seen like the Nokia 6555 or Samsung M520, which only allow you to adjust volume.
Music Software Functionality and Organization (7.0)
The Sony-Ericsson Z750a has a pretty slick interface for your music, much better than the carrier branded music players on Sprint and Verizon phones. Although not quite as good as the excellent Walkman music software found on Walkman branded devices like the W580i, it is easy to use and provides a solid array of functions. It supports standard playlists and you can also create your own playlists on the device. It recognized tags for our Mp3, AAC and WMA music files, so you can view them by artist, title or album.
Not everything is perfect, however, there is no search functionality, you can't rate music and album art was not supported. Any music file placed on the device is recognized by the phone, however you have to be careful about placing junk files in the music folder as these also show up in your music program. Music can be played in the background, which is a big plus, and there is an equalizer with presets and manual controls. All in all the Z750a's music software is amongst the best we've seen on an entry level handset.
Online Song Downloading (0.0)
Although the Sony-Ericsson Z750a includes links to AT&T's eMusic partner, which allows you to download songs directly to the phone, we were told that the device is not supported. There is no link to get music from AT&T's other direct download partner Napster. This may change in the future, but for now the Z750a gets a zero here.
Streaming (0.0)
The Sony-Ericsson Z750a does not support streaming audio in Mp3, Windows Media or Real formats.
Podcast Support (1.0)
We were interested to see a podcast section in the music software. Although there is no support for subscribing to podcasts or downloading them directly to the device we think the nod to podcasts is worth a point here.
It's nice to see a nod to podcast support.
Music Sync with PC (0.0)
As the Sony-Ericsson Z750a does not ship with a data cable or the necessary software for synchronizing music we will not award any points here. You can download the Sony Ericsson Media Manager to facilitate putting music on your device, but out of the box you'll need to manually drag and drop items onto the memory card using a card reader, which you'll also have to buy separately.
Music Formats and DRM (3.0)
The Sony-Ericsson Z750a is capable of playing Mp3, AAC and WMA music files. We don't believe the phone supports any form of DRM either. It wasn't listed as a supported device on any sites and AT&T does not list it as a Napster supported device, which requires DRM. We asked Sony-Ericsson to confirm this for us but at the time of this writing they have not responded to us. If we receive any further information we will update the review.
Music Interruption (10.0)
The Sony-Ericsson Z750a did a solid job when music was interrupted by an incoming call. The music was paused, a little abruptly, and the ringtone started sounding. After we hung up the call the music started back up again almost immediately from the point at which it was paused.. We would have liked a little fade-out fade-in action, but otherwise were pleased.
Video Software Access (3.33)
Getting a video playing took an average of six seconds, about the same as music. What was very slow for music, however, isn't so bad for video. You can see below that the Z750a took less time than average and sat around the middle of the pack amongst our comparison phones. Once again, however, it is beat out by the W580i, which is a bit disappointing.
Video playback in portrait mode.
We did like that unlike most phones that require you to go into the album software to get a video playing the Z750a integrates video into the same media player application that handles music. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Video Controls (6.0)
When videos are playing on the Sony-Ericsson Z750a the video playback controls are simple and straightforward. The D-Pad is used for most controls. The center select is Play/Pause, left and right control next/previous and fast forward/rewind when held down. Up takes you to the list of videos available while down skips forward a few seconds at a time. The volume keys do their thing, of course.
Video Software & Organization (2.0)
The video playback software on the Sony-Ericsson Z750a is built into the media player rather than in the album software, as on most phones. Although you get the nice carousel interface and it looks pretty it's not really much more feature rich than album software. There's no support for playlists, no organization features like categories or folders and no search. There is support for viewing in full screen landscape mode, although we found that this was a little weird.
Video playback is integrated into the media player.
When you put a video into landscape mode and then back out of it you'll find that the entire media player interface has gone landscape as well. In fact, even if you exit the application entirely and then go back in it will still be in landscape. Overall we were not particularly impressed by the software and organization features of the video playback.
Remember to turn off landscape mode when you're done.
Video Sync with PC (0.0)
As with music there is no software included or a data cable to synchronize videos with your computer. You'll have to place videos on a memory card manually instead.
Video Formats (2.0)
We were surprised to see that the Sony-Ericsson Z750a did not support 3GP video. It also doesn't support Windows Media, Real Media, Quicktime or Flash. It does support MP4 and H264 video.
Video DRM (0.0)
No forms of video DRM are supported by the Sony-Ericsson Z750a, so you won't be able to watch DRM protected videos from places like iTunes or Amazon's Unboxed store.
Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
We were able to play back all five of our test H264 encoded MP4 files on the Sony-Ericsson Z750a without a problem. These videos are of increasing bitrates up to 768kbps, so you can watch pretty good quality video on your device.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
There is no support for direct downloads of videos to the Z750a.
Video Streaming unscored
We don't score this section because streaming mobile video is not standardized yet. We do test a few services to see how they perform, however. The Sony-Ericsson Z750a was able to handle streaming video from Youtube Mobile and Zoovision Mobile. It was not able to handle streaming video from Windowsmedia.com. AT&T also offers a variety of streaming video content at various prices.
| Previous Next | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
