Sony Ericsson Z750a Cell Phone Review - Organizer
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Alfredo Padilla Published on June 12, 2008 Comment on this |
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| The Sony-Ericsson Z750a are better than the average phone, but are not as good as a fully featured smart phone. The whole gamut of organizer features are there, but some are bare bones. If you need advanced calendaring, contact, task and note support better go look at a more advanced device. |
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Synchronization (0.0)
The Sony-Ericsson Z750a does not come with any software or a data cable to synchronize the device with a computer.
Alerts (6.0)
You can set an alert on the Sony-Ericsson Z750a for both calendar appointments and tasks. The options for the two are slightly different. With a task you can choose the exact date and time you want the alert to go off at. Calendar appointments, by contrast, give you a selection of presets ranging from at the time of the appointment to 30 minutes before. You also have the option to set it for any date and time you want, however. We appreciate this level of control over the time the alert sounds. Neither allows you to set the sound that goes off for the alert, instead the phone will use the appropriate tone or vibrate depending upon the settings for your profile.
When an alert sounds the Z750a sounds the appropriate sound from your profile. You see a small alert icon on the exterior of the phone. The alert only sounds a single time and there's no way to change this, which is disappointing. When you open the phone you see the alerts page in the shortcut menu with all of your missed alerts, including missed calls, listed. Here you can view the item or you can choose to snooze it by selecting the option from the left soft key menu. The snooze feature is very good, with options to snooze it until 10 or 5 minutes before, at the start or for an additional 5, 15 or 30 minutes. You can also set a new alert here for any time and date you want. These snooze features are amongst the best we've seen on a phone, even high end smart phones like the T-Mobile Shadow.
Although there's a lot to like about the Z750a's alert system, including the flexibility in scheduling an alert and the extensive snooze options, we don't like that an alert only sounds a single time. This makes it difficult to use for important appointments where you want to make sure that your phone gets your attention.
Over the Air PIM Sync (0.0)
The Sony-Ericsson Z750a does not support synchronization of your contacts and calendar over the air.
Adding Contacts (5.32)
Adding a new contact to the Sony-Ericsson Z750a took an average of 18.8 seconds in our test. You can see from the chart below that this is just about average, but was significantly slower than some of our comparison phones like the Razr2 V8 and the Samsung M520. On the other hand it also performed significantly better than some others.
Ading a new contact to the Z750a.
To create a new contact on the Z750a you just open the phone, press down on the D-Pad to go to your contacts, go up one to access the new contact shortcut and then enter the information. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Looking/Sorting/Search (2.5)
When you open your contacts on the Sony-Ericsson Z750a they are sorted alphabetically by first name. The search feature is simple multi-tap, this means you can spell out a name using the keypad but it doesn't support searching via predictive text entry. The search feature also does not recognize last names separate from first names, so for example you could not enter JUA to find Alberto Juarez, you'd have to enter ALB instead. You can choose to sort your contacts by last name instead of first name, and in this case the functionality is opposite, you can search by last name but not by first name. Contact groups are also supported, you can access these by selecting Options - More - Groups. We were not particularly impressed by the searching and sorting options on the Z750a.
The address book on the Sony-Ericsson Z750a.
Fields (3.8)
The Sony-Ericsson Z750a provides you with a reasonable selection of fields when you create a new contact. There is support for seven phone numbers, three email addresses, two regular addresses, a notes field and birthday. In total there are nineteen different fields available. Although still far short of the dozens of fields available on smart phones like the T-Mobile Shadow it is more fields than other entry level devices like the Samsung M520. We have seen better from other regular cell phones, however, like the Razr2 V8.
Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (4.67)
The Sony-Ericsson Z750a supports speed dials, as you would expect of any phone, and it also supports voice tags. What this means is that you can record a voice tag for a contact and then dial the phone using that tag. For example if you record the word "Bob" for the contact Joe Bob you can activate voice dialing by pressing down on the volume key and when prompted say "Bob" and the contact will be called. Voice tags are nice because they are matched to your voice, so you don't have to worry about whether the phone will figure out what you're saying as with speaker independent voice command systems. On the other hand you have to record a voice tag for every contact you want to dial by voice. The Z750a does not support speaker independent voice dialing.
Adding Calendar Items (8.05)
We were able to add a new lunch appointment to the Sony-Ericsson Z750a in a rather speedy 12.42 seconds. This is faster than average and you can see below that it is also faster than most of our comparison phones. Only the Samsung M520 and the T-Mobile Shadow performed better. This despite the fact that the calendar on the Z750a is buried in the menus.
Adding a new calendar appointment.
We were able to achieve our speedy time by taking advantage of the keypad shortcuts to select menu items quickly and the fact that the Z750a automatically added a reminder to our appointments, something we have to do manually on some phones. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Calendar Views (2.89)
The Sony-Ericsson Z750a offers users three different calendar views. The Monthly view is the default and shows the current month. The current day is outlined in black and days that have appointments are bolded, although this is a little difficult to discern. Unfortunately you can't get any information about the appointments on a given day in this view.
The monthly and weekly views on the Z750a aren't very useful.
The weekly view is a grid with days along the top and hours to the left. Your appointments are blocked out, but like the monthly view you can't get any information about the appointments themselves. This makes both of these views only useful in getting an overview of your schedule. The daily view is an actual list of all the appointments on the selected day with title, start and end time indicated.
The daily view on the Z750a lists all your appointments for the day.
This is the only really useful view for those who want to manage their schedule with any amount of precision. Throw in the fact that there's no support for appointment categories, filtering or searching your calendar and the Z750a is probably not a good choice for those who want a phone where they can manage their schedule efficiently.
Fields (9.0)
When you create a new calendar appointment on the Sony-Ericsson Z750a you have the choice of the following fields: Title, Start Time, Duration, Location, Description, All Day and Recurrence. The recurrence options are limited to daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. Too bad the calendar views are so poor or the Z750a might have been a decent calendaring platform, this is a good selection of fields for a regular phone.
Adding ToDo/Task (7.35)
The Sony-Ericsson Z750a took an average of 13.6 seconds, which is faster than average and amongst our comparison phones only the Samsung M520 performed better.
Creating a new task on the Z750a.
We do have to admit that we cheated a little on this test. Normally we set a due date for a task for the following day. The Z750a does not allow you to set due dates, but it does allow you to set a reminder, so we did this in lieu of a due date. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (0.0)
Tasks on the Z750a are a very simple affair. The tasks are organized into a simple list. There are no options to prioritize, categorize, sort or search through them. This means the Z750a probably isn't a good choice for those of you who need a powerful task management platform on your mobile device.
The task list cannot be sorted or prioritized.
Fields (2.0)
When you create a task on the Z750a you have two fields to file, the task title and a reminder.
Adding Notes (4.13)
We were able to create a new note on the Sony-Ericsson Z750a in a reasonably speedy 12.1 seconds. This is faster than average and amongst our comparison phones only the Sony-Ericsson W580i performed better, and then only by a smidge.
The notes interface is very simple.
Like all the other organizer features on the Z750a the notes are buried in the menu, but we were able to use keypad shortcuts to our advantage to launch it quickly. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Note Interface (3.0)
The notes interface on the Z750a is exceedingly simple. You have a list of notes that can't be categorized, sorted or searched. At the top of the list is a shortcut to create a new note. The left soft key opens an Options menu where you can choose to edit a note, send it via SMS or Bluetooth and also add it to your home screen. Like the tasks program on the Z750a there's nothing fancy here, but it is pretty easy to use.
You cannot search through or organize your notes.
Note Formatting (0.0)
There are no formatting options when you create a note on the Z750a.
Voice Memo (5.0)
Like the Sony-Ericsson W580i the Sony-Ericsson Z750a's voice recorder is found in the entertainment folder rather than the organizer folder. Perhaps AT&T and Sony-Ericsson imagine that everyone is a burgeoning singer and thus recordings of their voices will be entertaining. Whatever the reason the voice recorder on the Z750a is simple and straightforward. Once it is open press the center select button to record a new sound. The sound is saved in your music folder and you can use it as a ring tone, however you can't do this directly from the voice recorder. When a recording is done your options are to create a new voice recording, playback the one you've just created, send it, rename it or delete it. The functionality is reasonable but the need to jump through extra hoops to do something like assign the voice recording as a ring tone for the phone or to a contact is annoying.
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