Sony Ericsson G502 Review

Interface:

“You don’t have to be big, to be smart”. That’s the case with the G502, which even though a representative of the lower mid level device group, has the same interface used by the big guys like K850 and W890. That is definitely an advantage.

The homescreen has not been changed and is similar to the older versions – the lower part shows the functions of the soft buttons and of the central key of the D-pad. The background can be animated, which is joy for the eyes.

The menu system is the same, showing the main as a 3x4 grid, and the sub menus as a vertical list. By the way, this version includes Flash animated themes for the main menu, which changes its appearance.



Phonebook:

You can store up to 1000 contacts, and you can add a few extra numbers for each of them (up to 7000 total), e-mails and web addresses. Besides, you can assign a picture, ringtone, videotone, to notify you of an incoming call. The user is also able to add contacts to groups, but those cannot have a separate melody.


Searching for a contact is done, by directly inputting letters from the keyboard, but unfortunately the system will only use the first name as a criteria.

If you directly dial a number from the homescreen, G502 will look for matching entries in the phonebooks (names and numbers), as in WM6 and BlackBerry. Here we have the predictive input present, which helps you in the search. If you want to call “Neo” for example, press 636 (6-MNO, 3-DEF, 6-MNO) and the phone will list all matches almost immediately. Regrettably, like in the contacts you can’t search by the second name.
Organizer:

Just as the Contacts, the Organizer menu has its own icon in the main menu. Its options include calendar, tasks, notes, alarms, calculator, timer, stopwatch, code memo, applications links, and synchronization option.

The Calendar can be viewed for a month, week, or a day; the latter option shows the events, set for the particular day, and it enables you to add new options. When you want to add appointments, you select the starting time, duration and the reminder’s time. You can include details about the venue of the event, as well as a description. You have the option of setting it as an All day event (all birth dates from the contacts list are added as such) and to include recurrence options (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly).


You can also save simple Tasks (reminder for Task or Phone Call) or write a plain note. The menu houses a Calculator with basic functionality, a Countdown timer, and a Stopwatch capable of storing up to nine results, as well. We think that the Code Memo option is useless and we will prefer to have a “safe” where we can save text information, LOCKED (not coded) by a password.


Additionally, in this menu is the file manager, which was found in the main menu of phones with the earlier software version. It sorts the content by type and offers an option to filter either the phone or the card memory, or to view both at the same time.

Instead of the manager, the main menu has icon for the five alarms. Each of them can be set on its own and has fields for time, recurrence, and signal type.

The voice commands are activated by holding down one of the volume keys, and if you don’t have any voice-tags recorded, the phone will prompt you to enter one. We think that this system is useless, since you must read what it says on the screen, but shortly after that hold the phone to your ear, as it has sound notifications but doesn’t utilize the speakerphone. This makes voice-tags absolutely inconvenient to use and we had a problem even with one contact saved only. There's no room for making a comparison with the system used in Symbian S60 phones or any other that have speaker-independent voice commands for making calls and opening applications. To sum it up, the one here simply does not work.

The phone has about 32 MB of internal memory that can be expanded through Memory Stick Micro (M2) cards.