The phone keeps the same aura that most Sony Ericsson K series. This quad-band, HSDPA phone is a true 3G phone; allowing users to make video calls with the secondary VGA camera at the top right of the LCD display.

The K850i stands out in terms of design like other models under the Sony Ericsson brand. In some cases, they tend to be very unique especially with the keypad design. If the K800i had circular keypad buttons, the K850i’s buttons are square. In my opinion, the keypad buttons are quite small despite its square design and still a bit small even for my small thumb.

Instead of a joystick to navigate through the phone’s menu, the K850i sports a four-way navigation keypad. This is also a one of a kind design. It has become a rectangular box - like an outline - enclosing the 2 and 5 number keys. It may be a bit complicated to press this navigation keypad, but practice makes perfect.

The left and right selection keys are removed and are incorporated within the bottom portion of the LCD display. You won’t see it right away because they are not the usual buttons anymore but are soft touch keys instead. This obviously makes users think that the K850i has a touch screen display. But it’s only the bottom portion that has this function and are marked with three white dots.

If you look at the back portion of the phone, you would notice that it now looks more like a digital camera but a bit more sophisticated. Even the battery cover is similar to those point-and-shoot cameras that has to be slid open. The 5-Megapixel camera can take both photos and videos that users can enjoy as if they are holding a real digital camera.

The K850i’s camera settings are like those of conventional point-and-shoot cameras. You can add effects to your photos, take panoramic shots, use various presets, adjust the ISO settings and edit the photos you have taken. It has a BestPic feature wherein the phone will take a set of photos and choose one photo that comes out as the best among the rest.

One advantage with camera phones is that users can directly publish the photos they have taken to their blog. But, of course, the phone won’t be able to do this without it connecting to the Internet automatically.

A dedicated camera button at the lower right side of the phone turns on the camera even without going through the menu. Beside this is the camera shoot button and below it is a sliding switch to choose between photo, video, and preview modes. The zoom buttons are located on the upper right side of the phone.

The main menu is arranged in a 4x3 grid manner which to me is neatly organized. The Cyber-shot icon activates the camera and is now outside the "Media" sub-menu, whereas the FM radio was taken out of the "Entertainment" sub-menu. It’s nice to see that the XrossMedia Bar (or XMB) media center interface is now incorporated in the K850i.

The K850i is still a multimedia phone since it still has a lot of fun features like the TrackID, VideoDJ, PhotoDJ, and MusicDJ. It also has games and you can download more from Sony Ericsson’s website.

On the serious side of the phone, it has an organizer with basically has the calendar, notepad, timer, stopwatch, calculator and code memo. Too bad that the notepad can only contain a specified amount of characters and you can’t make a full text document with it. It’s voice recording feature is quite clear and at par with most digital audio players with the same feature.

A phone that is not too serious but with a lot of fun - that is what the Sony Ericsson K850i. But it’s definitely a camera at heart.