There are also no "pick-up" or "hang-up" buttons. That's a standard Sony Ericsson trick, but it's annoying because most phones use the "hang-up" button to escape from multilevel menus. There's no way to jump from, say, playing a game right back to the main menu on this phone.
The Z500a's case also felt cheap and slightly unbalanced to us. The matte plastic cover seemed inferior to the velvety and metallic accents on Motorola's V500 series or to Sony Ericsson's own Z600 and K700i.
The disastrous keypad is a tragedy, because the phone performs moderately well otherwise. We got clear sound through the earpiece and microphone. The VGA camera takes very sharp photos, even if they do tend towards blue (see the images in our Camera Phone Test Gallery).
The speakerphone isn't very loud, but it's clear, and fine for indoor use. Similarly, the main color screen is dim compared with the Motorola V551 or the Sony Ericsson Z600, and it's entirely unviewable without the backlight on, but it's generally adequate. The external color display works for picture caller ID and as a camera viewfinder.
As for features, the Z500a supports MP3 ringtones and has two built-in Java games, a loop-based ringtone composer, AIM and e-mail clients, and room for about 83 VGA pictures. Games played fast enough, but the awful keypad made game-playing a chore rather than a joy.
The Z500a's best feature is its Class 10 EDGE modem (faster than older Class 4 modems like the one in the Motorola V551), which requires a $ USB cable to connect to your laptop. (The different classes of EDGE come from the fact that EDGE data transmissions are sliced up into time slots. Depending on the class of your EDGE device, it can use anywhere from two time slots—Class 2—to four time slots—Class 10 or 12—for downloading data. More time slots mean bigger channels and higher speeds.) But on other Class 10 EDGE devices, like the Nokia 6230, we've gotten download speeds of 170 to 180 Kbps on Cingular's network, double the speed of phones like the Class 4 Nokia 6620. Considering that Cingular's currently selling this phone at $50 for two, that's the best deal out there for a fast data connection. EDGE add-on plans can range anywhere from $3 to $20 per month.
Oddly, the Z500a also supports Nextel-style push-to-talk. But Cingular doesn't have a PTT network yet, making the function useless for now.
The Z500a is amazingly affordable for an EDGE camera phone, but the hard-to-press buttons negate those great features. We'd rather spend more and get the Motorola V551, which offers a superior screen, keypad, and case, and throws in Bluetooth as well. If you're looking for a phone with EDGE (and Bluetooth), see if the Nokia 6230 fits your budget.
Benchmark results:
Jbenchmark 1: 3274
Jbenchmark 2: 164
Battery life: 7 hours 23 minutes
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