OSNews

The Opera 8.60 web browser looks and renders fabulously! It can also do fullscreen and landscape rendering. I must comment Opera for the scrolling speed of their browser on this phone. Scrolling pages up and down was never been smoother, for almost any mobile device! Opera won't use much RAM for small pages, but for complex and big pages like CNN.com it will require at least 11 MBs of RAM (leaving you with only 3-4 MBs of available RAM on the phone). The browser also supports tabs, which are very convenient. There is also an RSS companion application that worked perfectly with the OSNews and BBC newsfeeds we tried it with. Here is the user agent of the Opera browser:
SonyEricssonM600i/R100 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Symbian OS; 276) Opera 8.60

I have also taken the time to install a number of third party native and Java applications. They all worked out of the box and without any problems: IM+, AgileMessenger, HandySafe, Chess, Finanz, WorldMate and of course GoogleMaps and Opera Mini. Currently there are only about 40-50 native UIQ 3.0 applications but more and more are getting ported, at a rate of about 10-15 per month.

Battery life is normal, but not exceptional. Especially after we disabled the 3G reception battery life came into more reasonable levels (the disabling feature is only available in the newer versions of the firmware). We managed 4 hours of talktime and we estimated over 5 days of standby time. Reception was so-so too, but audio quality was very good. Also, as there are no cameras in this phone, video-calls are supported one-way in 3G environments (sending a photo while receiving video). The touchscreen-based speed dial is very convenient too.

Where Sony Ericsson has truly failed us is in EDGE support. You see, 2100Mhz 3G does not work in USA and it doesn't work fully in Europe either. In my homeland Greece for example, only a few towers support 3G. And when I think of this phone as a business device, I can't stop think of my father-in-law, CEO of a very big company in France. Every other weekend he is visiting his vacation home in the mountains. He always has his phone with him to connect his laptop to the VPN/Internet and do some emailing. With the lack of 3G support in that mountain village he would be forced to download data at just 5 KB/sec wth GPRS, even if the towers there support EDGE (which usually peaks at around 22 KB/sec). And if he was to come to USA for a business trip, he would endanger his communications to no-coverage (especially in the East Coast) as the M600i is not a quad-band phone. Personally, from a business point of view, I would have prefered this phone to be Quadband/EDGE rather than 3G (even for Europeans).

Having WiFi support wouldn't hurt either as it would allow users to use their company's VoIP easier, it would make ActiveSync way easier/faster/cheaper and it would occasionally substitute for the (suggested) removal of 3G. I have a feeling that Sony Ericsson's product managers internally had a long talk about the inclusion of WiFi on the M600i or not. The reason for this gut feeling is because the device supports Bluetooth PAN. This is the first non-PalmOS/WinMobile phone in the market that I have ever seen to support BT PAN. Basically, BT PAN supports connecting into a wireless LAN over Bluetooth instead of over 802.11b/g. The problem with this approach is that there are very few (and expensive, over $90) devices in the market that do Bluetooth Networking in dedicated hardware and that the phone can connect to them only up to 8 meters in plain sight. The second option is configuring your Windows XP or Linux laptop to behave as a BT router -- which kinda defeats the point (additionally, MacOSX Tiger doesn't support easy BT routing anymore). I am happy to see BT PAN support, but there is no substitute for true WiFi support I am afraid.

In conclusion, I think Sony Ericsson went a bit too cheap on the M600i. Instead of designing a device that has logical features for the business market it was after, they designed it with the mindset of "creating a cheap P990". They removed everything they could remove and only left the 3G antenna and Qwerty keyboard in it as a honeypot to potential buyers. But this doesn't mean that the M600i is a bad phone though. It is actually a very nice, sweet-looking PDA & smartphone. For the low pricepoint and overall feature-set I think that in fact is a great phone. If you are on a low budget and you require a good business phone, you should consider it. Or, you can consider the Nokia E61 which is even cheaper and with more features in it instead (sans A2DP & touchscreen).

Pros:
* Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP and PAN
* Beautiful, bright screen
* Surprisingly usable keyboard
* Useful included and third party apps
* Attractive, modern user interface
* 3G support (outside USA)
* Great browser and RSS reader

Cons:
* No EDGE
* Not Quad-band
* No Wi-Fi
* No shortcut to shut down applications quickly
* Bluetooth file exchange ends up in Messaging

Overall Rating: 7.5/10

1. "M600i review, Page 1/2"
2. "M600i review, Page 2/2"