Sony Ericsson Elm Mobile Phone

The Elm isn’t a gimmick however and doesn’t hold back on the features.

Green peace
The Elm is one of only a handful of mobile devices whose goal is to be eco-friendly. No, it is not made recycle paper, but it does use recycled plastics, an eco-friendly paint and a charger that doesn’t leave a huge carbon footprint. Sony have also been conscious enough to supply the box in a smaller box than usual, so no trees are unnecessarily wasted.

The Elm even comes with some eco-friendly apps like the walk mate, which serves as a pedometer and is useful for those who are trying to exercise and not use a vehicle. Eco Mate is another eco-friendly app that simply gives questions that make us more environmentally aware. Paired with the green calculator, an app that helps you realise how much you hurt mother nature, The Elm is a great tool to attempt to help the planet, via mobile phone technology.

Curvaceous

The handset is both slim and has a beautiful curved design that fits into your hand perfectly. It has the appearance of a modern, attractive landline telephone but all the features of a modern smart phone. The Elm has a smaller screen than most would be used to from smart phones but this just helps boost the sharp vivid colours produced from this device. The small screen is great for watching YouTube clips or videos on as it looks crystal clear on this fantastic device.

The camera is pleasantly suprising, at 5 megapixels, as it is high quality and comes with a flash light. Many would think that being an eco-friendly device it would not deliver on the features but The Elm definitely does. The phone comes equipped with 3G and HSDPA support, an Internet browser, GPS, Wi-Fi, AAC music compatibility, an FM radio and Bluetooth.

The camera is packed full with features ranging from face and smile detection to geo-tagging, thanks to the built in GPS. The torch allows you to be able to get the shots you want even when it’s dim outside and the shutter speed ensures you won’t miss any photo opportunities. The phone comes with 280 MB of built-in memory and the option to expand it by up to 16 GB with the aid of a microSD card.

Form and sound
You traverse the Elm's user interface with its delightfully responsive direction pad, and the alphanumeric keys respond to presses with a satisfying click. Made from rubber, the keypad's convex shape provides grip and allows for simple dialling.

The Elm makes use out of Sony Ericsson's new 'noise shield' feature, which aims to filter out unwanted noise, so you can have clearer conversations. We gave this phone the Vuvuzella challenge, making a call during this years world cup, and we sounded clear to the person on the other end of the line and we could hear them fine too.

The quality of sound when playing music is equally impressive, with a full juke box offering rich sounds and full bass. The SensMe feature displays your music on a graph indicating how fast or slow the music is and also the mood. TrackID is equally impressive, it is a tool that can identify the track and artist by just listening to a short clip of a song.

Summary

On First glance it is easy to believe that The Elm is just a gimmick aimed at wooing the eco-concious but there is so much more. From all the neat features that come with the camera to the meticulous media player this really is a great phone. The GPS and Wi-Fi features keep the phone in the race against the top smart phones and definitely as useful. So if knowing your phone is made from recycled parts makes you feel better, and you like a phone that has an elegant well thought out design, then this is definitely a handset worth looking into. We were pleasantly surprised by The Elm when we gave it a chance, we just hope you are too.

The Sony Ericsson Elm

The Sony Ericsson Elm is Sony’s effort at appeasing the environmentally conscious so they don’t feel the guilt when making phone calls on the move.