Sony Ericsson Elm

Product: Sony Ericsson Elm
Website: www.sonyericsson.com/elm
System Specifications : 2.2-inch screen, microSD, GSM, GPRS, EDGE, HSPA, 5 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, FM radio, WiFi, FastPort connector, li-ion battery
Price: Dependent on contract, £170 SIM Free

SONY ERICSSON'S ELM is its latest environmentally friendly phone in a candy bar design, which falls into the range of handsets under its Greenheart initiative. Basically, it's a budget phone, with a small screen and minimalist keypad common to that style of mobile, but it's all very green indeed.

With this phone and others in the Greenheart range, Sony Ericsson has gone all environmentally conscious with the materials used throughout the phone and its packaging.

The whole design and look of the Elm is very dated, as it falls into the lower end of the no-frills category of handsets that are often past flagship models but now moving out of favour.

The screen on the phone is a 2.2-inch 240x320 QVGA TFT display that, although it seems a good fit for the Elm, could have been better. Looking directly at the small screen the images seem bright enough, but not a lot of text is visible due to the resolution and size. Moving out of direct viewing warps and distorts the screen's clarity due to the cheap display, in much the same way as screens on the early netbooks used to. This we haven't seen in other budget model handsets lately, even ones priced lower than the Elm.

The handset body is slightly curved, such that the phone's rear initially looks like it's just more rounded than other candy bar phones. The Elm has been designed to match the natural curve of the hand, where it sits in an open hand comfortably. This unfortunately leaves the phone awkward to hold with one hand and type onto at the same time, as the Elm is too rounded at the back and too top-heavy to type on with a thumb.

The Elm is made from recycled plastics, although what percentage and which plastics haven't been disclosed. Sony Ericsson hasn't stopped there as the packaging for the handset has been deliberately kept down to a minimum so as not to cause too much unnecessary non-recyclable waste, which curiously results in the lack of a data cable.

The materials used for the phone are supposedly free from hazardous chemicals too, according to the accompanying blurb, and we're taking Sony for its word on that one. What we're entirely unsure about is how much of the phone itself is recyclable when its usefulness has been outlived. We put this question to Sony Ericsson but it was unsure as to what extent the Elm can be recycled.

There are some other token green initiatives going on with this mobile, from the accompanying manual to the charger and other miscellaneous environmentally conscious additions. The Elm doesn't ship with a paper manual, instead Sony Ericsson has included one in the phone, therefore saving some trees.

A low power charger is thrown in for good measure. The phone did charge fairly fast from a dead battery, and we didn't notice a longer spell than usual. However, the charger uses the Sony Ericsson proprietary Fastport, while everyone else is going with a microUSB port. When you disconnect the Elm from the charger, the phone does remind you to unplug the charger from the wall, just to hammer home the point that it's a very green handset and it has the world's power resources in mind at all times.

The operating system running the Elm along with the UI are seen on many of Sony Ericsson's phones. There are some social networking applications in the form of Facebook and Twitter, running in the guise of widgets that are actually feature rich compared with other budget handsets.

Sony Ericsson has also added some green value to the applications in the form of the Walkmate eco pedometer. This records via the built-in accelerometer how many steps you take with the phone and shows how much carbon dioxide you have personally saved the planet by walking instead of using a car.

Besides a 5 megapixel camera, WiFi and AGPS, the Elm has a background noise cancelling feature that cancels out the background cacophony and concentrates only on the user's voice. This works rather well in that the user no longer has to shout just to be heard.

The Elm is powered by a lowly 1000 mAh battery, which seems to be synonymous with lower tier models these days, but let's not forget the Iphone 3G has only a 1150 mAh battery. During our testing on the Three network the phone lasted for four hours while making calls, which meets the manufacturer's claims suggesting that the expected 10 hours on GSM would also be met, although we didn't test that. This is one of the longest times we've seen, which is down to the phone not having to drive a resource hungry processor or a power demanding touchscreen.

In Short
The Elm is a fairly decent budget phone on first inspection, but we can't help feeling that Sony Ericsson has used the excuse under a 'green' umbrella to create a below par budget phone. The phone is an old design, with very dated elements, while the budget phones we're seeing today are better than expected and have raised the mobile phone game to a whole new level. On that note, we do commend Sony Ericsson on its green ethos and initiative, but we believe it could have done better.

The Good
Environmentally friendly mobile, noise cancelling technology.

The Bad
Proprietary charging port meaning no 3.5 audio socket as a result, no data cable.

The Ugly
Could be green just for green's sake, without offering anything that leads the innovation of budget handsets.

Bartender's Report
5/10