Sony Ericsson
K850i

The K850 was a flagship, Cyber-shot branded, five mega-pixel camera phone. Having successfully established itself in the music segment with the Walkman brand, Sony Ericsson still had work to do in building its Cyber-shot franchise. The K850 joined three other Cyber-shot branded phones (K550, K800, and K810) and was designed to act as flagship product for Sony Ericsson’s imaging portfolio. Although Nokia N95’s featured a five mega- pixel camera, the K850 was positioned as a dedicated camera phone rather than having the multitude of features Nokia was offering with it “multimedia computer” positioning for the N95. Sony Ericsson’s efforts to make the K850 a compelling camera experience extended to offering a dedicated key to turn the camera on and off as well making it easy to switch between the gallery and shoot mode. It also had an electronic lens cover similar to many digital cameras. Although now considered a standard feature, Sony Ericsson’s decision to embed an accelerometer to sense the orientation of the phone was quite revolutionary at the time. This meant that when the device was held on its side (e.g. when taking and reviewing pictures) images were automatically displayed in landscape mode on the screen.