Hot on the heels of the iPhone 2.0 being announced, Sony is keeping business as usual by releasing this seasons candy bar style phones -K330 and J132. While these phones aren’t the most innovative pieces of hardware, they do have sufficient abilities that should entice the average consumer with solid features and attractive pricing. The J132 (in Night Black or Heaven Blue) features a dust-resistant keypad, FM radio with alarm clock that plays your favorite radio station, and 9 hours of talk/450 hours of standby. However, the J132 is missing a camera and has only 4MB of internal memory with no expansion availability. The K330 (in Gold on Black and Green on Black) is a bit more advanced and has a .3 megapixel camera, FM radio, and track of calories and a daily health plan with Health mate software. With 7 hours of talk time and 330 standby, this phone should do very well in the entry-level market.
The J132 will support GSM 900/1800 frequencies and the J132a for US markets will support GSM 850/1900, The K330 will support GSM/GPRS 900/1800 and the K330a: GSM/GPR 850/1900. Both phones should be available in Q3/Q4 2008.
Sony Insider gives these phones a thumbs-up as they are purely designed for entry-level consumers. So whilst the features seem relatively unimpressive, compared to other low budget alternatives they are actually quite strong. We weren’t too impressed with the K330’s 12 minutes of video (in 2 minute clips), however. Sony, if you’re going to offer 12 minutes of video, make it uninterrupted.
