"It had no headphone jack, showing how far ahead of its time it was" lmao

Something I miss from those times is hackability. Nowadays on android, rooting is super annoying, breaks many things and needs constant maintenance. Those kind of mainstream devices that would "just work" and be immediately hackable is lost through time.

In Sweden these Sony Ericssons were everywhere. Kids around my age all used them instead of MP3 players. MMS using the built-in cameras led to spicy new ways of communicating. The smarter functions were quite well hidden, but googling facts about stuff was definitely possible, and I even found an instant messaging client that worked well with MSN messenger. We didn't have a lot, but it was fun to make the best of it anyways. Early days.

That dual microSD to Memory Stick RAID card is incredible. I mean, I know that RAID as a concept has existed for a very long time, but for some reason , in my head, consumer-level devices with RAID don't feel normal until like 2010+. And that was for PCs and the like! Seeing something like this for use with flash storage cards in that time frame is kind of blowing my mind a little 😅

Love this era of Sony phones, it just seemed like they were in a league of their own when it came to the feature phone market. Even now Sony is standing out, being the only manufacturer to keep the 3.5mm audio jack and SD card slot on their flagships.

Was that a photo of your then kitten and now 17-18 year old cat? What a good kitty. Stood the test of time even better than the phone did!

Around 2006 - 2009 i used a SE z710i. The OS looks very similar to the one on this model. Opera mini was a great addition and allowed you to browse the web comfortably. Even KZfaq worked since they used to serve 3gp versions of the videos back then. The OS was super snappy and stable

This is a smartphone. Just without the touch screen

I had a W810i. Still have it in one of my drawers somewhere. One of my favorite phones I ever owned. The headphone cord that came with it was detachable in the middle to reveal a 3.5mm audio jack! It was amazing, iPods weren't a thing where I grew up so this phone was my first on the go music machine. So many good memories.

SE modding. So happy you included this section in the video. It was so fun to do and see better and better tools being developed for it in real time in that era.

Phones from this era give me always a nice feeling when I see them. I was in late elementary school at the point when they were popular so half of my class mates had Sony Ericsson's while the other half had Nokia's; cannot forgot the "wars" between those two brands which always were fun. I remember how me & my friends used to talk a lot about what the phones are capable of, what stuff you can load onto them, what software you can flash etc. One of my friends has gotten the K750i & we thought that was one of the best phones of all time... Good times

Your videos have so much personality, the thumbnail, the documentary type voice, the devices shown, everything is just a compliment to each other. LOVE IT!

Great vid. There’s a whole scene that was quickly overshadowed by the iPhone generation, and it’s rapidly being forgotten. I’m glad you make these kind of videos.

The jump in camera quality between K700i to K750i was so gigantic that I think there's never happened again between two devices separated by one generation.

as an aussie who’s lived in canada, janus x trailer park boys was incredibly unexpected but very welcome

I'm glad someone finally mentioned ELFs and patches for Sony Ericsson phones! My K530i was flashed to a W660i, had custom fonts, icons, a home screen with "now playing" widget (with active controls), a HTC Sense clock (with animations!) and a dock-like launcher for apps. It was a beast. I've played original DOOM on it without any problems. Remapping hardware keys was awesome, because I mapped the camera button to lock the keyboard and disabled "press unlock then *" message.

I loved my K750i. Awesome camera, amazing mp3 player. I was listening to podcast, rocking my full music collection and taking great photos. The physical buttons for play / pause and volume as well as the satisfying clunk of opening the camera made this phone a joy.

I had the previous model, the K700! I remember a friend of mine having a black K750i too, and it really was a wonderful phone, it took for the time genuinely excellent pictures! That same friend later got a K850i and, gosh, that thing was a monster of a non-smartphone. Sony Ericsson made some really wonderful stuff over the years.

God the J-Roc tune from Trailer Park Boys really took me back

One of THE MOST wholesome mini documentaries on SE phones of the era.

Generally, the SE phones were some of the very best ever made. I had quite a few, and kind of worked myself up to the top of the line being the P-series. Really miss those times. Doubt we'll ever see something like that again though. Guess we can be glad to have witnessed such times. Because many never will.

Yes, it is a smart phone. You even showed us the browser.

The Sony Ericsson phones always seemed cool from like 2001~2006ish. For me the first I had heard of them was getting a network connection of a Palm. Sony Ericssons were usually not super locked down like most phones were. I am sure you remember how much Bluetooth was disabled and hampered on US cellular networks at that time. Well the Ericsson usually had all its BT profiles and some models had something much much more rare. An IrDA port! It was possible to connect to a network with a Palm over infrared through certain Sony Ericsson phones. I knew a foreign exchange student in HS that was from Japan and he had a Sony Ericsson, it also had the IrDA port. I couldn't establish a network connection but I could see that both devices could see each other it was really cool. I also got another chance when my Aunt got a model with that port as well. I always thought the games for regular phones were interesting but since I have had a Palm long before I had a cellular of my very own, I was always more interested in Palm games and software. I am definitely familiar 'hacking' the firmware of a diverse set of devices though. I have done so with my iPod, Sandisk Sansa MP3 player, HTC HD2 (a classic btw) and my PSP (I had to hard mod my battery to make my own tool battery back in the beginning and I had to go to Staples to make my Magic Memory Stick cuz I didn't have a MS reader at home). I have also seen may old articles and knowledge of hacking old stuff to be gone mostly. Even on XDA there are many dead links on old stuff. Fortunately I am a bit of a data hoarder and I've pretty much kept 80~90% of everything I have ever downloaded. By 2006~7 the cell phone market had so many interesting models from every sort of manufacturer that Sony's Ericsson didn't really stand out like it once did. A darn shame to be sure. On the subject of streaming over 2G, I have done such before, many times. It was on my iPhone 3G funny enough but since I wasn't on AT&T I didn't get 3G so I settled for 2G and I streamed internet radio stations (AnimeNFO, Yggdrasil, some other JPOP stations~) In general I got good enough quality. Have you ever listened to a strong AM station? The fidelity was close to that on 2G, Lol~!

You've got a very calm voice mate! Always love it when you get the soldering iron out!

So nostalgic, I remember liking lots of SE phones back in the day and this is one of them

I loved my K800i back in the day, with a J2ME Gmail client towards the end, I only stopped using it when the camera sensor decided to self destruct.

I was honestly surprised by those pictures. I didn't expect that much quality from a phone camera that old.

😮 I had the k750 the 800 and the w810 best era of phones Eva! I used to listen to the same music as I was heavily into breakdancing (bboying) this video was a good reminder of those good times. I remember recommending it to my friend who died of cancer last year. I still have so many great pictures we got from these phones. One was when we climbed on top of a mini street sweeper van in a busy oxford street and smoking a cigarette while people waved and laughed at what we were doing. I also remember meeting the time I bricked the phone after I just got the number of the girl I ended up marrying and trying to contact sony to help me get the number out because flashing it would make me lose it. I went to the same place for weeks until I saw her again 😅 we literally got married a few months later. 🎉 Man this phone brings too many memories the more I think about it the more crazy stories come to mind. Thank you for this video

4:47 we had a mobile tv package with 7 channels that came out in late 2006. Worked via umts and the pic quality for it's time was pretty decent on my Nokia n70.

I didn't have a K750 but I had a contemporary model. Sony Ericsson phones of that time were amazingly powerful. They also had a very powerful Bluetooth stack, something Android wouldn't get for many years. I would use BT to mount the phone as a file system to get files on and off it. Also used it to dialup to work from my laptop, similar to how you'd hotspot with a phone today.

Ahhhh, the days of WAP and J2ME. The only time I haven't _completely_ hated working with Java was doing J2ME stuff, for the simple reason that Sun couldn't screw up the implementation of features they simply didn't include! 🤣

Oh wow! I didn't expect to see a K750! It made me smile when you said it was the best phone you ever had, I kept saying the same thing back then too. Joystick on mine died at the end but I had all the shortcuts I needed memorized which made getting into desired menus was very fast and easy. Nothing but good memories with that phone!

OP should recreate THE SE-NSE forum 💀 👇🏻

Huge Sony Ericsson fan in the day. Still have plenty in my old collection. Many hours spent flashing unlocking and generally taking great photos.

Love your videos! Thanks. It's nice to see the process and also the failures, that's just part of the whole experience!

My dad had this phone, got a lot of childhood memories back 😊. Here in India this phone was quite the luxury at that time

I had this phone back in the day, a friend of mine had flashed the firmware for me and it was truly a beast!

Thank you for unlocking memories of modding these phones. I remember modding phones like w200, w300 and w580, with lots of windows vista related ELFs, vista was all the rage back in the day, one thing i always loved installing is a vista sidebar thing on the home screen.

Thanks for bringing back so many memories of my childhood with this video. I used to mess around with my sister's W660i and my dad's K810i, adding those themes, patches and elfs. It was so cool to run those custom patches. One day I messed up the flash so bad that it corrupted the W660i's firmware and my sister lost some really important data 😅. I also remember helping a friend to cross flash the K810's firmware on the K800i. I think SE-NSE and TOP-SE were the main forums that I used to visit.

These kind of video is just so therapeutic for me, in addition the voice of narration is also soothing. I love old devices that I have not touched before or tinkered when I was younger since I don't have access to such finances. Slowly I got some of them and tinkered with these stuffs and it still amazes me when it works. Technology is fascinating.

such a brilliant phone. i remember turning all the EQ channels up which pretty much doubled the volume from the speaker

i used to have the k610i and it was one of my favorite phones ive ever had, i had a few of them one still works and gets service

I had the same phone when i was a teenager, hacked the sound drivers and it was the loudest phone among my friends. I even keep some files for modding in my archive. Great video !

modding Sony Ericsson back then was crazy, I still remember modding my K800 to get full manual camera control and a walkman music player, for me as a teeneger with limited technology knowledge, it was wild!

I used my W800 like forever back then. It was such a great phone. Really nice reminder to the good old times!

Some of the pictures I took on that camera back in my teenage years look better than anything I've ever taken on a modern smartphone.

I remember playing that tennis game, that airplane game, and that platformer game on my friend's phone throughout the entirety of my high school senior year. This thing was so groundbreaking for it's time

Such a great channel and video :) I was also playing with different firmware for SE, patches and other things. Such a nostalgic memories!

I used the J2ME version of the Opera Browser all the time way back on long busrides. If i remember right thebrowser filtered everything trough a proxy, so the slow GPRS speed wasn´t really a issue then. I also used to read a ton of books on the tiny display.

I haven't had this model, but my first phone was the W810i, which is similar to this model to the K750i, and I loved it. It had all of the features mentioned, and I used it a lot. It brought me memories of my first phone.

Fantastic phone, served me well for years. Took some mad pics with it that to this day look allright. Also the music with the headphones it came with was great.

Great design + great features + great camera + it just works. Great success! Had it and loved it.

If possible, could you post some links to where you found the tools to install ELFs? :) I'd love to see if I can try some of this on a K610i or W595!

Another brilliant video thanks

I loved downloading those huge archives of random games and looking through all of them to find ones in the correct resolution, damn I miss this phone. Thank you for the video!

I had the W800 and i loved it. I had hundreds of mp3s and many full length movies that i converted for it on the memory stick. Sadly the joystick stopped working and i tried to replace it but it didn't work again. I think i paid 3 or 4 hundred dollars for it. I miss that phone.

Man, those were the times, I remember the firmware upgrade to a W800 and I could put my entire mp3 collection on that thing back then. I got a used one for cheap with a broken camera, but I killed it by taking it for a swim in the ocean. The W910 (with the sliding screen) was its spiritual successor - the smallest phone we'll probably ever have (other than those purpose-made for a prison wallet). But by that time Sony started screwing people over with planned obsolescence where the sliding cable was intentionally designed to crack after 6-12 months and you'll gradually lose buttons and screen functionality. A replacement cable was only 3 bucks on ebay but it was always a big hassle to change every year like an oil filter (still a breeze compared to what we have to put up with now just to access some internal component). Other than that, it was such a great phone that I kept using it for 8 years until I replaced it with a Galaxy S7 in 2016. Mobile internet wasn't much of a thing until then (too slow, unreliable and too expensive rates) and for everything else the phone was just perfect. It was truly the last ever Sony product worth spending money on before the comany died.

your videos are so kino i feel the need to actually comment to help you with the algorithm, can't wait for what you've got in store for this year

What an awesome device - thanks for sharing! Really looking forward to the next one :)

I like the way you bring these old devices into the modern world. It makes me realise how far technology has came. Nowadays I can't wait even for a second for buffering while earlier had these kind of phones where screen refresh rate can actually be seen by eyes 😂.

I still have a K610i from 2007, still working. Used it most as a music player and gaming device (it had that same tennis game, but was an special WTA edition). It came with its USB transfer cable, so it was easy to put stuff into the device. N.B.: I remember that the 'i' suffix stood for 'international', that is, a model meant to work with GSM networks, opposed to other cellular standards like CDMA or EVDO.

This bring back so much memories I wish you can do more of these videos on Sony Ericsson phones specially the K800i that device had more mods and power to handle those mods back in the day, I remember even there was camera mod that can add so much functionality to the camera that didn't exist on the standard camera app as well as sound and display drivers that enhance the screen and music playback and so much more I even made couple of skins for the music player myself, those were the fun days.

happy new year! waiting more great videos!

7:59 This was also a built-in game on some Nokia phones back then…

Aw man, I wish I’d known about that modding forum back in the day. I didn’t have exactly this model but I had a slightly later Walkman one with the same functionality. I got themes sent by kids at school over Bluetooth, but I couldn’t find other free themes back in the day. I bet if I knew about that forum I would’ve had my pick of hundreds! Sony made the same claims about music streaming, as well as a Shazam-esque service. But I never used them because data was so expensive on pay-as-you-go back then. So all my multimedia activities involved transferring over USB to the bundled 128MB micro Memory Stick from a computer. I had a few episodes of a few TV shows converted to 3GPP format to watch them on the go 😅

Recently I bought an almost new W715, and I absolutely love it. My first phones were the Z550i and then the K510i. Back in the day, my hobby was flashing vkp patches, installing elfs, etc. I also had a huge collection of J2Me games. Such a good times.

Great vid thanks for the memories. Loved the old sony ericsson w810i myself... my all time favourite 👌

My favorite dumb phone as well. Had it for 6 years as a daily driver. Installed multiple camera drivers in an attempt to sqeeze the last bit of quality from the sensor and it held up to many phones released later. For the forums, use the wayback machine and see if its already a discussed problem.

Damn i feel old

This was the phone my dad had for the longest time. I remember spending hours just tinkering with it, or play that tennis game sometimes, it was such an amazing and loaded phone for kid me. Now the phone lays in its box collecting dust, battered and weathered from extensive use, but sometimes I'd charge it back up and just play around with it.

This brings back memories! 😀 I really enjoyed using my K750i back then! It truly was amazing, and it still is. I do have mine saved, and it's in great condition with original box and all accessories.

Listening to a phone speaker, through a phone speaker, is such a pain🤣

Nice PCG-U1 UMPC! (lovely name Sony) & thanks for sharing. I had a buddy in high school who had one of these K750's and I was dying to get one. Honestly I miss this era of phones before the monoliths took over as the devices had personality.

This is the first phone I ever got in my collection back in 2017. I have a lot of nostalgic feelings for it. I used it as a camera as a kid. The pictures looked so good for such a tiny phone. My dad owned it. I also used it for the games on the go. I loved showing it off to people. Mine still works. I have the black version.

Please keep covering Sony Ericsson phones, specially the P line... I love them!

My family used to be all in on Sony Ericsson, my mom used a K800i for years, well into the smartphone days. We used it a lot for pictures! I had a W200i as my first phone that I continued to use as an MP3 player long after getting newer phones (that had no headphone jack). I had a charger with a passthrough so I could plug in the 3.5mm headphone dongle as well. Had it plugged in to my stereo like that for years. Even after the little plastic on the charger broke I used tape to hold it all together lol

I had the W850i and absolutely adored it. Pretty sure it's an evolution of this phone. Used it to tether to my netbook, back when the Internet was light enough to browse with a minuscule data cap. The camera was surprisingly good and audio playback was great. Never got into the Java or hacking side of things though!

My last SE was packed with G-maps, Opera browser, ICQ-Miranda, and games, and I didn't even want first android phones back in the day, because I had all I needed in my SE with Java. And my first "LAN" game: Gish!

I wanted to buy a new Nokia phone when my 3310 got stolen for the second time, but the store didn't have it in stock and suggested the one next to it... The K750i! Best choice ever. I even used its joystick to control the mouse cursor on my PC, so i could pick a movie to watch without leaving the bed.

I still remember seeing this phone on G4! The reviewers were comparing it to the Blackberry and I remember the camera being a stand out in their reviews. I wanted one, but I was really young at the time so my parents wouldn't buy me it.

Sometimes I cry when I see these Sony Ericsson phones. I had the z200, S200, k700, w705, w710 amd at last the j20 ..

5:10 Trailer Park Boys is incredible

I remember owning K750i, W810i and K850i afterwards. Such brilliant phones, especially when modded.

I loved Sony Ericsson's feature phones. Had a W508, K700, K750 and K800 which were all great in this era. Later feature phones really weren't that bad, could never go back but things were changing a lot by this time and they weren't hopeless any more.

The OS that these Sony Ericssons used to run was amazing. So much smoother, prettier and overall better than what most Samsungs or some of the cheaper Nokias at the time could offer. My SE had this MIDI creator utility, where you could make your own music to use as a ringtone or alarm sound. It even had a small video editor, where you could create stunning 3GP files from whatever clips of photos you had. It felt so much ahead to everything else.

I absolutely love this channel!

I loved my K750, it was Vodafone branded and I flashed the W800 Firmware. Seeing SEtool brought back some memories. ❤

K750 was a Bobby dazzler back in the day. I would of thought you would of preferred the p900 that was the dogs doo das. Would be cool to see what you could do with p900 though. Great video as always mate.

Ahh yes, I suppose I miss the Elfpack fun. It had potential for quite advanced applications, I remember working on GBA and SNES emulator ports, as well as ports of emulators of some older consoles. Some of my work was also based on ports for Siemens phones, which also had an Elfpack of their own. Of course there was a port of Doom, and even tinkered with a port of Quake, although it never got far enough to be released, and eventually I lost interest as SE "dumb" phones were moving towards oblivion at an increasing rate, with smartphones slowly taking over. However, most of my work was aimed at the slightly faster models - DB2020 chipset based models (e.g. K800i, K550i etc.) and later also the A2 platform (DB3xxx chipsets) that both used a 220 MHz CPU and had more RAM compared with the older (and later used in lower-end devices) DB2010 chipset that K750i mentioned here used. I hope den_po is safe with all that's happening in the world.

This brings back memories. I still have my K750, which was actually the second one. The first one I lost but I remember I flashed it successfully to the W800 firmware, this was the beginning of my phone hacking era

Glad I found your channel, this video brings memories, back when my parents bought me brand new at the time W660i. I was a bit more tech-savvy than my peers then, and I figured out you could pirate phone games. I probably played every single shooter that this phone supported, and there were a lot of those, from BT Biplanes to Alpha Zone and Deep 3D. I could also share those games with my classmates (for a small fee) by sending them a .jar file of the game. With 15-20 new games every month ""sold"" to half of my classmates I could cover the internet bill for 100mb of the traffic for another month. Most of the games back then were 150-500kb, so I had plenty of traffic left after the games for chatting, browsing forums, and downloading videos. Shame there is no way to get one, even used, where I'm.

This brings back so many memories..... My second phone was an Sony Ericsson K750i in Black ("upgrading" from an LG flip-phone). I had this Phone for years and i loved it! I remember the games, the red theme, the awesome camera mechanism.

1:00 that cat is still alive now ?

You reminded me of this phone. It Was stolen in a bus when i was returning back to home. The bus was crowded,I had earphone hanging in my neck. This was enough for the thief to unplug the earphone and steal it. Best camera phone at that time. I had it in black colour. The best was the neon flash! The flash used to pop with the sound of capacitors(imo). Best phone ever used and very very beautiful.

This brings back memories. I had K800i, awesome camera, and M600i the butterfly keyboard.

I'd argue that the K800I and similarly powerful phones in the series are smartphones. Especially the C905. In many ways more of a smartphone than the iPhones prior to the 4S. I have so many J2ME files for these phones. Sorted by native resolution and capability.

clearly a video made for kids born after 2000 😅 I mean every java based phone had the features that this one had, just this phone did it all a little better than all the others. And golly, I miss a lot of J2ME games that I used to play, there are hundreds that are worth playing, but I had my best experience with games on my Symbian based Nokia 6630, which at the time was already considered a smartphone, before the slab smartphones came out. I had bangers such as Carmageddon 3D.

I had a k750i for a few years. Got some very fond memories of it and I still have all the photos I ever took with it. Actually I even have the phone itself in my drawer, but the battery died long ago and I've never gotten around to buying a new one. I later updated it to k800i because my friend sold his to me for a very reasonable price. That was another great phone that took even better photos with it's 3.2MP camera.

I had a K770 and I remember installing those fancy 3d menus, in silver. It was so cool

sony ericsson phones were better than the rubbish now.... a phone o be a phone plus music ... I had a whole series of thee ... k750, w800 and i think 788