Sometime over the past few months Fido has become the “green” carrier of Canada. They have the most amount of devices that are eco-friendly: Motorola Renew, Motorola Renew+ and now the Sony Ericsson Naite.
When you look at the Naite it looks like any other Sony Ericsson device in design. So you can see that a great deal of thought went into creating this product to ensure the style was not compromised when making it green. The Naite is made from 70% recycled consumer plastics with the overall dimensions of 108.0 x 47.0 x 12.6 mm. So the length is a couple inches short of a standard gift card. When it comes to the weigh, the Naite is a measly 84 grams and you barely feel it in your hand, let alone your pocket.
The screen size is tiny at 2.2 inches (resolution of 240×320), but gets the job done. You have options to change the brightness settings and save your battery life – which makes the device even more green. Around the Naite you’ll see on the right hand side the volume rocker but missing is a 3.5mm headset jack. So to listen to your music (and charge the device) you’ll have to plug in the proprietary cable they provide. For the size of the Naite the keypad is actually nicely spaced out and you won’t have much trouble getting used to typing your text messages/e-mails. We did notice that the back light is a bit faded around the “s” so at night or in dark places it could be a challenge to see the letter. Nothing to be concerned about though.
You have all the standard features of a phone, such as contacts, calendar and phones. The call quality was good – people could hear us and we could hear others clearly. The Naite also has quick access to Facebook and Twitter, plus when you check out the video you’ll see they have also included in the applications feature tips on how to be green.
When it comes to other features, the 2 megapixel camera is probably the only thing I would improve on. The picture quality is good for taking quick pics and sending to your friends, but printing them will only come up pixelated. The Naite can take video and the quality again was a bit pixelated, but the sound quality rocked during the video test. This device also comes with an FM radio and video calling capabilities with it’s front facing camera. For the web experience it was as expected, no full HTML browser or WiFi but incredibly fast compared previous devices we’ve tested. Surfing the web is easy and viewing can only be done portrait view so the 2.2 inch display might take some getting used to. We checked out YouTube and streamed a video and found the video came up quickly, pixelated and the sound quality at full blast was muffled. Once I took it down a level it was perfectly clear. Realistically you’ll be listening to your music with your headphones. The Baite can also hold up to 8GB with a microSD card.
Again, I would have never picked Fido to be the green carrier but they’re doing a bang up job. The Naite can be yours for $25 on a 2-year contract or $150 no contract. You can check out the full review here
