Sony Ericsson Z520A Cell

We love ours. Excellent battery life, tiny, robust, and quad band.

 

How is the RF reception on it. It has the loop antenna, right. I wonder if that design improves signal reception. Some phones are good, some are bad. I had a Motorola Razor side by side with Nokia 6230. The razor had no bars and no call could be made. The Nokia fluxuated between 1 and 2 bars and made calls easily (both on the cingular network).

 

I am sure it would help you much by reading some of the reviews online (cnet.cmd, for example). Most users complained about the side buttons.

Yes, horizontal/looped antenna should improve reception in weak signal environment. Since the antenna of a base station is usually vertical, an antenna of a cell phone should be horizontal to maximize "gain". So I heard from an RF engineer and it also makes sense to me based on my EE training.

 

I just received my Z520a and cannot determine if it is possible to transfer any contacts to the car. So far it only works as strictly a hands-free device.

Maybe someone out there can help us with this. What are the steps to transfer the data? I have selected transfer book from the Prius, but the phone then loses contact and does not recognize the Prius as a device it can transfer to.

Help please....

Thanks.

 

I love my z520a. Had to have it exchanged for a model with new software, but after that, it works great.

I have awesome reception, even indoors at my office (solid brick building with few windows).

I don't have BT in my Prius, so all the contact transferring stuff, I do not know.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(agile pagile @ Feb 7 2006, 07:23 PM) [snapback]205441[/snapback]</div>

I've had Bluetooth problems with that phone and the Prius. It connects when I turn the car on, but the phone disconnects from the car once I've driven for a minute or two. I updated my phone's firmware to the latest version, but the problem is the same. The phone's Bluetooth work great with my computer though.

Note that my previous phone was a Sony Ericsson T610 and that never had this problem.

**** UPDATE *****
I've now found a solution to this problem - see my post below for the fix. The Z520a works very well with my 2005 Prius now.

 

I'm running a Sony Ericson w300i and find it is great. I don't know how it compares to the Z520A though.

Tom

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(maf @ Mar 5 2007, 02:00 PM) [snapback]400531[/snapback]</div>

I found the fix for my problem. Go into the phone's Bluetooth menu and turn on the Powersave option. This makes the phone only allow one Bluetooth connection at a time (all I ever do anyway) and it fixes the problem.

 

I have the Z525a, which is nearly identical, and am fairly happy. The Push To Talk button for their quasi-Nextel-Direct-Connect thing is too easy to push accidentally, but I found a setting to lock out that button and it doesn't bug me anymore. It does have better reception than any other phone I've had- works at my office in a steel-framed building where my previous phones wouldn't.

To transfer the phone's whole phone book to the Prius, to into the phone's Contacts list and choose the Options entry (above the choice where you can put in a new number). Then select Advanced, then Send All Contacts, then via Bluetooth. Then it will show you a list of the bluetooth devices it sees. If the car is paired, it should show up in the list.

There's something you have to do on the car's end to make it ready to accept the transfer- I don't remember that part offhand. I managed to get the transfer done using this phone before I drove my '07 off the dealer lot- though it took me a few tries before it worked. And it does seem pretty robust- I have probably 200 phone book entries with about 300 numbers, and it did them all without complaint. The only limitation is that the Prius can only hold... two numbers per name I think? In cases where I had three numbers for a contact it would have that name in the Prius's contact list twice; the first entry had two numbers and the second entry had the remaining number.

After the initial setup and transfer I have had zero problems getting the Prius and the phone to work together smoothly.