The Sony Ericsson Elm is intended to let tree huggers make guilt-free phone calls on the move. Unlike previous entries in Sony Ericsson's eco-friendly GreenHeart series, however, the Elm and its Hazel sibling don't skimp on features.
The Elm is available for £15 per month on a two-year contract, or for around £120 on a pay-as-you-go deal. You can also pick it up for around £170 SIM-free.
Treat 'em green
The Elm is one of only a few phones to wave the eco-friendly flag. No, it's not made from wood or parts of dead animals, but it does use recycled plastics, eco-friendly paint and a low-power-consumption charger. It also comes in comparatively small box, while a paper manual is dispensed with, in favour of an electronic manual on the phone itself.
Unfortunately, the Elm's approach to saving the planet can take a rather irritating form. Nannying pop-up messages reminding you to unplug your charger from the mains, and the screen's tendency to turn itself off prematurely, can become annoying.
Then there are the apps. Walk Mate counts your steps throughout the day, converting this exercise into the amount of carbon dioxide that you haven't caused to be emitted into the atmosphere -- Sony Ericsson is presumably under the impression that we normally ride a scooter around the office. A tally of burnt calories would perhaps be more useful.
Eco Mate offers pedantic advice via an environmental quiz, and Green Calculator measures how evil you are to the planet. The Elm means well, but do people really buy mobile phones to be told how to help the environment?
Slim and curvy
With its arched back, the Elm may remind you of a miniature version of a typical landline phone. That's not to say it isn't attractive, though. Its slim, black and silver, candybar-shaped body sits relatively well in your hand. The small, 56mm (2.2-inch), 240x320-pixel screen doesn't really stand up to comparison with the OLED screens on the market, but it's certainly sharp and usable for the applications offered, such as the YouTube one.
Despite its green credentials, the Elm doesn't skimp on features, improving on previous GreenHeart phones, like the no-frills Naite. There's a 5-megapixel camera with an LED flash, 3G and HSDPA support (up to 7.2Mbps), GPS, an Internet browser, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Java-based games, MP3 and AAC music playback, and an FM radio.
The 5-megapixel camera comes with a bright LED photo light (also usable as a torch) and takes relatively clear shots, thanks to its autofocus, although colours can be slightly dull. The camera also offers face- and smile-detection features, and you can geotag your photos thanks to the phone's GPS support. There's only 280MB of integrated memory, but you can expand that to a more satisfactory 16GB with a microSD card.
Indeed, you're rather forced to use a microSD card, due to the fact that Sony Ericsson doesn't supply a USB cord with the Elm. "No problemo," you might think. "I have plenty of USB cords." But the Elm has a proprietary port, so you'll have to either shell out for a specific cable, or transfer photos and music via a microSD card, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Why Sony Ericsson? Why?
iPhone App 
Newsletters 
RSS Feeds 
Send Us Tips
User reviews4
Add your review
Shady Janzeir 4 February 2011
Good: Size, design, and user interface
Bad: GPS and LED flash functionality limited by poor software; please stop telling me to unplug the charger!
Comment: It's easy to like the Elm when you're flipping it around at the store, and the rather reasonable price makes buying it that much easier. But beware - if it's just a phone you want, you'll love the Elm. If you're one of the few who take their phones seriously, the Elm will drive you mad.
It's a great little thing, what with the (almost) complete feature set and those widgets that the socially mobile (no pun intended) adore. But it's when you actually try to use the phone's other features (namely the GPS and camera) that it starts to come undone at the seams.
The C702 I had been using for almost two years had its GPS operation separated from the functionality of GPS-based applications like Google Maps and Tracker. The Elm, by comparison, is a step backward. The same functionality is there, but the user can no longer control and monitor GPS operation independently of the available applications - to start GPS, you must run at least one application, and there is no way to monitor the progress as the phone tries to find and latch on to satellites. Worse yet, you can't get coordinates, speed or heading information (you can only get speed and graphical heading information through Tracker). The death knell is dealt with the fact that when you come to a stop while monitoring your position with Google Maps, the GPS receiver disconnects from the satellites it had taken so long to latch on to, and will only reconnect after you manually reactivate the Maps application.
And good luck trying to take photos in the dark. The LED comes on only briefly to help in focusing, but not long enough for you to compose the shot. And you cannot switch it on or off with the # key like you used to on older SE phones.
The Elm is a great phone if you're into style and have your whole life hanging out for people to see. But if you tend to use your phone to within an inch of its life, you will be disappointed. I wish I had spent the money on refurbishing my trusty old C702.
SOphiee 6 November 2010
Good: everything I have read about it seems good,I like the way it looks like the C902 but a newer version of it.
Bad: I haven't really heard anything bad about this phone so far.
Comment: I'm getting this phone next week and I'm looking forward to it hopefully everything goes well with it.
astrikor 11 October 2010
Good: Keyboard has easy prominent keys - great for clumsy fingers!
Bad: Camera fault OR specification fault?
Comment: I bought an Elm from Carphone Warehouse last week as it was on offer half price - looked good value on the basis of the specification on the Sony Ericsson web page, and my C903 had broken. I was looking forward to using the camera with it's up to x4 digital zoom according to their specification.
Unfortunately, if you try to zoom before taking the photo (to preview a reduced size photo and/or to minimise saved file size) you get a message "Zoom not possible at this resiolution. Select a smaller picture size". The only way to make the zoom work is to select the lowest (VGA) resolution setting or use the movie setting. In both cases the zoom action is very jerky and impossible to control.
I am very disappointed - for me the poor zoom makes the camera unusable. Having tried to return it to Carphone Warehouse I was told that there is no fault with it and consequently they cannot accept a return. I am now £100 out of pocket and will have to find an alternative phone.
If there isn't a fault in the phone, then there is a fault in the specification as it is misleading by making no reference to the limitations of the zoom. I have advised Sony Ericsson of this and they have said that the Elm is not a camera phone so what do you expect. I expect it to do what their specification says, but sadly we can no longer trust Sony Ericsson's own specifications.
Beware next time you buy a phone - check out ALL functions BEFORE purchase. If the retailer doesn't allow this then go elsewhere. CLEARLY DON'T BUY BLIND FROM WEBSITES!
See all 4 user reviews