The F500i is designed specifically to help Vodafone meet the needs of consumers who increasingly want to get more out of multimedia services. Vodafone live!™ brings together an extensive range of services including colour picture messaging, the best in colour gaming, the largest catalogue of realistic music ringtones, alerts and information in colour and with pictures, immediate links to additional exciting content such as picture and text messaging, music, sport and news, all from an easy-to-use picture menu, available any time, any where.

“The Sony Ericsson F500i is the latest exciting addition to our range of Vodafone exclusive handsets allowing customers easy access to Vodafone live!™ services,” said Guy Laurence, Vodafone’s Global Marketing Director of Products and Services. ”With the growing popularity of high quality, easy-to-use camera phones and the continued high interest in games, the F500i is well positioned to appeal to a broad range of consumers keen to combine the excitement of gaming on their handset with a host of features, allowing them even more ways to keep in touch with their friends and family“.

“We are very excited about expanding our collaboration with Vodafone and bringing the F500i to the market, as we share their passion for compelling mobile entertainment services,” says Jan Wäreby, Corporate Executive Vice President and Head of Sales & Marketing at Sony Ericsson. “Our focus on easy-to-use camera phones has been well appreciated by consumers around the world and with the F500i, we also offer a great gaming experience to Vodafone live!ä users.”

The F500i promotes the use of imaging by its ease-of-use and dual front design concept, allowing both telephony and camera features on the same handset. A dedicated camera button on the side of the phone gives fast and easy access to the camera; it only takes a few clicks to take and send an image or a video clip.

The camera features a 4x digital zoom and its 128x160 pixels, 65,536 TFT colour screen presents video, images and games with great clarity and resolution.

With its colour screen and MultiAction™ joystick, the F500i gives a superior gaming experience. It features a graphics platform especially suitable for graphically rich mobile applications and content, Mascot Capsule® Engine Micro3D Edition and a wide variety of great games will be available for download from the Vodafone live!™ portal. Compatible with the Gameboard EGB-10, the F500i can easily be transformed into a full-fledged gaming machine.

Imaging & Messaging

• 128 x 160 pixels Display TFT
• 65,536 Colour screen
• 10 MB user Memory
• QuickShare™
• SMS, EMS & MMS
• 3D graphics (animations and pictures)
• Wallpapers
• Themes
• Picture phonebook

Entertainment

• Polyphonic (40 tones)
• Music DJ™
• Direct links for easy download
• Java MIDP 2.0
• DRM (forward lock and SD support)
• 3D games

Connectivity

• USB and RS 232
• WAP 2.0
• GPRS class 10