Sony Ericsson W800I

Sony Ericsson W800I

Sony Ericsson is one of the few mobile phone companies with such an impressive pedigree. A merger of two giants: Ericsson, a mobile phone company, and Sony, the consumer electronics giant, Sony Ericsson is poised to take the mobile world by storm with its Walkman-branded line of music phones.

What is a music phone? Simply put, it is a new type of mobile phone that marries the concept of a music player with a regular mobile phone. With the recent trend seeing built-in cameras in mobile phones, this concept takes the mobile phone one step further -- into a whole new dimension, in fact.

Sony Ericsson has released the W600i and the W800I, the first two Walkman phones. This review takes a long, hard look at the W800I and tries to answer the question: “is it worth your hard-earned cash?”

What’s in the Box

Sony Ericsson W800I unit
Li-Ion battery
Battery charger
USB cable
Stereo earphones
512 Mb memory card
Applications CD

Test Drive

Out of the box, the W800I almost seems to radiate an aura of seriousness and fun at the same time. The boxy form with a solid feel is no-nonsense, and the handset’s weight of 3.5 ounces (about 99 grams) is so light that it seems a tiny breeze would carry the little gadget away. The W800I comes in only one color, a Smooth White with orange appointments, trim, and backlight. Unlike its sibling, the W600I, this phone is light and slim, despite all the features packed into its tiny package. Now that, is awesome.

The W800I’s keypad is very comfortable and solid, with a good tactile response, making text input a pleasure, and facilitating one-handed typing. Also present are a joystick-style navigator and a dedicated button for activating the Walkman music player. The display screen is adequately large, with a 256k color capability (able to display 262,144 colors simultaneously), and a resolution of 176x220 pixels. On-screen colors are bright and clear, and the W800I features an icon-style menu similar to that found on other Sony Ericsson models.

The integrated 2-megapixel digital camera takes images with rich, vibrant color and hands down, color quality is excellent. Performance is also better than satisfactory in dark or low-light conditions. Two added features of the W800I’s camera -- auto focus and macro focus, are very usable. There is also a 4x digital zoom and video recording capability (which, unfortunately, is not as good as the still image capability). All in all, the built-in camera is many times better than the usual cameras found in other Sony Ericsson phones, or, for that matter, other brands’ phones; but of course, it still can’t touch the quality and performance of a dedicated digital camera.

Voice quality on the W800I is superb. Whether incoming or outgoing, it is clear and loud, with no hint of fuzziness or of a nasal quality that sometimes appears with some phones.

Then there’s the Walkman integrated music player. The W800I shows a strong focus on music playing, as evidenced by two available modes of operation: as a combined music player and phone, or as a dedicated music player alone (no phone or camera features). The W800I plays MP3 and AAC files with equal alacrity, and comes with a built-in FM tuner. Sony has brought its expertise in audio to bear with the W800I, resulting in a top-notch music player worthy of the Walkman name. That, coupled with the superb-sounding stereo earphones, makes the W800I one mean music-machine. Phone memory is also expandable, thanks to its memory stick slot, while the bundled 512 MB memory stick is plenty storage at the start. It is almost enough to make diehard gadget lovers drop their separate MP3 players and phones and get the W800I, which is a beautiful marriage of both.

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