Although music phones have been around for a few years, they never really quite took off. Format support was limited, memory cards were expensive, internal memory was limited, battery life was apalling and audio quality was so-so. Fast-forward to 2005, and Sony Ericsson's W800i addresses all those limitations - and if it hadn't, Sony would have been made to allow the use of the Walkman brand with the phone (that said, the Walkman brand has graced plenty of crappy audio players in its time).
These are new pastures, however, and Sony Ericsson makes a solid impression with the W800i as the handset maker's very first music-oriented phone - and they've made a good job of it, too. Essentially built around the same reference design as the K750i, the W800i is a robust piece of engineering with a fresh orange colour scheme; too fresh for me, but I have a feeling the young crowd will drop it like it's hot (which is a reference I still don't quite get - the intricacies of American popular culture are vast and mysterious).
An impressive feature set graces the W800i, which boasts not only the same 2 Megapixel camera as found in the K750i, but also a built-in FM radio and audio player with 38 MB of internal memory and expansion courtesy of the proprietary Memory Stick Pro Duo format.
Lingering at the prototype stage, the W800i still managed to impress me with its audio capabilities. Deep and rich audio eminate from the handset, and although a bundled dongle is needed to convert the proprietary connector to a standard 3.5 mm jack, users have the option of using high-end headsets which - if what I listened to is anything to go by - will prove to offer an excellent listening experience.
Although the user interface I saw was far from complete, it included a handy equalizer function to allow for adjustment according to the properties of various headsets, as well as a mega bass function for that extra bit of thump. Equally impressive, the 2 Megapixel camera delivers superb quality, with colour reproduction and sharpness ranking among the very highest I've seen produced by a handset camera.
Speaking of visuals, the screen of the W800i is also quite good with its 176 x 220 pixel resolution and 262K colour depth. Given Sony Ericsson's focus on 3G in Europe, the W800i is unsurprisingly void of support for EDGE, leaving tri-band GSM/GPRS 900/1800/1900 MHz to offer WAN connectivity. Short-range connectivity is fortunately up to par, with both Bluetooth and Infrared present.
The minor complaint of lacking EDGE aside, the W800i is chock full of features, and should serve early adopters of hybrid phone/music devices well; I wish I could say more about the battery life of the handset, but the thought of a five meter drop to concrete over the lounge fence at Sony Ericsson's booth somehow seemed less than appealing.
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