Sindre Lia reviews the first-ever handset to be graced with the venerable Walkman brand: the Sony Ericsson W800i is a jack of all trades - and king of most. Play it again, Sam.
Review summary of the Sony Ericsson W800i:
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 Music is key in Sony Ericsson’s first Walkman branded handset, the W800i. Outstanding audio quality combines with a user friendly interface to make for a compelling music experience fully capable of replacing lower-end MP3 players. The 512 MB of memory provided out-of-box is a bit cramped, though, which is unfortunate given the limited synchronization capabilities. This becomes even more of a pressing issue when the handset’s 2 Megapixel camera - in itself a high-performing feature - is taken into consideration. Still, there’s no denying that the W800i is a solid choice for feature-lusting handset buyers. Release: August 2005. Price: $350.
Pros: Size; outstanding camera results; impressive audio player performance
Cons: No EDGE support for high-speed data; adapter required for 3.5 mm jack
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Full Sony Ericsson W800i Review:
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Featuring a Walkman branded music player, the Sony Ericsson W800i aims to revive the once-fanatic Walkman obsession amongst youth all across the globe - or at least in Europe, since it's not really made for use overseas; that's what its W800 - sans i - sibling is for. Sindre Lia takes the first-of-its-kind W800i for a test drive, finding a handset slightly improved over its sibling, the recently top rated K750i.
Weighing in at a mere 99 g and measuring 100 x 46 x 21 mm, the W800i is both slim and light considering its heavy feature set. When turned on, the relatively small 1.8", 262K colour screen strikes one as both bright and clear as well as unusally sharp due to its resolution of 176 x 220 pixels - more typical of smartphones than ordinary handsets.
Moving on, we find the W800i keypad to be very comfortable in use, providing good tactile feedback as well as low audible noise. Both the numeric keys and the action buttons are flat, well-rounded buttons, and Sony Ericsson has also found room for a dedicated short-cut key activating the Walkman music player. In terms of navigation the W800i offers a rather small yet ergonomically sound 5-way joystick, which provides a quick and easy way of scrolling and selecting while in the menu. All in all, the W800i comes across as slick and user-friendly with regard to user interface and text input.
Sporting the same camera as found in the K750i, the W800i snaps stills at a resolution of 2 Megapixels with good white balance, and performs admirably well under poorly lit conditions. Its appliance of contrast leaves something to be desired, however, but overall image quality must be said to be excellent with good colour saturation and crispness. Also, the W800i's implementation of auto focus and macro focus deserves praise for its good performance and relatively short response times. Still, despite offering a solid improvement over its predecessors, it cannot replace a dedicated digital camera.
The prominent Walkman branding on the W800i's smooth white and orange casing reveals the handset's strong focus on music playback capabilities from a mile away. In fact, when powering on the handset, users must choose whether to use the W800i as a combination of mobile phone and music player, or as a stand-alone music player. Having the same hardware as the K750i, audio quality has been upped significantly as compared to handsets of yore, and given the good quality of its bundled earphones, the W800i as a music player would have no problems competing with many existing portable audio players out-of-the-box. What it doesn't offer, however, is compatibility with tracks purchased from online music services such as Apple's iTunes or PlaysForSure compatible varieties including Napster and Yahoo! Music.
Dedicated hardware buttons for play/pause and volume control are of course available, all of which are especially useful when in phone mode. The Walkman application relies on tag data to let users browse music by Artist and Tracks, as well as the ability to create playlists. As with the K750i, however, we did miss the opportunity of forwarding through songs without entering the music player interface - but on the other hand, the graphic equalizer with several presets proved excellent for optimizing sound. As such, it's a bit of a shame that the W800i doesn't provide an integrated 3.5 mm jack but rather relies on a bundled dongle.
As far as mobile phone related features are concerned, the W800i supports GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz networks, as well as HSCSD and GPRS. Unfortunately, EDGE support has been left out, but at least Bluetooth and Infrared are present for short-range connectivity. Offering a Memory Stick Duo expansion slot and an USB 1.1 port, the 512 MB Memory Stick storage card and the USB cable to be found in the box allow for easy transfer of MP3 files to the phone. Furthermore the W800i also sports an FM radio, 38 MB of non-volatile internal memory, polyphonic and MP3 ringtones, SMS and MMS, instant messaging and e-mail, and lastly Java MIDP 2.0 as well as WAP 2.0 support.
Reception and voice quality for the Sony Ericsson W800i both proved excellent, as did its battery with approximately 6 hours of talktime and 9 days of standby time as compared to the claimed 9 hours and 16 days, respectively. When using thye W800i exclusively in Walkman mode, we found the battery to last approximately 15 hours; not exactly the 30 hours promised, yet still favourable.
Availability
The Sony Ericsson W800i, also known as the Sony Ericsson W800, is at the time of writing available in Europe and North America, selling for approximately €475 EUR and $500 USD, respectively.
Price and availability
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