Sony Ericsson W810i review

The Sony Ericsson W810i is another of Sony Ericsson's famed Walkman phones, and although it's only an incremental update from the W800i, most Sony Ericsson W810i reviews from across the web rate it very highly.

As a Walkman phone, the W810i's features are focused mostly on music. This is evident both on the outside of the phone, with dedicated music keys, and the inside, with easy to use playlists and tune down loading software. The sound quality of the W810i is also very high (which you'd expect from any gadget badged by Sony as a Walkman).

Being a Sony Ericsson phone, though, the W810i doesn't just end with music. The W810i also features a 2 megapixel camera, email, EDGE, quad-badn connectivity and a host of other features. As a good looking mid-range mobile phone, now being discounted heavily, the Sony Ericsson W810i is a great buy for Christmas 2006.

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Sony Ericsson W810i review

The Sony Ericsson W810i is a mid-range mobile music phone. Building incrementally on the critically-acclaimed W800i, the W810i nevertheless offers enough features to make it well worth buying. And now it's being discounted heavily, it's even more of a bargain.

Sony Ericsson W810i music features

The key to Sony Ericsson's success with its Walkman range of music phones is the fact that they've been designed from the inside and out with music in mind.

On the outside, for example, you'll find integrated speakers on the back next to the camera, with a volume control located on the side together with a dedicated play/pause button that will stop the music no matter what the phone's doing.

There's also a D-pad beneath the screen that's specially marked for music features, whilst on the sides rest matching Walkman and Shortcut buttons for direct access to the W810i's music features.

Inside, there's an MP3 player with MP3 and AAC codec, and a dedicated Walkman application that letes you manage the tunes you're playing. Pressing the Walkman button on the front of the phone will take you straight to this application, where you're presented with the "Now Playing" screen. It's now that the D-Pad comes into play, letting you scroll through the list of tunes you have by pressing up and down, or fast forward and rewind the current tune by pressing left and right.

The Walkman application lets you access your whole library of tunes either by track, artist, or playlist that you've created, and play around with the graphic equializer settings. One nice feature is the ability to send playliss and (unprotected) tunes to other users, either via Bluetooth or IR.

Those who like their tunes bass-heavy will be pleased to see the addition of Sony's MegaBass feature, which boosts the bass to stop the tunes sounding tinny through headphones.

One downside is the storage capabilities of the W810i - just 20MB of onboard memory, which has to be shared between tunes, photos and any other file you have stored on it. Fortunately it comes equipped with room for a Memory Stick, enabling you to add up to 4GB of extra storage, which should be plenty for even the largest music library.

W810i Connectivity and Messaging Features

Sony Ericsson have chosen to make the W810i a sociable phone, giving it a plethora of ways in which to talk to the outside world. It's a quad-band phone with EDGE support, Bluetooth, InfraRed, and USB. As far as messaging is concerned, the W810i comes with text, MMS messaging and email, which, together with useful contacts and other applications, makes the W810i rather useful for business users (though it can't compete with your average smartphone).

One rather neat feature is the addition of an RSS newsreader, which lets you pull in RSS newsfeeds from any web site that offers them. You can then read the headlines and story summaries, although not see the pictures. In many ways, though, this is perhaps a better way of viewing web pages on a mobile phone, as you can read the content easily with the cruft of advertising and site navigation that you won't need on a mobile device. Simply look at the headlines from your various different news feeds, and the click on the story fo yuor choice. What cold be simpler?!

W810i Multimedia Features

The W810i has a 1.8 inch screen capable of displaying 262k colours that apparently is rather good for viewing pictures and videos, although not so clear in direct sunlight (like most mobile phone screens). This comes in handy, as the camera on the W810i is also rather good.

It's a 2 megapixel camera, and features auto-focus, night mode, macro mode for close-up shots, and white balance settings. Sony Ericsson's mobile phone cameras are always of good quality, producing fine results for a camera phone, and the W810i is no excpetion (see above picture, courtesy of ZDNet).

There's also an MPEG4 video recorder that lets you record up 176×144 resolution for as long as you have storage space (which, with a 4Gb Memory Stick, could be along time!)

W810i User Interface

One highlight of the Sony Ericsson W810i is the user interface.

Based on the user interface Sony Ericsson have used for a while, the W810i updates it with a variety of new features.

Files can now be accessed easily, with tabs enabling you to get your hands on any file either from internal memory or external storage.

The D-Pad comes in useful in navigating the various menus, whilst the new themes provide intuitive navigation, attractive animation and innovative feedback as you scroll through the various menus (each time you change to a new screen, the phone vibrates slightly, giving you instant feedback).

Keypad keys take you directly to certain features of the user interface for quick access to the most often used functions, and there are user-configurable Shortcus as well to take you directly the the functions you use most often.

There's also a nice and intuitive use of the main navigation buttons, with the D-Pad letting you navigate easily, and the back button taking you back to the previous screen every time. In fact, MobileBurn like the user interface so much, they call it "the best available on the market today." Can't say fairer than that!

W810i Optional extras

One nice advantage of Sony Ericsson's Walkman heritage is that it knows what music lovers want from their gadgets. One of these is clearly the ability to hear your music loudly and in good quality, and to this end, Sony Ericsson have released a variety of optional extras that do just that.

One such add-on is the Sony Ericsson MDS-70 Home Audio System, which is basically a set of speakers with a docking bay into which you can place your W810i and play its tunes for all to hear.

There's also the Sony Ericsson MMR-60 FM Music Transmitter, which fits into the bottom of the W810i, and transmits your tunes over an FM channel, from which it can be received by a nearby radio (such as your home stereo, for example, or more usefully your car).

[Source: FROM MOBILE SITE]