Photo gallery: Sony Ericsson W800iSony Ericsson has gone out on a limb creating the W800i's look -- its cheerful colours won't be everyone's cup of tea, but we do think it will go down well with vivacious music lovers. While it oozes funkiness, it lacks the sophistication of premium phones such as the Nokia 8800, which is what you'd more likely see a business executive pull out of his jacket pocket.
However, no matter who you are, you're certainly not going to miss this mobile phone if you walk into a store -- it comes in a fluorescent orange plastic box with grey pair of headphones dangling from within the see-through window. The phone itself is far less glaringly bright than its packaging, the majority of the handset is ivory-coloured, with an orange anodised-aluminium-looking band encircling its sides. It stands out next to most phones on the market and we feel that the target market this phone is aimed at might tire of the colour scheme -- especially considering the W800i doesn't feature removable covers. Yet the W800i does offer customisation options through wallpapers, themes, MP3 ringtones and screensavers.
The keypad layout is almost identical to other non-flip Sony Ericsson phones, such as the black and silver K750i. Navigation through an intuitive animated menu is provided by a tiny joystick that will irk some users with its fiddliness. A couple of slight differences to the norm include a dedicated Walkman shortcut key below the screen to launch the music menu, and a play button on the left side of the phone that starts songs stored on the W800i's memory card.
FeaturesThe W800i re-introduces Sony's Walkman brand, which for us conjures up memories of bopping down the street in the '80s with the latest cassingle blasting into our eardrums. While the brand might have evolved into Discman in the '90s as CDs usurped cassettes, Sony Ericsson has decided to use the original brand name for this music-centred phone at a time when we are waving goodbye to CDs and embracing MP3s.
Sony Ericsson bundles an burly 512MB Memory Stick Duo with the W800i, a format which has smaller in dimensions than the original Memory Stick, but is quite large compared to the miniscule TransFlash memory cards that are making appearances in Motorola's MP3-playing phones, such as the E398, E1000 and the upcoming Razr V3x and Rokr iTunes phone. An FM radio is also included on the W800i but like most phones, it can only be activated when then headset, which acts as an antenna, is attached.
While the W800i has a small switch that flicks the lens cover open and puts the display into capture mode, we prefer the slide open action of the K750i's camera. Sony Ericsson has again implemented a handy landscape orientation for the camera mode. Holding the phone on its side places the shutter key at the top device like a regular digital camera. It takes JPEG stills at up to 1,632 x 1,224 pixels and .3gp videos at 176 x 144 pixels.
Sony Ericsson has a range of accessories available for the W800i, including the MXE-60 detachable camera flash and the MMC-60 stereo line-out cable.
Bluetooth and infrared are onboard for transferring photos, music and contact information to other devices. Sony Ericsson also throws in a USB cable for fast PC transfers. Sony Ericsson's bundled software CD includes an application called Disc2Phone that can rip CDs to transfer to the W800i, and acts as an interface through which you can drag-and-drop existing MP3 files.
PerformanceIn our experience when it comes to sound, Sony is generally a top performer. It currently holds CNET.com.au's crown for the best-sounding MP3 player and we'd be safe to say that the Sony Ericsson Walkman W800i produces the richest sound from any phone we've heard so far. This is thanks in large part to the excellent noise-cancelling headphones bundled in the box. While not the high-tech variety with circuitry designed to actively reduce ambient interference, such as Bose's QuietComfort 2, the included set feature soft rubber domes which plug snugly into your ears to passively eliminate surrounding noise. With the equaliser set to Mega Bass, the pounding beats coming from the W800i's headphones are enough to keep any dance or hip hop fan bopping. Treble boost gives an extra bit of crispness to tunes while we found Voice to be good for acoustic songs.
One gripe we have with the W800i is the minor shutter lag when taking a picture. Granted, it does have an autofocus mechanism that takes a second to adjust its depth field, so photos are taken at a slight delay to when you hear the digital shutter "click" and can therefore come out blurry if you start to move away.
Overall, though, we'd recommend the W800i to anyone in the market now for an MP3-playing phone for four main reasons: its headphones provide exceptional sound for its class, it comes with a whopper of a memory card, it has a 2-megapixel camera, and it features Sony Ericsson-style ease of use. Whether it holds up against Nokia's upcoming N91 or Motorola's Rokr iTunes phone is yet to be seen.
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