SE W800i Review

So, the K750i is bored of the way it looks and decides to get a makeover. It’s probably inspired by the Japs who roam at 2 a.m. with pink hairdo but thankfully it decides to choose a much less lurid color than pink, though. So, it goes for a white-orange combo. Also adds a “Walkman†option when you start the phone up. Everything else is pretty much SE K750i.

Looks and Build Quality
Looks pretty funky and is eyeball grabbing for sure, but there could have been a better color combo that SE must have thought of. (Used to get a C at school in drawing and coloring, so don’t ask me to suggest a color)
The phone’s nice to hold and fits pretty snuggly into your palm. Easy to slip in and out of your jeans pocket. And don’t do it unless it’s a Diesel or a Levis’ (it’s fairly pricey, ya know)
On the side are the buttons to the camera and the Memory Stick Duo slot. And oh, lest I forget the phone comes with a 512MB Stick.

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Keypad

The keys look small but don’t get fooled by their small size. They are comfortable to use right from the word go. Well spaced apart and very good tactile feedback. There is also a four way stick for scrolling and zooming around. So SMS junkies shouldn’t find any reason to complain. Wahey!

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UI and Screen
Coming to the UI, it’s pretty similar to the earlier SE phones, and I certainly think those icons could have done with some anti-aliasing and some more detail. It’s a brilliant 262k (176 x 220 pixels) screen after all. Apart from that the UI is quite simple and a newbie shouldn’t have much difficulty navigating through the plethora of features that this thing offers you.

Performance
Battery Life


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The battery is a 900mAh. In normal usage it gives you about 6 hours of usage time and in the Walkman mode, the battery life is a good 12 hours. I’m impressed

Music Features
I like this concept of “Walkman†branding on the phone. Looks cool, no doubt. Someone at Sony has had a nice brainwave. Cash in on the legendary “W†logo and guffaw all the way to the bank.
Let’s talk about the music quality now. It’s not just any other phone, ya know, it’s a Walkman series phone and you can expect it to sound really good. And it does. The highs, the lows all sound very nice. It’s the best sounding music phone for sure. Period.
You can create Folders, play lists and do whatever you do on stand alone MP3 players.

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The earphones too are worth a mention. They are “inner earphones†so to speak and fit well within the ear so that very little sound is lost to the surroundings. Wish I lost some calories like that. (I’m pretty fat for my height, if you don’t know, and you quite obviously don’t)

Camera

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This is the best camera I have ever seen on a phone! It just rocks and I think is second to none.(OK, maybe the N90 but I haven’t got my hands on it yet) It’s got 2 mega pixies(or something to that effect ;-) ) that captures JPEG images up to 1,632 x 1,224 pixels or .3gp video at 176 x 144 pixels. The onboard Media Player utility also supports playback of MPEG-4 video files.

Here I compare a pic taken from the W800i and the LGM4410(didnt have a Nokia around, so)
SE W800i
LG M44410

The difference is so apparent that er… the less said the better I guess.

The owner says he doesn’t need a digital camera, now that he’s got a W800i. Humph.
And that cool AutoFocus feature which focuses the pic for you so that you don’t get a blurry shot(you can actually feel the lens traveling while the lens focuses!!!). Thank you very much.
Memory

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The phone comes with an onboard memory of 34MB and an external memory of 512MB which you can bump it right up to GB. Pretty neat, given that the K750i came with lot less. This also bumps the price up to an extent. But then this is a music phone and the more the better.

Connectivity
So this thing has Bluetooth, IR, and GPRS (no EDGe!!!) which completely pisses me of. I fail to understand why SE doesn’t have any EDGE enabled phone in India. I mean after paying this fat wad of currency, you at least expect this connectivity option. Even the lower priced phones have got EDGe. Practically on our networks you get more than twice the speed than that of GPRS.
Why so much criticism for not having certain connectivity feature?? Cos it’s the only thing I can crib about in this phone. And the only serious flaw, if you can call it that.
Stop Press!!!!
SE has released the W810i which does have EDGe
More Info Here

Games and Software
Truckloads. I tell you. Truckloads. There is just so much you can do with this phone apart from making calls and that odd SMS: p.
It’s got a MIDI composer, a Video editor, a world clock. A Tetris style game, a video player Et al
I need some more time with the phone to post about this. Please wait for a few hours before I tell you about this


Optimistic
+Great Camera
+Great Screen
+Good keypad
+Cool Interface
+The “W†Logo
+Great Bundled earphones

Pessimistic

- No EDGE
-Nothing else to crib about (note to self, put it under the microscope and find more flaws, stop writing corny jokes in parentheses)

Contents of standard package

>Handset
>Charger
>Manual
>Earphones
>Sandisk Memory Stick Duo
Price
Rs. 22000(This is the price I got after asking 3 odd dealers)

Conclusion
This is as hip as phones can get. This phone didn’t get to the NDTV top 10 Gizmos of the year without reason. A perfect example of form marrying function.If you've got , then this is THE thing to buy.
Overall Rating
9/10(would have given it a 10 if it had EDGe)

P.S. Please post your comments about the review. Thank you. Flaming is welcome this time. I am now officially 3 reviews old. With experience comes maturity :p :rofl:
and er.. My exams are on and this review has been put up in bits and parts. Please don’t mind the silly jokes.  Hope it was a nice read.
 
Nice review. W800i truly is the phone of 2005. And if people don't know K750i is mostly the same, even though it lacks Walkman logo, they are the same hardware, same camera, only difference is design and embedded operating system which can also be flashed to W800i.
 
nice review dude...kudos to ya(and reps too)

But you forgot a few points like antenna strenght...have you compared it with motorola antenna...

MOtorola seems to pick up network in a few places where SE models dont...but dunno about k750i n w800. havent tried them

also the automatic network searching algorith used by motorola seems to be better as it selects the home network by default if in roaming which SE older models failed to do. very useful feature this.
 
great review. anyway what most reviewers fail to know is that joystick of sony phones stops working after 2 months. my bro has a w800 whose joy does not go down.
good thing w810 chunks joystick.
 
my k750i is a few months old as well no issues with the joystick so far *fingers crossed* even though i use the js quite a lot (tennis)
 
Sorry satish,fr posting a review inside ur thread but just could not resist this one :)

anyways I used W800i extensively when I was home around dec-jan....
followin is what I felt;;

Pro's

-very good design;IMO looks better then W810
-good mp3 playback
-good batt life(2 days with heavy usage)
-yeah,the best cam on the market
-camera cover is much better IMO then K750i

Con's

-sms memory limited around 200. :(
-network fluctuates(in the model I had )
-joystick did not go down
-The white colour beomes dirty quickly around the boundaries of the phone.

my phone version was R1L
anyway sold it off at a much better price then I got it.....:eek:hyeah:
let us see what is the launching price fr W810i.
 
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