Review of the Sony Ericsson W810i
The W810 comes as sony ericsson’s update of their highly acclaimed W800 walkman phone with the latter model now being discontinued. It retains almost all the features of its predecessor and adds to them with a few of its own. The orange colored body has also been done with in the favor of a more conservative black color scheme although the walkman orange is still alive in the form of keypad backlighting, walkman interface and branding along with a dedicated orange music key.
In a Nutshell :
The Good
• Quad Band and Edge Class 10
• Excellent mp3 player and 2MP camera with autofocus
• High quality earphones bundled in the package
• FM player with RDS
• 512MB memory stick included and support for hot swap
• Vibrant display
• Good Flaunt Value
And the Bad
• Lack of camera lens cover
• Noisy keypad
• No A2DP profile support
• Plain construction
I shall be reviewing various elements of the phone in detail now.
Calls, Messaging, Gprs and Interface
The phone is Quad-Band GSM and picks signal very well and the voices sounds nice and crisp. I faced no problems of missed or dropped calls with this phone. In messaging standards it supports SMS, EMS, MMS and E-Mail and has a fairly large capacity inbox. Support for Gprs class 10 and Edge class 10 is present, the browser is strictly average though and not as good as the one in latest Nokia S60 3rd edition phones. The interface is clean, fast and intuitive and even first timers wont have any problem zipping through the menus. Almost all functions have some help text attached and dedicated keypad shortcuts. There’s a short tutorial and welcome wizard that greets you the first time you start the phone.
Construction and Design
The build quality of the phones appears to be solid and no creaks were observed which is generally a problem in an all plastic construction. The phone now has a navigation-pad instead of a joystick which is a welcome change since SE joysticks have been less than reliable in the past. The keypad is well spaced out and comfortable to use though found key-presses to be a bit noisy. I like the design quite a bit and feel the phone has nice flaunt value however I am not too pleased with the very plasticky feel of the device, SE should have used rubber accents similar to Nokia 5500 for a more sporty feel and better grip. Dedicated shortcut buttons are intuitively present for almost all major features like camera, walkman etc. SE has not given any kind of camera lens cover however which I feel is a gross misjudgment. The phone comes with a 900mAh battery which will last the average user 2 days, however I have to recharge it every night since I listen to a lot of music.
Display
The phone sports a 1.9inch 256k 176x220 resolution which displays colors with remarkable vibrancy. The display is bright and has an excellent contrast ratio for true to life images. The fonts look crisp and menu icons have no jagged edges. The display has very good legibility even under direct sunlight thanks to its brightness. Both the display and keypad have auto-adjusting backlighting to maximize battery life.
Music Player
The phone can act as fully capable standalone mp3 player thanks to its mp3,aac,mp4 and mp3-id tag support and the fact that it has a fully functional equalizer with sony’s proprietary Megabass. The fact that the phone supports memory stick pro duo up to 4GB is a big plus. It also has a dedicated music and volume buttons along a navi-pad marked specifically for music further strengthening its position as a music phone. Also included is a FM tuner with RDS with ability to store 20 channels and good signal reception. The earphones bundled with it however are what makes it a true mp3 player as these are one of the best earphones I’ve ever seen bundled with any mp3 player or music phone. They are quite a bit better than the ones I got with my ipod nano and I’ve hardly used my nano since I got this phone.
Camera
The camera is the same as the one in the K750i and W800i i.e. 2MP with autofocus and a LED flash which is more useful as a torch than a camera flash. The picture quality is perhaps the best I have ever seen in a 2MP camera-phone and a host of advanced options like macro mode, white balance, shoot mode, picture quality etc are present ; sadly there is still no option for exposure control. The night shots are average and its very easy to take blurry photos with night mode on. The phone takes great macro shots and the panorama mode is lots of fun. Sadly though the video recorder still records in the ancient Qcif resolution and also picks up a lot of extra noise while recording.
Conclusion
The phone currently retails for Rs 14,500 along with free portable speakers and is a good buy. I would rate the various aspects as follows:
• Multimedia : 4.5/5
• Design and Construction : 3.5/5
• Overall : 4.5/5
• Value for money : 4/5
