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• The Good: Excellent integration of functions, good overall design, great music quality, easy to use, 2MP digital camera, fast operating system, memory expansion, Bluetooth / IR/ USB data transfer, drag and drop support, video clip and photo slide show on device editing.
• The Bad: No bookmarking features, cumbersome hands-free cables, costs and limits of the memory Stick Duo format, slow fast forward.
• The Verdict: An excellent combination of devices with few real compromises.
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REVIEW:

Thanks to the advances in memory and processor technology in the past few years, the Music Phone genre is finally starting to get interesting - it's no longer about adding music features as a mere afterthought.

Music Phones are nothing new in themselves but they have almost always been a compromise. This year is promising a few new entries that aim to do it right, and the SonyEricsson W800i is the first phone to sport the highly recognizable "Walkman" name.

Sony has lost out big-time to Apple in capturing the hard drive music player market in the past few years, so this focus on music phones makes for an interesting battle given the Apple backed Motorola ROKR. Can they overcome the Apple momentum? Probably not any time soon.

But can they compete on this field? Absolutely

Look and Feel:

The design guys did a great job with this one. The cream-and-copper color scheme looks great and the phone is very well put together in a comfortable 100-by-46-by-20.5 millimetres and 98 gram package. As with previous models, SonyEricsson is going with the dual face design; the back looks like a camera, the front like a phone.

The camera side carries a 4.8mm 2 megapixel lens, along with 2 bright LEDs which provide a light source. Unlike most camera phones, the W800i has a built in lens cover. This slide switch that opens it also doubles as the camera activation key.

The front of the phone sports the 176-by-220 pixel (262K) screen, dial pad keys, navigation controls and the dedicated Walkman key. Overall, I really like the design of this phone and found it very comfortable to use.

The sides of the device bear the multiple use keys which cover volume, camera shutter, power, play/pause and other features.

The W800i includes an external speaker for listening to music, using the speakerphone and the like. If you put it terms of a small clock radio, you won't be disappointed. It was great for listening to tunes at my desk, where I don't want to bother anyone else, but little else. At the highest volume, which could well be heard for quite a distance, it gets pretty tinny.

Note that both a clip-on FM transmitter and a desk stand with amplified speakers will be available soon.

As a Phone:

The W800i is a tri-band 1900 / 1800/ 900 worldphone with 32 megabytes of on-board memory in addition to a 512MB Memory Stick Duo. I have used several phones with the same operating system and I really have little to complain about.

Reception and call quality were good and the eight hours of advertised talk time (400 stand-by) on the 900mAh Li-polymer battery was pretty close to accurate.

As modern phones go, the W800i offers a good variety of well implemented features including a flight-mode, conference call, speakerphone, voice answer, magic word, voice dial, 500 name phone book with photo ID, Outlook Synchronization, Vcard support, stopwatch, countdown timer, datebook, task list, word time, notes, call record(both sides) and 40chord polyphonic ringtones (12 included).

This is pretty good. However, the phone book limit may be a little light for business users. Also, the call logs might be called Time and Cost but do not have a feature that would allow you to plug in your plan details. I have yet to see this option well implemented and it sure would be nice to avoid the monthly bill surprises. Thankfully, the data side keeps track of all your kilobits.

On a day-to-day basis, using the W800i as my primary phone was a pleasure. I liked the general feel of the device and found that despite the nearly flush placement of the dial-pad buttons, I had no difficulty in using it for calls and texting. Ringtone-wise, I was disappointed by the initial selection but of course, you can just use any music track in your library or build your own from the preset clips available. Unfortunately, you cannot use one of your music tracks as a base for a new ringtone.

As a Music Player:

I have to say that on the whole, I was rather happy with this device as a music player, and it wasn't just the great sound quality. The menu system is a simple and attractive organization of music by year, genre, track, artist etc with no noticeable pauses of any kind when navigating between songs. One can also run them from the file explorer, a better choice for those whose music is in folders and not fully tagged.

Adding to all this goodness is the ability create playlists on the fly as well as move, send (Bluetooth, IR, USB 1.1, Message), receive, delete and rename files right on the device. Since it is recognized by your computer as a hard drive, you can choose to use the provided ripping and transfer software, Windows MediaPlayer, iTunes (there is a hack for this floating on the net) or just drag and drop your music into it. It just doesn't get any easier than this.

I also really liked having a dedicated hardware button for play/pause and volume controls that I can access without having to stop to read the screen. Also, if you get a call, your music automatically stops allowing you to answer. The moment you hang up, it starts again right where you left off. Using the hands free kit while out of a hike allowed me to take calls and listen to music without ever reaching for the phone.

Using the hands free accessory itself was a mixed bag of positive and negative. The W800i uses a proprietary plug so you can't pop in just any old cell phone headset. I generally hate this kind of thing because it forces me to use a single supplier for headsets and that tends to cost me more. Mitigating this somewhat is the way they adapted the cell phone hands free accessory to better integrate with the Walkman function. What they created was a cable with the proprietary plug at one end and the microphone part for the hands free(with a call answer button) at the other. The latter then has a standard plug for music ear buds. You get a very decent set of the Sony variety included - however they are the kind that go into your inner ear, so you have trade off excellent sound isolation for the earwax gross-out factor.

The great part is that you can use ANY music headset you like and still answer calls. The not-so great part is that the combination of cables can run from just over five feet (using the included headset) to well over six feet depending on the ear bud brand.

If you are going to use this, I recommend getting ear buds with a retractable cable. Also, it would have been nice to have incorporated basic music controls into the hands-free device in addition to the answer function.

The only thing that stops this from being a fully equivalent replacement for a music player might be its lack of capacity. The unit comes with 512MB and that's nice (about 150 songs), but I would never be happy with that limit.

Since the memory is removable, you can always upgrade- but there is a catch. Memory Stick Duo units do not presently come in any size larger than 2GB. Considering that there are SD and Compact Flash cards on the market at 4GB and above, it would have been nice if they had used one of those instead. Further, a 1GB memory stick duo will run you about $140 bucks. That's considerably more than an identical capacity SD card would have cost you at around $90.

As an Audio book player:

If you are into books, this device is not your best choice.

Although it will play MP3 and AAC (No Audible format) a few key features critical for audio books have been mysteriously left out. Firstly, there is no bookmarking feature. As such you cannot mark your spot in a book, listen to some music, and come back to it later. You can always pause any sound file and reply from that point later on, but only if you don't listen to anything else in the interim.

The absence of this feature is further compounded by the lackluster speed of the fast-forward feature. It took a solid minute and a half of standing there with my thumb on the FFW key just to get 15 minutes into my two-hour audio book file. I personally prefer fast-forward speeds which are progressive in order to address this issue while still making for easy navigation in shorter files.

As a Phone Camera:

If you are used to the old 640-by-480 low-quality stills taken by most phone cameras, you'll be blown away by the 2-megapixel quality you get from this device. I have to say that this is the first cameraphone I've tried that actually provided me with a picture I could print.

In perfectly sunny outdoor conditions with a still subject and the use of the delayed shutter (in order to keep the camera steady on a table), I turned out excellent results 9 times out of 10. It was really quite impressive to see this level of quality in camera phone and I would compare it well (in terms of sharpness) to my old 2 megapixel Canon Elph in these ideal conditions. Colors were a little flatter than the old Elph but still nothing to snicker at for general use.

Unfortunately, ideal photographic conditions rarely seem to be about when something hilarious is happening so the day to day results were considerably less stellar.

Six out of 10 pictures taken, and there were hundreds in this test, turned out a little fuzzy and with a noticeable tendency towards the blue end of the spectrum. This is not great, so it still doesn't fully fill the need of having a dedicated camera for the important stuff. It does, however, do a much better job of it than any other phone camera I've tested thus far.

As operation goes, it could not be much simpler. From the main menu, just open the shutter button and the phone goes into camera mode. Turn the phone sideways and the shutter button falls right under your right index finger. Press halfway to focus, all the way to take the shot; there really isn't much more to it. As a point to grow on, it would have been nice if the lens cover switch activated the camera mode regardless of what screen you were in. As it stands, I often had to navigate back to the phone or main menu in order for it to activate.

If you want to get creative, the camera software offers digital zoom (sorry … still no optical), shooting modes (panorama / frames/ burst), three picture sizes, macro mode, night mode, self timer, effects (B/W, Negative / Solarize / Sepia) effects, white balance, normal/fine picture quality and access to the "flash".

Of note on the latter, the W800i allows you to map a shortcut right to the light feature allowing you to use the phone as a very decent flashlight. And for you extra paranoid folk out there, it can set to a continuous S.O.S.

Also included in the feature package is a PhotoDJ. You can add decorative frames, text, change brightness and tint, add effects, rotate and add in pre-loaded clip art (the metal cone bra being my personal favorite).

As a Phone Camcorder:

As these things go, the video quality of the W800i was middle of the road. Do not expect these to be on par with the video capabilities on your digital camera.

In good lighting conditions, the video clips (3GP) are decent enough for e-mail. What makes this feature pretty cool however is the addition of Video DJ software. With this, you can assemble and trim video clips, photos and sounds together, including voice-overs, to create your own mini movies.

I have to admit that I was surprised by how much I enjoyed making these clips and slideshows right on the phone from where ever I happened to be. The only real downside was that you could not use your music as the soundtrack. Instead you are provided with a series of audio clips and the ability to use a voice note. I even tried playing the song on the walkman side first (using the external speaker) and then recording a video clip. Unfortunately, the music shuts off. Seems to me like this has some huge potential for hilarity.

The W800i can also play some specially formatted video clips. The quality is fairly choppy so you won't be watching Shrek on it anytime soon.

As a Messaging Device:

The W800i supports text messaging, e-mail, and picture messaging. Here are my thoughts on each:

Text Messaging: The unit supports multi-part text messages and has the option of group send, validity period and confirmation receipt. It does not however have delayed send; a feature prized for both timely reminders for others and consideration of time zones.

E-mail: Both POP3 and IMAP are supported and you have the usual controls over how much of it you want to download at any given time. You can also set the phone to automatically download your e-mail at set intervals however keep an eye on this if you don't want to be funding your local cell phone executive's new boat.

Picture Messaging: Not Tested In this review.

As a Radio:

Again, the W800i is a pleasant surprise. The extra length of the hands free kit must make for a better antenna as I was able to pull in stations I've never been able to hear on other cell phone radios. Also, the application itself is excellent. Setting presents (manually and automatically) or moving between stations is just about instant and the phone actually picks up and displays the digital ID name some stations broadcast with their signal. If it isn't available, you can just rename it yourself as one of your 20 presets.

In items lacking for this category, I would include the inability to directly record radio broadcasts and the lack of AM support.

Internet Surfing:

The W800i is your basic WAP 2.0 surfer. Good for getting headlines of accessing phone provider information services.

As a Voice Recorder:

This is a feature I use quite a bit to record speeches and lectures and the W800i did the job to a functional level. It was fine when I was holding it up to my face but the range of the microphone seems to be limited to only a few feet. Also, although you can send these directly to others, they are in the AMR format which most people will be unable to play without downloading additional software.

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As a Gaming Device:

The W800i is your basic Java gaming device. It comes with a picture sliding game and a music themed Tetris clone. Nothing to get all excited about but functional when killing time in the morning line-up at the coffee shop.

Connectivity:

Moving files with the W800i is easy. You can transfer files to other computers or devices by Bluetooth, Infra Red, Memory Stick Duo or USB 1.1. There are no restrictions.

As an additional feature I really liked, the W800i also has a "Bluetooth Remote" feature. Once you have paired your phone and computer, you can then control Media Player, Power Point or the mouse itself with your phone. Since I run all my music and DVD's through my Bluetooth enabled laptop, I was able to run the whole kit using the phone from anywhere in the room. Sweet. Even better was the ghost-in-the-machine effect I put the father-in-law through when he tried to figure out why the mouse was "running away from him".

Overall Impressions

The SonyEricsson W800i is an excellent combination of devices with few real compromises. You get a well designed and constructed device that is a great phone, with a 2MP camera and a very well integrated music player. All in all, it's well worth the $650 (Cdn.) price of admission. Not currently being offered by mobile carriers, the W800i is available from Puremobile.ca and other Canadian retailers.