Update 12Nov2007: It is said that we come to know the value of something, when we loose it... the formula is little different for me I say we come to know the dis-service of a mobile, when we loose it. I used to curse my SIM provider for really bad voice quality till I lost this mobile and bought a low-end Nokia. Now with that low-end Nokia, the same SIM card works just flawlessly at any location, at any time of the day. It could be just that I got a defective piece but with this exp of mine, I won’t risk it again. In last update of mine dated 04June07, I had recommended a rethink before buying. but on this update, I am putting a complete NO NO for the buy of this mobile. All other features in a mobile does not work, one can still bear... but **if the main function of signal reception itself is bad... better call it something else not mobile.
---- History ----
Only a week back I have purchased this mobile and only yesterday my sim is active so I do not have long experience with this phone per say. I was looking for a mobile, which has color screen, FM and MP3 player. I had no preference for camera since I have a nice digicam. So this was the one of the good mobiles that was fitting in my all requirements. Hey btw, all handsets of W200i available in market are only black in color. One which is shown here is not avaliable.
Whatever I could evaluate in this short duration as of now is, it’s a nice phone at its offered cost. The mobile with similar features in other two major brands are comparitively costly. As name suggests being a walkman series the voice quality of speakerphone and earphone is excellent. Only major pit fall in this handset is the volume of speaker phone, which is way below other phones of Sony and also other brands. May be in a calm and quite home environment it’s good enough but for a market place kind of area one will feel the lack of volume.
Since I had no sim for 3-4 days after I purchased this phone, one more thing I could find about this phone was, the walkman part of the phone works without sim inserted. Otherwise other phones are dead weight without sim.
Ya another info, with Mp3 in-place, other mobiles come with so low built-in memory that mp3 is a waste without spending more money on memory card. This phone gives some relief in it. It comes with a free 128 MB memory card.
No idea of Reliability & Durability, but giving rating just because this site demands it. May be I can add more into this review once I have use handset enough.
Update 04June07: I have found that the vibrator of this phone is not good enough. One of my low end Samsung phone too makes a better vibration than this phone. If I am on bike with mobile in my pocket, I just can not know the incoming calls because of low vibrations coupled with low ringtone sound. I feel this is one more major pitfall. Even when I am still recommending this phone but readers should take calculated decision since these are two important features, which has flaws. Flaws in features like MP3, FM, Camera can be acceptable since they r just for fun but if such basic features have issues then one needs to rethink.
Update 14Aug2007: I was able to sight one more short fall of this phone. The battery, the battery life is not very great but it’s not bad. The main issue is battery status display. Say before call it shows 45% battery but after 1 or 2 min call, it suddenly starts showing 20% or 18%. Keep it for some time and check again, it will show 25% later 35%. This way it becomes really tough to esteemate if the one which is shown is correct or not. This can leave user confused especially when battery life is less than 10%. It’s tough to determine if user should charge it right away or still more life is left.