I have recently purchased Sony Ericsson W660i. This is my third Sony Ericsson phone in a row. My last phone was also a walkman(W300i), which is also an excellent phone.
I am a not a great music enthusiast, but I prefer to use music phones as they provide good company while commuting to the office or while going for a walk/jog. Also, most music phones tend to have decent battery backup and memory storage.
Although I prefer to use Sony Ericsson phones, I am not biased against Nokia phones. I checked out the XpressMusic series of Nokia phones, but none of them were convincing enough for me. 5700 has a joystick which I don’t like and comes only in white colour. 5310 has terrible battery backup and very low ringer volume. 5610 is very fragile and has buggy software.
Coming back to Sony Ericsson walkman phones, I shortlisted W350i(releasing soon), W380i(just released) and W660i(stable model). W350i is a slim handset(10 mm thick) which makes it prone to problems similar to Nokia 5310. W380i(clamshell model) looked impressive on the Sony Ericsson website, but when I saw it in the stores, it felt very cheap and plasticky. Finally when I saw the W660i, I knew this is the one for me. Believe me, it looks very different in person as compared to what it appears on the Sony Ericsson website. The black and golden combination looks quite decent and doesn’t look gaudy at all.
At the time when I purchased this handset, it was available in a combo offer(W660i+ DS-200) at 11K. But I prefered to buy the W660i without the DS-200 stereo bluetooth handsfree at 9.1K. I plan to buy the DS-205 sometime later.(The DS-200 has a microscopic display which makes it practically useless)
Coming back to the W660i, I feel that this handset packs quite a punch for its price. You can see the detailed specifications on the Sony Ericsson website, I’ll only list the most important ones here. W660i is a tri-band handset which comes with 3G capabilities(including video calls). It contains a 2 megapixel camera along with another front facing VGA camera. It has walkman player and FM player to complete the music capabilities. It has USB and Bluetooth(including A2DP) connectivity. Finally, it comes packed with 512MB memory card, USB cable and HPM-70 handsfree.
I really like the design of this handset. It is 15mm thick which means that it is slim but not ultra-slim. It feels reasonably sturdy, it won’t break if you happen to drop it on the floor. The display is big, clear and bright(A big display looks pretty but sucks up the battery juice, thats why I have set the brightness to minimum). The white backlit buttons are nicey sized and tactile, but not good enough for heavy texters. I prefer these ergonomic buttons of W660i to the thin keys found on W880i and W610i. Another point which I like about W660i is that the fast port connector is placed conventionally and conveniently on the bottom of the handset as compared to most of the new models have the fast port on the side(which is not very user friendly in my humble opinion).
The back side has concentric circles around the camera, which gives a stylish look to the handset. I feel the concentric circles could have been extended to the battery cover as well which would have provided a better grip to the handset.
It has the On/Off button on the top, Play/Pause button and memory slot on the left hand side and Volume rocker and Camera button on the right hand side. Placement and usability of all side buttons is very good.
It also has two shortcut buttons on the front side - one for walkman and another for applications running. These further improve the usability of the user interface.
W660i has good call quality and network reception. Sound quality improves further if you use the handsfree. Inbuilt mono speaker is reasonably OK for making calls in a quiet place.
FM reception is very good. Walkman sound is crystal clear. One point worth mentioning is that W660i comes with walkman 2.0. I didn’t find it a major improvement over the walkman 1.0 except that it displays album art.(If anyone can find another major difference, please feel free to leave a comment). The orange light effects on the D-pad when using the walkman application are a matter of personal taste(I am not a big fan).
The 2 megapixel camera is good enough for taking photos in bright sunlight, but don’t expect much from it because it does not have flash or auto-focus.(If you are picky about the camera in a walkman phone, then W810i is the one for you)
User interface is typical Sony Ericsson style with 12 icons. Those who have never used Sony Ericsson phones would also find it very intuitive and user friendly. Sony Ericsson user interface is very fast and it will never hang like Nokia phones.
Battery backup is decent but not great. Heavy users would have to charge their phone daily and average users can charge it once in 2-3 days. Tips to improve battery backup - set the display brightness to minimum and use the theme with black background.
To sum up, I would say that W660i is a music centric handset and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a slim music phone in the 9K range. W810i is another good option in this price range, it has quadband and a better camera, but is slightly bulkier and heavier compared to W660i and lacks A2DP support and 3G.