I was extremely tired of my Nokia 6600 and was looking at the new N Series phones as a replacement. My main requirement was MP3 support since I didn’t want to buy an iPod separately. Why juggle around with so many gadgets if one could do almost all necessary functions with acceptable perfection? Thus just out of curiosity I checked out the Walkman series phones, W700i and W810i (I was told that W800i has been discontinued)
To my utter surprise, Sony Ericsson was offering a 2mp camera, mindblowing integrated speakers, awesome noise cancelling earphones and a trendy and youthful GUI for at least 2k lesser than the closest Nokia competitor. Other than this you have the FM radio, PIM capabilities (not extensivelike a business phone though) and some games. You can call this theusual stuff. I was still in 2 minds about going back and buying the Nokia N72, but believe me I would’ve seriously missed out on some quality fun had I not bought the W810i.
This mobile had me enchanted from the moment it was turned on. The graphics and user interface are very catchy being highly colourful and animated unlike those of the Nokia counterparts. The default theme is the bright orange Walkman theme. It had an animated wallpaper which I confused for a screensaver (It was that nice!) But don’t worry. If you don’t like the look-n-feel you can change the theme. But wait up. What is that? The entire layout of the icons changes. Yes every theme has it’s own style for the icons and a different animated background. Not like those boring Nokia themes where you just see a few colour and wallpaper changes. Being totally new to the Sony Ericsson line of phones I was pretty impressed.
The camera is absolutely fabulous. The software is very much similar to my old Cybershot Digicam. It offers the complete range (well maybe not that complete) of functions you’d get from a normal digicam. It even has the macro function. Alongwith the camera comes the somewhat tacky but very bright LED flash which doubles up as a torch. One thing I found lacking was that they haven’t provided resolutions between 1612x1224 and 640x480. All in all however, a good camera package.
Now the USP. The embedded media player. This is the reason these phones are selling like hot cakes around the globe. It’s an absolute lift from the iPod interface. Very smooth and fast GUI. Crystal clear sound quality. 5 band equalizer offers the MegaBass facility which I found very nifty since I like Metal and Hard Rock. Playlists can be generated quite easily. Shuffle and looping are thrown in for good measure. And one more thing. It is not the same as setting Bass to high in Manual mode. Megabass is a trademark algorithm which handles the digital audio in a very different way. The earphones as I mentioned earlier are very clear and high fidelity noise cancelling ones. The PC software (Disc2Phone) is very handy and easy to use, unlike my tormenting experience with PCSuite (some of you may have had a better experience though)
So there it is. One phone that I think will give you the feeling of satisfaction that no other piece can. It is absolute bang for the buck with every penny you spend on it accounted for. A must have for music fans and trigger happy (but wallet conscious) folk like me. Go for it.