I own a sony ericcson W810 I for more than 10 months now and I hope this review will be usefull for the people who has a plan to go for it.
Honestly speaking I read more than 1000 reviews, consulted hundreds of people (but thats my character, I will ensure the product is good, reliable and worth the money as its my night and day hard earned money) and personally ask people who uses that product only then I take out money from my pocket.
I did consider Nokia 6233 which really attracted me with its simplycity and its speed which was amazing than any other brands(inclusing nokia itself) and a cheaper price(Now 8.2k & earlier 11 k ) as compared to SE but since camera, sound quality is not upto mark and poor body quality decided to stick with W 810i. In this review I will discuss the positivies and negatives of this Cool product
Positivies:
@Price : I guess the phone now costs approximately 11 K ( I bought it for 14.5k) which really worths it
@Calls : Reception is fine and the voice is crystall clear though there is only one point tower with your service provider, which I found better than Nokia, i hope every one agrees the phone is first for a phone then comes all (May be this is because I use Airtel)
@Camera : I dont find a word in dictionary to explain it, simply the best camera compared to other brands, especially the zoom feature is amazing (32 X), i sure if you are used to this camera you will never get satisfied with any other phones, night mode, negative, etc are quite cool
@Light : Powerful light i am sure you can use it as a headlight for your 50CC mopeds, i just love it, sos, i min on are other good features
@Battery : Quite good for a multimedia phone I get 10 -15 calls (5 min / call )and I listen to music & FM quite often, it lasts upto 2 - 3 days (But for getting this life you need to charge your battery for 16 -24 hours after is the phone is out of the box & charge full everytime (akes about 2- 2.30 hrs)
@Sound : What more you can ask its Sony, mouthshutting quality overall
@Body :Solid build, I dropped it few times nothing happend to him, except I ended in breaking covers wheni dropped from 2 nd floor (it just costed me 20 for replacing it)
@Display : Crystal clear thank other brands, as it has a black LCD screen, you cant find a better display in the market than this.
@speed & navigation :Simple and fast compared to Nokia(Exception :6233), LG and Samsung
@GRPS & Other connectivity : I use it for checking mails and perform updates, in simple words it works like a computer which has celeron 386 processor & 64mb ram computer which is superb for a phone, blue tooth and IR port does a good job, but for this I always keep my s/w upto date
@Misc : additionally the phone comes with 512 MB card, which is good and one fact that surprised me is I can save any documents like word, excel, pdf anything (But you cant open it n phone ) and transfer it, it acts like a pen drive
So here comes Downside....
@Camera : Camera is awesome compared to nokia, but the problem is it’s not good when you take pic in the night and other things like macro, night mode are just eyewash, picture is deadly worst when taken in dull lights (though phone lights are on ), here the point is Nokia has a better picture than SE which is taken in the night
@Sound : You cant really compare it with iPod, the headset which goes inside your ears it very much dangerous for your nervein the ear & directly affect your jaws which is not the case in other brands moreover jazz, bass, mega bass does not make any big difference once again its just eyewash, but I found some variation with nokia music phones though sound quality could not be compared with SE
@FM : "Man worst ever reception.....", a basic samsung or nokia or a 50 bugs radio could give you a better reception than this, one good thing about FM is it auto detects the station name.
@Charging : This is were sony does the mistake and nokia rules, the charger, headset and usb cable everything is off same slot which ends up excessive usage of same slot, thereby decreasing the life of the phone
@messages : Though you have 4 GB card it is not linked to messages as the message space is restricted to few KB, so when you cross 80 messages it comes up with "95% memory full "
@Bluetooth : you cannot transfer few sounds from nokia, but sounds from SE can be transferred to Motorola or Nokia
@Buttons : good that buttons are sensitive but when you press the back button (Which we often use), some time teh walkman comes up as my fingers are bit big it touches the w/m button, i am not sure why you need that button as the play button in the left side is already ment for walkman. People who hava a big finger like me may have tough time using this phone
@Black and orange (white & orange not available in India), so people who do not favour black may not go for it though features are attractive
So that’s my point of view