Sony Ericsson W880i Review

 

Sony Ericsson launched a new Walkman phone the W880/W888 , having only 9.4mm thin, the W880 is the thinnest 3G phone from Sony Ericsson and combines the Walkman phone experience with a device that fits easily into your pocket.

With the W880 Sony Ericsson hopes to have the same success as with previous walkman phones. "Our Walkman phones have proven to be phenomenally attractive to our consumers - we have sold 20 million Walkman phones since launch - and we are continuously developing the portfolio to extend their appeal," says Steve Walker, Head of Product Marketing at Sony Ericsson.

 

The sales package contains a 1 GB Memory Stick Micro which gives you room to store up to 900 tracks. Sony Ericsson did not intend for the W880i tobe a smartphone or a phone packet up with technology they already have Sony Ericsson W850i. The new W880i will be a mass offering for the top fashion-conscious price-bracket.

The phone measures in at 103x47x9.4 mm and has a candy-bar shape, the handset slips into a breast pocket and keeps low profile while in jeans,as for the weight it is just 73 grams.

The W880i is the slimmest music phones available with a 1GB capacity, but the true beauty of the design can be seen in the brushed stainless steel finish and the stand-out colour variants; The W880i comes in two color trims : Steel Silver or Flame Black.
The build quality is very good we couldn't find any creaks even when we gripped it firmly in both hands. The front panel hosts a VGA camera for video calls within UMTS-networks, which is located right on top of the display.

The display measures just 1.8 inches and is capable of showing up to 262 000 colors it uses TFT technology and has QVGA resolutions (240x320 pixels) , it can accommodate up to 8 text and 3 service lines. The quality of the screen is great, all the color are bright and vivid.The display shares the same specs as the K800i,but in real conditions the K800i show a better picture than the W880i because of the 2 inch diagonal.

Usually a tiny case forces developers to apply weird solutions for the keypad,in this case Sony Ericsson the keys narrow and raised above the surface , a little higher than we have gotten used to, but thanks to this solution the keypad can be used easily despite the slim size of the phone. All buttons are evenly lit in white and are well seen in the night or in a dark room.The four-way navigational key is edged with ridges located on top and at the bottom, thus overall it is easy to work with. All in all the keypad leaves only positive impressions.

On the left side we can find the socket Fast Port but unfortunately it's not covered by a flap and thus is always wide open,right beneath it is hot swap-enabled M2 memory expansion slot that can be accessed only with a disconnected headset. Sony Ericsson W880i can support cards up to 8 GB.On the same side we can also see the dedicated music key which is positioned more towards the top end, if you push it the music player will instantly start.

The right side houses a shortcut key for the camera , volume control keys which act as zoom in/out in shooting mode,and in music playback mode holding this key doesn't adjust volume level, but navigates through tracks instead.On the rear side we can see the 2 Megapixel camera,the speaker which is average in terms of volume and quality.Next to the speaker we can also see the producers logo.

The phone has a 950 mAh Li-Pol battery which can last up to 425 hours of standby, 6.5 hours of talk time, and up to 20 hours of music playback, as the producer says.In real life condition the W880i lasted about 4 days with around 40 minutes of phone calls every day 20 minutes of Bluetooth usage, and 2 hours of music playback a day.These figures are really great for this type of mobile phone,first of all we must not forget the slimmes of the phone.Because the phone is so slim there wasn't any room for the Infrared connectivity.

Now let's talk a little about the menu :

 

The menu is typical for any latest phone from Sony Ericsson.The main menu is composed by 12 icons placed in a grid. You can assign shortcuts to most menu items very easily.If you press the "#" key a list of the available languages pops and you can easily switch between.
Let's see the main categories in the menu:

Phonebook:

It can store up to 1000 contacts, but number of phone numbers is limited to 2500. This means that despite the ability to assign up to 5 phone numbers to one contact, you cannot go over 2500 numbers,but we think that this is more than enough even for the more active users.For every contact there are available other fields like : address, e-mail, IM id..etc.It is possible to assign each contact a photo which will appear on the screen you we call or are being called by that person.Voice tags are also present here but are limited to just 40.You can create a back-up copy of all entries in phonebook, which will be stored on the memory card, so that you will have the ability to restore them afterwards

Messaging

The messaging function is standard ,the device uses the phone memory and the SIM memory to store the messages. The MMS function is improved and it's really easy to create video clips or just send a photo.

E-Mail client can send and receive e-mails.The emails can be stored on memory card. Attachments that are supported by the phone are presented as icons in an email's body. The phone doesn't recognize office files or PDF, but they can be stored in any directory.

The limit for outgoing/incoming email size is set by operator. Emails with 6-7 Mb attachments can be sent without any problems.


Entertainment From this part of the menu you can easily access photos,music files and other media.Like all new SE phones this ones has the three applications MusicDJ, VideoDJ and PhotoDJ .
In MusicDj you can edit/modify music files ,create ringtones..etc.The VideoDj is a more evolved version of the MusicDj it allows editing not only music files, but also adding images and signs. The resulting file is recorded in .3GP file which can be sent by MMS or Email.PhotoDj allows you to modify existing photos or just draw new ones,at the same time you can add different effects or remove red-eyes effect ,adjusting brightness..etc The phone has only one game called QuadraPop and is a tetris based game.
Organizer

Again here everything is pretty standard and it's just like any other SE phone.Let's talk at first about the calendar:Like in the W800 there are three ways of viewing the events on the calendar : weekly, monthly and daily.The next function is "To do list" which has two types of events: phone call and reminder.The device has a search function for the calendar : you type a word and the phone shows you all events that match that word.This feature is quite nice and also has a good speed.

Another feature found in the Organize is the Notes function. The phone supports notes entry, though they are limited in length. The name of the note you see on the list will be first word entered.Like any other phone the W880i has Alarm Clock where you have access to 5 alarm clocks.Besides the ring tone for alarm clock you can select small note and picture, they will be displayed when alarm clock goes on. Any music file can be assigned as the alarm tone.

Then let's see the Stopwatch/Countdown-everything is standard here and is no different from any other mobile phone.

The phone also has an application for storing secret codes, which had a huge success in previous models.The last function of the organizer is the calculator which has standard functions.


Connectivity

All settings related to connectivity can be set from here, starting from WAP and GPRS to Bluetooth and Synchronization.The Bluetooth version is 2.0 and all profiles are supported including A2DP.

WAP

Standard browser for Sony Ericsson phones is NetFront which supports single-column web pages display and HTML. One of the best things about it, is the ability to create folders with files and bookmarks. The browser is considered to be one of the market's best offerings, but limited phone resources do it no favors.The browser also supports RSS feeds allowing you to read the news or any other articles that you like. HTML pages that contain advanced formatting or exceed 500kb in their size will not be displayed

The user has 20 MB of available memory, and a M2 card that comes with the retail package.Here you can store all you files,the memory that remains is occupied by preinstalled applications, which cannot be wiped. Part of memory is dedicated to phonebook, call lists, etc

The phone has a basic file manager, with its help files can be sorted by various folders, custom directories can be created in phone's memory, files can be moved there as well. With or without cable the phone can become a perfect storage, there are no problems with recording your own files, even if they cannot be opened by the phone.


Walkman version 2.0 player

 

This is the new walkman application from Sony Ericsson,and the W880i is the second device from Sony Ericsson to have the new player, the first device was the W850i.The first changes we can see from the first version is at the surface,the color of the walkman application is now black instead of orange. The supported audio formats are : MP3, AAC, AAC+, E-AAC+, WAV, WMA and m4a. There are no limitations on bit rates; you can also upload files with VBR. Sony Ericsson recommends using files with 192 Kbit/s bit rate.

Phone supports OMA DRM 2.0, which makes it compatible with almost all online shops that sell music. Manufacturer included Online channels menu item, here you can add different online shops

The player was modified not only in the interface, there are also changes in playback algorithm. Playback quality is different from other models except for Sony Ericsson W850i.

Just like other walkman phones the W880i has the TrackID application.With this app you can record a few seconds of song you heard on the radio via the phone's microphone and after 3-4 seconds you can find out what's the name of the song and you can also buy it.

 

Camera

The W880i has a 2 megapixel with a CMOS matrix without auto-focus,the supported resolutions are :
• 1632x1224
• 1280x960
• 640x480
The size of a photo ranges from 500-600 KB in the "fine quality" mode.The time for saving a photo is usually about 2 seconds which is ok for a photo this size.


The camera settings look the following way:
• Shutter sound. You can choose on of the three shutter sounds but not turn the sound off.
• White balance. A possibility to choose between an automatic mode or Incandescent, Fluorescent, Daylight.
• Effects. Several effects may be applied to the photos, they are Negative, Solarize, Sepia, Black & White.
• Timer is activated for a certain time period for self shooting.
• Night mode is for shooting in the dark. Noises raise on a photo, exposition is increased (you shouldn't move the device in order not to get a blurry photo).
• Shooting mode. Normal mode, that is taking usual photos. A multiple mode (Burst 4) allows taking four photos for a series. Landscape is a very interesting mode that allows taking rather unordinary photos, has no rivals for the moment. The last mode is taking photos with frames, photo resolution decreases automatically.
The quality of the videos is average and is pretty poor compared to other top models.The resolutions for recording a video are 176x144 and 128x96 and the clio is stored in 3GP format.

Here you can view a photo take with the W880i : (click on a image to enlarge)
Conclusion


The model will appear on the market at the end of March with price tag of more than 400 Euro.The W880i is a great phone and has no direct rivals on the market.The new device from SE is a fashion solution combined with great functionality.The device is small,slim and comes in various color trims which will appeal both men and women.The design of the phone is a little different from what we got used to from Sony Ericsson but it's pretty stylish and many people will like it.