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Section » Reviews » Review Sony Ericsson W900i

One of the most powerful phone in the Walkman range is the Sony Ericsson W900 (W900c in China and W900i in the rest of the world.Unlike W800i or W710i it is a swivel model(similar to W550i ) which means that the keyboard is hidden behind the display when the phone is closed. To access the keyboard you have to turn half the phone 180 degrees. The swivel must be closed the same way it was opened. Sony Ericsson W900 is a large and heavy phone. It is comparable to the older Sony Ericsson S700 but weights 10g more and the plastic material does not make it look very exclusive.The standard package contains : handset,battery,stereo headset HPM-80 with built in radio and board,user guide,,USB-cable,software, charger , MS Duo 64 MB.

The model W900i has the size of 109x49x24 mm.Bigger featheriness of S700 is caused by the silver color and rounded form.In addition to its music features, the W900i also has UMTS/3G for making video calls, a 2 megapixels digital camera and has 3D hardware accelerator for the latest 3D Java games.

Exterior
On the front of the phone you will find a tiny camera which only is active during video calls and when the camera is set to self-portrait mode. Below the display there are two softkey buttons, a return/back-button, cancel-button, a dedicated browser button, video call button and a button which leads to a customizable shortcut menu. Finally, the round middle 5-way navigation key is used for navigating the menus in addition to control the Walkman application when this is active. On the left side of the phone there is a direct access button to start and stop the Walkman application.

The phone is multitasking when you listen to music and the Walkman application can run in the background while you for example look up a contact to find a phone number. It will automatically pause when you receive phone a call and it starts up again when the conversation is finished. The same thing happens if you listen to the radio. A lock-device button is also found on this side. In addition to lock the keys, this button also controls the camera light. On the same side there is a toddler for the keypad blocking or flash activation in a shooting mode. The service indicator and a socket for memory cards MS Duo (up to 4 Gb) are also situated here.On the opposite side, you will find the camera shutter button as well as volume control and the window for the infrared connection. Both the Walkman- and camera button must be pushed in for a second or so to start the respectively applications. The digital keypad is latent on the internal side, buttons are of average size and are well spread. Keys backlight is of white color, it is well visible in full darkness. In the street keys designations are read well due to the muffled illumination, they do not merge in spite of small size. At the bottom end face there is an aperture for a strap and Fast Port closed by a rubber cover.

The display

Technical characteristics of the screen are quite good, its resolution is 240x320 pixels (31x40 mm), it displays up to 262000 colors (TFT). Picture is bright, the interface looks well, and that creates an impression of excellent color reproduction.W900 has a protective glass covering the display and a small area around the display. I do not know the material of the protective "glass", but it sure helps shield the display from scratches. On the backside there is a small area where the flash light, a self-portrait mirror and the 2 megapixels camera are located. The camera does not have any kind of lens protection which could result in scratches to the lens glass. I have experienced that this not is a big problem. The challenge is to remember to wipe out fingerprints from the lens before you take a picture. Photos tend to be blurry if the lens is covered with grease. This is not easy to see when previewing the photos on the phone display, but you will see them when you have transferred the images to a computer and view them in full size.The battery is lithium-polymeric; its capacity is 900 mAh. According to the manufacturer it works for 370 hours in the standby mode and up to 8.4 hours in the talk mode. Full recharging takes about 1 hour 40 minutes.

The stereo headset HPM-80

Sony Ericsson W900 comes with the standart headset HPM-80 ,the w900 does not have a radio application installed into the phone itself and like many other phones you must connect the headset ,in this case the HPM-80 to listen to the radio.This is because the radio hardware is not found inside the phone but in the HPM-80 headset. You can't even control any of the radio features from the phone. Everything must be done throught the headset controller. The only reason why you need to connect the headset to listen to radio, is because the radio needs power from the phone. The radio will not work on other Sony Ericsson phones (K600, K750, W550) with the same connection interface. They will just report "Not supported". The handsfree wire is divided in two parts. The first one connects to the phone and has the radio and Walkman controller located in the middle. It has a microphone with a standard headset plug in the end. The second part is where the earplugs are found. The earplugs can be changed with your favourite headset or earplugs. This is ideal for music enthusiasts preferring to use their own high quality headset when they listen to MP3 files.
The HPM-80 has three buttons.

The volume control is located on one side and the play button is located on the other side. When the Walkman application is active, the play button has four functions. Play, stop, forward and rewind. During radio listening, the button is changing purpose and control FM band seek. A light press to one of the sides change band frequency with +/- 0.05 MHz. Pressing the button completely in auto-tunes to the next station with Stereo reception. Press and hold for more than one second mute the radio.
The power button is located on the front below the small LCD display. Its function is to power on and off and switch between the radio and Walkman.
Quality of mp3 compositions reproduction is good; the headphones which are included in the standard kit coincide with Sony Ericsson W800i, have replaceable nozzles and provide good sound insulation. Radio quality is worse than in K750i/W800i, reception in problem zones is complicated,.For those who not only listens mp3, but likes to listen to the radio this model will absolutely suit them.

Camera

W900 has a very good 2 megapixel camera with auto-focus.The main camera can capture pictures with 160x120, 640x480 and 1632x1224 pixels resolutions. The portrait camera facing the holder of the camera has only one resolution of 160 x 120 pixels. Captured photos are saved as JPG files in Normal and Fine quality which can be translated to quality of 50% and 95% when saving a JPEG file in Photoshop. A test using the same motive but different compression settings shows a 36 percent increase in file size from Normal (336 Kb) to Fine (458 Kb). Light sensitivity is automatically adjusted by the camera application. Shutter speed and ISO value can not be set by the user but it is possible to change the exposure compensation to between -2 and +2 in 0.3 steps.If you do need more light and the subject is close enough to be enlightened, it is easy to turn the camera flash on using the lock switch. Well, it is not really a flash, but a small led light located next to the lens. The video call/self-portrait camera is a low resolution camera delivering a 176 x 144 maximum video resolution and a 160 x 120 pixel picture resolution.The phone has a 8x digital zoom on the main camera while the video camera has 2x digital zoom. I don't see the point in having digital zoom on cameras because even a computer with the most basic image editor software can do the same thing. Unlike some of the older Sony Ericsson models, it is possible to capture pictures before the camera has found correct focus. Press the shutter button half way down to focus and press it fully to take the picture. W900 focuses faster than its predecessors, and the focus speed can now be compared to older stand-alone digital cameras. Testing the camera start-up time shows us that the W900 is quite slow,it took about 5 seconds from pressing the shutter button, waiting for the application to start, finding focus and capturing a picture. The time taken from you press the shutter button until the picture is taken is approximately 1 second. The selectable shutter sound is played a short time before the actual photo is taken. This is very annoying. When human subjects hear the sound, they might stop smiling and turn away resulting in a faulty portrait photo. The display works as a viewfinder just like any other modern camera phones. This works well despite the fact that it is a small delay between lens input and display output. When the camera button is pressed half way down, all information about the camera settings disappear from the display and a focus square appears. Correct focus is found within this square frame and it will change colour from white to green when this happens. A short beep also tells you that the focus is found. Pressing the shutter button all the way in will capture the photo. Sony Ericsson W900 use the Cyber-Shot camera menu also found in Sony Ericsson K600, W550 and W600.

Here you have a picture taken with the W900:

(click on the picture to zoom)

The camera settings look the following way:
Shutter sound. You can choose on of the three shutter sounds but not turn the sound off.
Spot photometry. Spot photometry is by the central point.
White balance. A possibility to choose between an automatic mode or Incandescent, Fluorescent, Daylight, Cloudy.
Light. Backlighting activation, also may be turned on by pressing the key on the lateral face.
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.
Autofocus - an opportunity to switch to Macro mode or to switch off an auto focusing, many people complained for its work and has received the possibility to choose.
In a shooting mode the screen acts as a view-finder, picture's moving is smooth, everything is well visible.Due to the 3D accelerator it became possible to get video records of resolution of 240?320 pixels and frequency of 30 frames per second. Records look well both on the screen of the phone, and on a computer, their quality is quite good..During video recording, three possible Shoot modes are available:
"For picture message", where the maximum recording time is 10 seconds. This ensure that the video clip fits in a picture message. The "Normal" setting does not limit the recording and "Self-portrait" uses the video camera for recording. The other possible settings during video recording are: Auto focus, Night mode, Light, Effects, White balance and Spot photometry. Se photo table above for possible settings. Resolution during normal video recording is 320 x 240 pixels.

The Walkman application

The Walkman application is the same as in Sony Ericsson W800 and Sony Ericsson W600/W550. This music application can run in the background while you do other tasks on the phone. W900 has 470 MB free internal memory for user data where it is possible to store the supported music files of the types MP3, AAC and WAV. 470 MB internal memory storage should be enough for over 130 files, but remember that pictures taken with the camera also make use of this storage. Because of this, it is likely that available memory will decreases over time as you capture more and more photos. Adding a 2GB extra Memory Stick PRO Duo card will increase the available memory enabling you to have a total of 700 melodies with you at all times and take more pictures. The Walkman application is a very simple but effective tool to organize your media. Melodies are automatically organized by artists and tracks but it is possible to create several playlists where only the favourite songs are included. Video clips are also listed in the Walkman application and they can also be added to playlists. The Video clips can be one you have recorded with the W900 video camera, clips downloaded to the phone or video clips transferred to the phone from a PC. To transfer media to the phone you can use the included USB cable and the PC software Disk2Phone which will organize the music files in folders based on artist and albums .The application let you select the files you want to transfer to the phone and convert them to MP3 before the transfer. It is very simple and it works well but you don't have to use it if you don't want that.
Video calls
Unline W800 or W550 the W900 has 3G capabilities.Sony Ericsson W900 is the first phone in the Walkman series that also offers 3G features. A small VGA camera can be found just above the display. One way to start a video call is to look up a contact from the address book and then select Make video call. The other is to click the dedicated Video call button located below the display. When a video call has started, a small live picture of yourself is visible in the bottom left corner of the display while the main part of the display shows a video stream of the person you are talking to. Press one button to switch the recording camera to the backside camera. This makes it easy to show the person you are talking to what you seing. Other features found is "share picture" where you for example can show the opponent a photography you have captured earlier. During a video call, it is possible to change video quality, switch to night mode, mirror image plus more. Doing video calls in noisy environments usually requires a Bluetooth or a headset.

The menu it is a typical model of the last generation by Sony Ericsson, it has Activity Menu. Using the navigating key deviation it is possible to appoint labels that mean fast call of functions. The main menu is submitted by four lines each having three icons. The user can take advantage of a shortcut number navigation, then transition to the necessary item will take few seconds. Text input remains on its comfort level, so, pressing the "#" key brings out a list of the available languages and you can easily switch between them while typing. Besides traditional vertical sub-menus, the vendor has provided thematic horizontal tabs. It means that while viewing a list of the dialed numbers, one can see not only the dialed numbers but in the same time (horizontal joystick striking) switch between missed and received call tabs. In the phone menu this kind of navigation is provided anywhere it's possible and it makes using the phone much easier. The menu ergonomics is quite high in this phone model. I also note that such horizontal panels appear in Phonebook, Settings and another menu items as well.W900 was the first Sony Ericsson model with 3D accelerated hardware. This hardware speeds up advanced Java games and is also the most likely reason why video recording is so smooth. Three Java games are installed. One simple 2D Tetris variant and two 3D Java games where the Sony Ericsson innhouse creation PowerBall Arcade make use of the 3D accelerated hardware.

Sony Ericsson W900 comes with a couple of useful and not so useful Java applications pre-installed. The old Java application Converter helps you convert meters to inches to feets etc. Distances, volumes, weights, temperatures, speeds and areas can be converted back and forth. Facewarp is a Java application where you capture photos of people and use the application to morph their face. Metronome must be a Java application for musicians with special needs. It is a collection three musical utilities: guitar chords, pitch and a metronome helping you keep the rhythm.

Three other applications that are non-Java are installed to help you create and edit new videos, pictures and ringtones. A graphical editor PhotoDJ is provided for creative users, which allows drawing plain pictures. Sometimes it will help in spending time, but most often is is excessive. The editing process is quick and easy to learn, but the generating of the final movie takes some time. PhotoDJ is a image editor where images can be edited using Pen, Line, Ellipse and rectangle tools. It is possible to add clipart, add effects like Auto levels, Tint, Negative, Cartoon style, change contrast and so on.MusicDJ is an interesting function although it isn't used by a wide range of consumers. It provides you with an ability to make your own melodies editing up to 4 track. makes it easy to create midi/polyphonic ringtones by mixing four instruments. The instruments has 32 different drum beats, 32 basses, 32 piano chords and 32 accents. You should be able to create completely unique melodies by combining these tones. Advanced version of MusicDJ is a function VideoDJ, it allows editing not only music but also to add pictures and inscriptions, the final result is made out as a 3GP file which can be transferred in MMS or Email to another phone.

The Organizer has a lot of functions first let's see the calendar. There are three types of events viewing: week view, month view or today events. In the last case you see a list of all appointments and notes, another two modes display time and appointment or the day. Scheduled events can easily be sent to another devices (as always, through IrDA or via Bluetooth). You just have to choose a desired time interval - a day, a week, a month - and then send all the records. The phone can store short text notes. Notes list displays the first word form a note. It isn't always comfortable because one should start a note with a keyword to know what it is about. An alarm can be set to regular or recurrent mode (the alarm can ring on selected days of the week). Alarm works even if the phone is switched off. Any sound file can act as a signal. Countdown timer is rather standard either as a stopwatch. The phone has a code reminder which is loved by lots of people, usual calculator.

Connectivity and Internet

W900 has the latest Bluetooth protocol 2.0 built-in next generation of short range communication.In the connectivity menu you can find everything from WAP and GPRS to Bluetooth and synchronization. The model is compatible with the bluetooth versions 2.0 standard, but I would like to note that there is no EDGE support here. The phone supports HID profile which allows using it as the computer or other device remote control. USB connectivity is maybe the easiest and fastest way to communicate between a PC and the phone. The fast UMTS network connection also let you communicate fast with remove services and tools.The phone has the latest Netfront XHTML browser installed. The full screen rendering feature is nice to have on such a relatively small size. You might also find the zoom in and out page feature helpful. The browser is one of the best, but the limited resources of the phone do not make it easy to use.At the same time the support of RSS Feeds is interesting, it allows using the phone for reading news or announcements.In many respects the standard browser is the best to use, but use of Opera Mini would be more preferable, as it gives you more opportunities.

Conclusion

W900 is the largest phone from Sony Ericsson. Some might find it too large and wont like the swivel type. But it has every feature you can desire; 3G network support including video calls, it has 470 MB internal memory expandable with up to 2GB using Memory Stick PRO Duo, a 2 megapixel camera, 3D accelerated hardware supporting 3D Java games and a very good battery life compared to other 3G phones.The lack of a standard memory card included in the package is a little disappointing but 470 MB internal memory is more than enough. Business users might want a more sophisticated email client and calendar, but Sony Ericsson W900 will satisfy the demand from the average user.

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