Flash memory is getting cheaper and more capacious by the month and gadget makers are falling over themselves to shoehorn the stuff into their latest kit. In this feature-packed new clamshell phone from Sony Ericsson, 8GB of memory is crammed into the uber-stylish chassis.
The W980 Walkman will be out very soon, on a range of networks and price plans, or for around £350 SIM-free online. There's a good deal of excitement surrounding this phone, but is it going to justify it?
Design
For once on a clamshell phone, both the primary and secondary screens are excellent. Sony Ericsson has given the W980 a terrific, ultra-sharp primary screen with a 240x320-pixel resolution and awesome pixel density.
The external colour screen sports a lower resolution, but is dedicated to browsing music with its accompanying touch-sensitive buttons, making for quick music navigation.
Conversely we found the main keypad less enjoyable to use. The circular keys are spaced apart a little too much, requiring extended finger travel. Users with chubbier digits may find the small menu and call-handling buttons too minute. One quirk is that the buttons required for taking photos are exactly opposite the camera. This means your fingers naturally cover the lens when holding the phone up, which is mildly annoying.
It's a solid, sturdy phone, however, with plenty of strength in the hinge to survive life on the road. But like all Walkman phones, this Sony Ericsson has no 3.5mm headphone socket -- you have to use a horrible proprietary adaptor to connect your own headphones.
This adaptor, when attached to a standard pair of earphones, gives you about three metres of cabling to deal with. It's long enough to use as a skipping rope. Music phones need 3.5mm headphone sockets as standard.
Features
Still, inside the W980 is 3.6Mbps HSDPA data transmission, quad-band connectivity, A2DP stereo Bluetooth, 3D Java games, twin cameras for video calling, an FM radio and an FM transmitter for sending music to radio receivers, which works really well once you snag an empty part of the radio spectrum.
It's also got respectable support for Microsoft Exchange right out of the box, giving you BlackBerry-like push email, contacts and calendars over the air. We tried it out with our corporate email system and it worked perfectly. A terrific feature, if a little out of place on a music phone.
More relevant to its calling, the W980 is compatible with MP3, AAC, WAV, WMA and protected WMA format music files from Napster and 7digital et al. You can either drag and drop these files through Windows or sync them up with Windows Media Player.
In an iPhone-esque touch, screen orientation is handled by an internal accelerometer.
Landscape photos, for example, rotate by simply flipping the handset on
its side.
Unfortunately, the 3.2-megapixel camera doesn't have a flash, or a memory expansion slot. The 8GB of internal memory is a fair reason to consider omitting expandability, but we're all about having options.
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Bobby Blanco 25 August 2008
Good: Ease of use, style, meaty
Bad: No gps
Comment: I've just got this phone and I'm so impressed. The sound, picture and camera quality are amazing. I got this phone on recommendation from a friend, and for once, they are right. Lots of internal storage, so easy to use from the box. I'm loving it :)
heymichael! 11 August 2008
Good: 8gb of music, retro look, fm transmitter, gps photo thingy
Bad: slight problems with the 3g internet (think it might be my service provider)
Comment: I took this phone as a replacement for a big ol vario II on tmobile.
first impressions- its tiny. i keep losing it in my pocket, which is a good thing. its very straight forward to use- if you've ever used a sony erricson before you wont be confused by the menu set up.
It can hold 8gb of music- thats alot, up there with iphones, and is half the size. Best part for me is the fm transmitter. now THISis amazing. I've you have an itrip for your phone you'll understand just how good an idea this is. It basically means you can broadcast your music from your phone to a selection of FM frequencies, then tune your radio/car stereo in and enjoy yur music on the go.
Other things about this phone's features. Well- this is strange. When you take a snap, you can go view it on a map through gogle maps. yep. it places your newly taken snap on a google map. so you can build up a photo library on a map, which is a bloody novel concept. I am slightly scared by this however!
Great phone- you won't be disapointed.
mitchuk 5 August 2008
Good: Great sound qaulity, gestural controls
Bad: A lot of great features hidden away
Comment: I got this phone as a replacement to my old Nokia. I was looking for a phone that could also play music as I was fed up of using an MP3 player and a phone, and I was not going near an iPhone as they don't support the music subscription services that I favour.
After playing around with the phone a lot, I am very impressed. The sound quality is excellent, both from headphones and from the phone speakers. Now I know what you are thinking - why are you playing music out loud from the phone. Don't worry - I'm not annoying fellow commuters on trains and buses. It comes in handy with a bunch of friends when you don't have a sound system in the room, or in a car when the stereo was out of use. The phone was a lifesaver on a recent 5 hour car ride with no stereo - crisp and loud! One annoyance is that although you can use your own headphones, you have to use the adapter that comes with the phone - in trouble if you lose that!
The phone has interesting gestural controls - tilt it towards or away from you to adjust volume and give it a flick to switch tracks - careful in public! Digging around, the phone has other apps which use these controls - the driving game to steer, a drum kit where you play different drums with a flick of the phone and a useful pedometer! However a lot of these features seem hidden away so explore those menus!
The phone has a camera which does a good job, though there is no flash. I was not expecting a great camera though as this is part of the Walkman series and not Cybershot - maybe one day they shall combine!
In conclusion this is a fantastic music phone, very small, very sleek, great user interface, using a cut down XMB for Multimedia and stunning sound quality.
Recommended!
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