Sony Ericsson W850i review

Impressively, there's still more on offer, including some fun applications. For example, in the Organiser section there are two Java applications, one called Face Warp that lets you morph somebody's face into weird shapes, and another called Music Mate that teaches you the chords on a guitar or pitch on a piano -- there's even a virtual metronome.

In the Entertainment section of the menu there's an application called MusicDJ that lets you compose your own simple tunes and use them as ringtones. Then there's the VideoDJ application that lets you add a soundtrack and transition effects to your video clips.

Other features include flight mode, MMS and SMS messaging, a calendar, an alarm clock, tasks, a voice recorder, over-the-air synchronisation (SyncML), a Bluetooth remote, a video player, Java games, a timer, a stop watch, an SOS light option, a calculator and a file manager. The W850i's firmware will automatically update itself over the air.

One niggle that we have is that you can't set the W850i to lock when you slide it shut from anywhere other than the main window. If you're in the settings section of the menu, for example, and you shut the slider, it won't lock the phone.

The W850i also won't end a call when you shut the slider. It will answer a call when you slide it open, but won't do the opposite, so you can't simply slide the phone closed when you finish a conversation. This might seem like a small problem but many slider phone users are used to that functionality and we found it annoying.

Performance
The audio on calls is clear and loud and the speakerphone works as expected. The audio on the music player is great and it doesn't sound tinny at all. The provided in-ear headphones are better than the majority of bundled ones, but we found the player sounded best when using our own headphones.

The stereo Bluetooth also worked well and we found it easy to pair up a set of stereo Bluetooth headphones with the W850i. As with other Walkman phones, if you're listening to music and you get a call, it will automatically pause the music until you end the call, which we found very useful.

Unfortunately, after being exposed to the Sony Ericsson K800i's camera, the W850i's camera really disappointed us. There's no autofocus, so pictures don't come out as sharp, and no xenon flash, so shots in low light don't come out as well lit.

In fact, compared to the 2-megapixel camera on the almost two-year-old K750i, this camera simply doesn't measure up. If, however, you just want to take the odd snapshot for MMS messages, then it is more than suitable.

Video calls were acceptable and worked well, we could see the other person clearly over a 3G connection and they could see us.

Battery life is quoted at 350 hours on standby and 210 minutes of talk time. We found that battery life was good aside from when we made 3G video calls.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Kate Macefield