Posted by Mia in 
Introduced in 2005, Sony Ericsson W800i was greeted by critics and consumers. Key factors for success were few, but all of them were verified to the last detail. It was the first phone with a legacy of the famous players Sony from no less famous Walkman brand with all the ensuing consequences. In fact, the phone W800 was really a serious music player. It shows today’s situation in the market, new F300 from Samsung, Nokia 3250 or 5700 XpressMusic. To grow on megapixels 2 million cell phone makers have taken a time out. Secondly, W800i has serious functional content.
Design
Certainly, now thin phones are fashionable, important and sometimes even very practical. However, the overwhelming number of slim-devices is extremely inconvenient to use. In pursuit of millimeters manufacturer forgets about ergonomics, forcing the user to break the nails on the keyboard and when working with menus to twist his/her fingers in the untold patterns.
Fortunately, this fate to a greater extent bypasses Sony Ericsson W880i. Its dimensions are 103×47x9, 4 mm and weight is 71 grams. Thus, the device is long enough, but due to its rectangular shape it has stunning design.
Thickness, or rather its absence, and light weight make it possible to carry the phone anywhere. Whether it is a breast pocket of your shirt or the pocket of tight jeans, W880i looks good from everywhere, more precisely, in jeans, it is imperceptible.
The front part of Sony Ericsson W880i is made of stainless steel, and can be in silver (Steel Silver), and black (Flame Black) colors. In the first version the rear face of rubberized plastic is matte black, while the second one is orange. Both the colors and the presence of metal among the components add to an already excellent design of W800i a fraction of sophistication. Moreover, it is worth noting the excellent build quality of this phone.
Keyboard
When dealing with the keyboard of Sony Ericsson W880i it is possible not to feel discomfort.
But there is an unambiguous claim to the navigation key. It is too small.
And if girls with nails of medium length speak positively about the numeric keypad, than they will scold the navigation. So if you prefer long nails, you should think about shortening them.
On the right side there is a key to access the camera (horizontal mode).
At the top there is a small multi-purpose “rocker” (or even a slider).
With its help you can get into the menu of the phone, adjust the sound volume, or play around with the scale of the photographs. Access key to the player Walkman 2.0 is located on the left end.
By tradition, the Sony Ericsson phones are not usual green and red phones, and their functions are performed by two context keys. Beneath them there is a button fast access to the Internet browser and “My Menu”. Below that are key “return” and “C”.
So we glad to note that the keyboard of W880i is somewhat unusual, but it is viable.
Display and menus
Screen of W880i is rather narrow, but it has dimensions of 1.8 inches, supports QVGA-resolution (240×320 pixels) and displays up to 262 thousand colors. The display, of course, belongs to the premium class – high brightness, excellent clarity, rich colors. Due to its elongated shape, the upper line with the level of reception, battery indication, hours and other information icons are always active when you move the menu (if you have the theme Walkman), unconditional and very significant advantage.
Simple and intuitive menu of W880i consists of 12 icons, and subsections in a tree form.
However, changing the theme to the standard Walkman on “Bits of the City” you can get a stylish black and red menu with icons, arrayed in a row. These moves through the main menu will be accompanied by a mild vibration.
To master the organs and functions of control of W880i can even unprepared person. Anyone who has ever spoken on Sony Ericsson phones over the past three years, the process of learning and adapting to the new product will take a couple of minutes.
Multimedia
Traditionally, the older phones of the Walkman series inherit a full set of features and capabilities of their business counterparts. So the user of W880i gets 16 MB of internal memory, support for memory Memory Stick Micro (1 GB card included) card, Bluetooth with support for A2DP protocol (wireless stereo headphones), convenient and functional web browser Net-Front, Java , support for USB and much more.
Well if living without ICQ to you means not to exist, then go to the menu “Applications” and run powerful client which is able to function (like other Java-based applications) in the background.
The phone works in three GSM and UMTS 2100. This means support for video streaming and video calls. For the latter there is a small camera on the front panel.
In general W880i is a modern phone with classically-considered trifles. Does it have tuned Bluetooth? Does it easily work with uploaded files? Does it have functional organizer? Can it work in Flight Mode? All these questions can affirmatively be answered with the abbreviation of five characters – W880i.
Walkman 2.0 is stuffing, let’s consider hardware. Headset connector (HPM-75 included) is located at the left bottom.
This is quite inconvenient, since the plug is not small, so it still goes on thick wire, which is not particularly flexible. The most reasonable accommodation would be a 3,5 mm input on the top of the phone. Headset HPM-75 has decent quality and should satisfy most of the audience. We have to test headphones Sennheiser CX 300, in order to feel all inside the player. Fortunately HPM-75 is a structure of the adapter and headphones, so that the 3,5 mm input is available, albeit not at the phone.
To start the music application you can use the little orange button or through the menu.
At the start screen “My Music” can sort tracks by artists, albums, play-list or simply the list of tracks.
Play-lists can and should (because 1 GB is about 250 songs in good quality, very easy to get confused) be created directly on the phone.
In addition, the player has a standard set of visualization (animation, or album cover), play mode “in a random order”, repetition, and changing colors of the application.
There is also an equalizer. Unfortunately, it was a simpleton, from the available preset modes you can choose – Bass, Mega Bass, voice, lifting high frequencies.
In addition to these four settings, it is a possible and a manual calibration. Player responded only to the most understated or overstated frequency. And the description on the website Mega Bass Sony Ericsson says “improve bass, let music become more volume, in practice, the sound remains flat. But what pleases me is that only player can be scold in W880i.
The volume is enough comfortably to listen to music not only on a busy street, but in the subway or any other public transport.
Out of interest, just as noteworthy feature, is TrackID. A
gain we turn to the description on the official site – “Just record a song a few seconds and all the information about the track, artist or album will be available within a few seconds”.
Funny opportunity for Walkman with FM-radio on board, but in the case of W880i it is a useless icon on the desktop, because the music that pours from the player to know there is no possibility, as composition should be recognized only through a microphone. Another function of downloading content PlayNow seems much more interesting in this case.
The player supports popular formats such as: MP3, AAC, AAC +, E-AAC +, WAV, WMA, M4A, however, it is difficult to imagine that many users listen to music in the format E-AAC +.
As a conclusion of the player it should be noted that it has many useful features. As for the level of the music, Walkman in this sense is ahead of other phones. However, if you are a music fan beginner, features of Walkman 2.0 will be sufficient.
Camera
In case of W880i camera is more a design element than a serious application. In fact, a small lens with a penny coin and the matrix of 2-megapixels is not as bad as it might seem at first glance.
Using the camera in landscape mode is very practical. The camera settings are standard – resolution, quality, effects, 2.5-fold digital zoom.
Conclusion
A small step for Sony Ericsson is a big leap for the market. Player phones go to the next level, slowly biting more and more of the market. Union of a phone and a music player looks more organic than a phone and a camera. In case of W880i nirvana is aggravated with battery with a capacity of 950 mAh. At 30 minutes of calls a day, using all sorts of functions and player for 2 hours a day, the phone worked for five days. It is an excellent result.
Having examined W880i brick by brick on the components, we have a stylish phone, rich functionalities and a decent player. Definitely a successful model, I recommend to buy it.
