A Good Buy. Review on Sony Ericsson W810i

I have been using this phone for the past 8 months and I am in a situation where I can write a more realistic review.Before buying this I was a Nokia 6230 user and a huge nokia fan but these latest products from Sony erricson were about to change it all. It is well known that Sony was the pioneer in the Walkman technology.  Even today very few can rub shoulders with the Sony walkman brand.

I once happen to listen to a w700i of my colleague’s and was very impressed with the megabass sound.You see Bass is actually omini directional and it’s only in earphones or headphones that you can hear it from two channels L and R that’s the reason why you enjoy music more when listening from headphones or earphones.

Now where was I? Yes I was very impressed with the mega base feature and one thing I did not like was the color of the phone. I liked the black w810i. So my decision was purely based on the color of the phone.

I ended up paying 15k for the phone and got a set of jewel speakers “free” along with it which actually would have costed 1500 if purchased separately. I was surprised with the quality of sound it produced, however I seldom use it and its still lying in the packaging. Anyone in Bangalore wants to buy it can contact me I am ready to part with it for half rate.

Coming back to the phones construction:

I have only two complaints here:

1) There is no lens cover due to which it has got scratched and the picture quality does suffer.

2) The keys are quite bouncy when pressed and placed very closely it does take time to get used to it after using nokias.

however It has an anti scratch body, no matter how you use it(in my case only the lens cover can tell you how it roughly I have used it)

Features:Well it’s a Java enabled phone and you can download and install n number of themes, applications and java games from the internet.It has the music only mode which preserves a lot battery power if you are only interested in listening to music for a while.

Other than the usual calc, calendar, timer you have the white LED light which is a very handy tool.

Camera:The camera is some thing to be talked about because it has its roots from the Sony cyber shot technology.

This comes equipped with the auto focus feature by using this you can get sharper pictures comparable to some of the digital cameras in the market.( only thing here is the mega pixel limitation its just a 2 Mega pixel camera) apart for this it has some very interesting feature which I regularly use like the panoramic more( which stitches 3 pics into one giant panoramic pic) and the burst more which can capture 3 frames of any action. Within a second. Infact if I go on I might have to write another review on the camera of the phone itself.

Walkman

This is the best part it has awesome sound clarity and the mega bass feature is too good.

I will tell you what I did with the ear phones which came with the phones: Threw it in the dustbin. Ask me why and all I have to say is that they can not bring out the true sound quality of the music player; they just can’t handle the bass. I had my old Sony walkman earphones and once you can really feel the difference. You can’t stop dancing when listening to some latest dance numbers.

And yes this phone is upgradeable to 4 GB of external memory which just means more tracks and mp4 or 3gp movies too. Movies can also be played horizontally on the screen.

Apart from the above I can even read text documents and WebPages. But it would have been great if PDF could also be read in it.

Performance:

All the thrills and frills apart how does the phone fare when it comes to the “act as a mobile phone part?” well I would say it just does its job. The reception quality if OK, but the saddest part is of you are an sms junkie you will find it difficult to use this as it does not some features like send to many or group messaging etc which my earlier nokia 6230.

One interesting feature is that it can have animated walpapers(.gif files)

Its a very good feature many have got impressed with the moving wallpapers.

For any one buying this phone I would say it’s a good time to buy as I have heard that the rates have come down by 3 to 4k by now. I am not sure if they are still giving those jewel speakers “free” along with it.

Some of the other things I want to comment on:

battery backup: pretty decent for a phone with loads of features really depends on how often you use the camera, light( flash), walkman etc.

Speed of function:

it really depends on the type of theme you use on your phone if it has lots of graphics it is bound to be slow.

Built Quality:

I have dropped it 3 or 4 times and thank god nothing happened.

FM Radio reception:

OK but not upto the nokia mark.

Even though I feel I paid more for it the features of the phone soon more than convince me that it’s a good buy. In fact you buy any electronic items nowadays make sure you are going to use it for as long as it lasts and there is nothing called as resale value for electronic items nowadays.

As for me I am going to use it as long as I can, even though I do get tempted by some releases like the Samsungs credit card sized phone etc. I just say to myself that I will think about it later.

Would appreciate your rating to this review and comments are welcome!