Digital Trends

Sony Ericsson w800i

February 15th, 2006 | by Vince Veneziani

Testing and Use

Navigating through the interface on the w800i is a pleasant experience and I did not experience any troubles at all. The joystick helps you get through everything quickly and is great for gaming. The dedicated Walkman button helps you go straight to your music collection right when you need it and sorts your music by Artist, Track, Play list, and Video. When you open the lens cover of the camera, it automatically assumes you want to take a picture or video and goes right to the camera-interface. This interface looks and works just like a regular digital camera with low-light adjustments, the ability to use an extremely bright flash and other filters among things.

So let's discuss this camera a little more. A 2.0 mega-pixel camera in a cell phone is a wonderful thing. I haven't used my Canon a400 Powershot in a while now that I have this w800i. The camera lets you flip the phone on its side where a dedicated shutter button lays. You then can use the phone like a true camera using the 262k-color screen as a beautiful viewfinder. Video comes out pretty decent in the right conditions and is probably as good as you're going to get for a while as far as cell phones go. However, the w800i shines with stills. The quality is unbeatable, hands down. If it's dark, you can use the amazingly bright LED-flash to keep your picture quality high. I have actually used my w800i to take pictures with, gone right to a local camera shop, taken out the 512MB Memory Stick Duo card, and gotten 4x6 prints made. The result? Amazing prints that you could never tell were taken on a cell phone; keep in mind it won't fool a photography buff though. The w800i‘s camera is seriously it's best feature that makes everything else pale in comparison.

Music and Audio Capabilities

But enough about the camera, what about the music? This is a Walkman phone after all. The music functionality is great. You use the included USB cable to transfer files / music to the w800i with either Sony's software or just as a removable USB drive. Since I use all Macs, I used the latter and found it was very easy to do with all the folders laid out clearly for me to navigate through. The only problem here is that it's USB 1.1 and not 2.0. This makes music-transfer a bit slow, but bearable by all means. Once you load up your favorite tunes, you can browse them by artist, track, or play list. Formats accepted include MP3, WAV, and AAC, so you'll be fine with most of your music. Videos can be played back too and look wonderful on the crisp LCD screen.

The included headphones include a microphone for talking on the phone while you pause your music. The ear bud-style headphones fit great and sound awesome. Even if you don't like them, Sony has included the standard 3.5mm adaptor for using your own headphones. Navigating the UI is easy with the joystick Sony Ericsson has provided and playback works without a hitch. If you forget headphones, the built-in speaker is loud and sounds good if you want to share a song with your friends, but don't go relying on it. You will not need to bring your iPod along with this phone. It is not meant to become a total iPod-replacement due to storage limitations, but if you're only going to be out listening to music for an hour or so, you're fine.

The battery life has to be pretty amazing to handle all this multimedia going on and we found it to be excellent with the w800i and you'll find you only need to charge it after a day of listening non-stop to your music. Otherwise, you can probably go 2 or 3 days without having to recharge it. If you're skipping music playback altogether, you'll get plenty of talk time and standby time from this phone. You can always check the percentage of your battery life on the phone easily which gives you an exact idea of how much longer you'll have to play games and text message your friends.