A few months ago I wrote an editorial and several blog posts about convergence on gadgets and how Apple might have to move to the phone market for the next-gen of its iPods. So, where is that market is going? Hi-Mobile.net was very kind to send us over the Sony Ericsson W810i Walkman phone for the purposes of this review. We take a look at the W810i’s voice, data and multimedia capabilities.
In the box we found the following:
* Sony Ericsson W810i Phone
* 512 MB Memory Stick Pro Duo card
* Travel Charger (EU & US)
* Good quality in-ear handsfree with 3.5″ jack option
* 900 mAh battery
* User Manual
* USB cable
* CD-rom
The phone came with the following hardware features:
* 2 MP autofocus/macro camera
* Quad-band GSM and EDGE
* 176×220 2.0″ 262k LCD (bright and clear)
* 21 MB available internal flash memory
* FM radio
* Memory Stick Duo Pro (up to 2GB, hotswap support)
* IrDA SIR
* Bluetooth 2.0
* USB 2.0
* wrist-wrap hole
Physically, the phone is pretty small, easy to carry around. It has a very good built and the buttons are easy to reach and press. People with larger thumbs might need to train themelves a bit though, as the “walkman”, “back” and “left softkey” buttons are all in a single rocker button (depending in which direction you press the button it does a different job). On the top of the phone you will get the IrDA and the power button, on the bottom the Fast Port, on the left there is the “stop/play” button that will start playback the previously paused song in the background, and on the right side there are volume keys and the camera button. On the back you will find the 2MP camera with a powerful flash. There is no protective cap for the camera.
The phone boots pretty fast, in under 12 seconds. On boot you are presented with the option to either continue booting in phone mode, or use the device as walkman-only. In that second mode, the W810i is functioning just as any mp3 player would, with no extras. This is also known as the “flight mode” (yes, you have to reboot and choose that mode in order to disable the GSM antennas).
The 5-way jog-dial/joystick carries over the normal operations (up, down, left, right, confirm), but when inside the Walkman application it also works as “previous/next song”, pause/play, “previous media folder”. You can activate the Walkman software at any time by pressing its dedicated button, or as I mentioned above, the “stop/play” button on the side to start playback in the background, while other applications are loaded. I found this to work so-so with other multimedia apps. For example, the included MusicDJ application will kinda freeze when Walkman is active, because it seems that the Sony Ericsson embedded OS does not support mixing. If you stop the Walkman application and therefore “free” the sound card, only then the other application will continue its operation.
When booting to the phone mode, you are presented with the updated and well known Sony Ericsson user interface. I must give props to the people who designed the UI: it’s consice, stable, fast, up to the point and very easy to learn. In this newer version they have also added eye candy transitions between menus and screens and other niceties. Most of my readers know that I prefer smartphones, but if I had to pick one consumer-grade phone user interface as my favorite, that would be Sony Ericsson’s, hands down.
In the main screen you can select from many options, including “contacts”, create a new sms/ems/voicemail (there is no “email” in that list), check your call history, and use your shortcuts (Bluetooth, IrDA, Calendar, Events, Bookmarks, flash light on/off etc). I loved one of the “Light” options: it can flash SOS in the Morse code, should you be in danger!
With the phone you will get lots of interesting utilities and applications: VideoDJ and MusicDJ, email, a very useful RSS reader, MMS/SMS, T9, a sound recorder, two 3D games, good Java support (we ran Opera Mini, MGMaps, Google Maps and some games), an alarm clock, business card exchange, calculator, calendar, conference call support, a nice file manager, notes, wireless PIM Sync, speakerphone support, stopwatch, tasks and a timer. Only a native unit converter is missing. Instant messaging is supported, but it would not connect to YamiGo for some reason (might have been YamiGo’s fault — update: this is now fixed). In the settings panels you can change the themes, ringtomes (mp3 ringtones are supported), profiles, phone locking and more. Both Bluetooth and IrDA file exchange worked like a charm. File exchange was managed at over 10KB/sec with IrDA. The HSP/HFP Bluetooth profiles worked well too. The FM radio works only if you plugin the handsfree cable (because it works as an antenna to it). We had some very good FM reception with no dropouts.
Calls came through very clear, but the speakerphone is so loud that while it sounded good on my end it created a lot of noise in the other side. Nevertheless, voice and reception proved outstanding when connected. We had two instances of our call not going through (the other end was getting nothing after pickup and we were getting static) while GPRS was not always connecting (all these might be a problem of the Cingular tower, though I believe it was the phone’s fault). Where I get 2-3 bars with my Windows Mobile phone, I got 4-5 bars with the W810i. GPRS with EDGE worked perfectly too. Where the W810i truly excels though is in its battery life. It managed over 6 hours of GSM talk, and over 15 hours of mp3 playback. Few phones in the market can argue that can do that too. Sony Ericsson also claims 350 hours of standby.
To add music and video files to the phone you can either use Sony Ericsson’s software, or simply connect your phone via USB 2.0 to your desktop OS and have it get mounted as FAT32. Both the internal memory and the MSProDuo card get mounted as external drives. You just drag n drop your files in the designated folders and off you go. Except the default 512 MB flash card the phone comes with I also tried successfully a Sandisk 2 GB card. It was a bit slow to copy too many songs via the phone though so I used a USB flash reader instead which proved way faster. Speaking about USB, it would have been nice to have a standard mini-USB port and a normal 2.5″ headphone jack instead of the Fast Port. Additionally, it would have been great if there was a third option to the “connection” menu you get when you connect to the USB cable. In addition to the “file exchange” and “modem functionality”, a “charging only” option would be most welcome.
When in Walkman software you can manage playlists, view mpeg4/3gp videos in fullscreen or listen songs by artist/albums or by song. There is also the ability to use an equalizer which includes some presets, but also lets you set it up manually. I must commend Sony Ericsson for the great sound quality produced by this little machine. I used my high quality 3.5″ Sony headphones (which I usually use with my iPod Mini) and there was a clear distinction between the sound quality in the iPod and in this Walkman phone. The sound of the W810i was far more clear. There was more tremble too. I am left highly impressed. I am seriously thinking of using this phone in “flight” mode as an mp3 player only, simply because of its outstanding battery life and sound quality.
Regarding the 2MP camera, the phone comes with an updated camera UI. It goes to landscape mode immediately after you turn on the camera and there you can select from various options: panorama, burst mode, macro, night mode, self timer, b&w/negative/sepia/solarize effects, white balance options and more. The autofocus truly helps the user take better pictures. A very nice feature indeed. Similar options exist for the video capture mode. The W810i captures video at 176×144 and 128×96 in 3GP format.
The “true” downsides of the phone in my opinion are only the following:
– Netfront 3.3 runs out of memory very easily. It seems that Sony Ericsson did not pre-allocate enough memory for the browser, so usually, Netfront runs out of memory before it has downloaded 30 KBs of data! This means that “real world” web sites are virtually unrendered with this phone. Additionally, Netfront uses a fixed size big font. There is no bold, neither “small size” font sizes supported (there is “zoom” support but during a normal rendering of a site the browser does not utilize different font sizes). The old native browser used in the previous Sony Ericsson phones could do bold and use the system’s variable-size fonts. With the move to Netfront we got JS and CSS support, but these are useless features if the browser runs out of memory so easily (the older browser was liter in terms of memory requirements). On the upside, when Netfront didn’t run out of memory, it rendered the requested pages really fast.
– There is no A2DP/AVRCP Bluetooth profile support. For a walkman phone, this feature is a must-have. We learned that these profiles were not ready when the phone shipped, but are included on all newer SE phones.
– The screen resolution is low for such a cool phone. A QVGA screen would have been much welcomed.
– The internal email client could not read MIME-encoded emails sent via Outlook Express (this is the default setting in OE). It read Uuencoded just fine though, and emails from Gmail and Hotmail also worked fine.
In conclusion, the W810i is one of the best consumer cellphones in the market today. It builds in the legacy of the K750 and W800 and goes beyond its predecessors. If you are into music and you love convergence, this is the phone to get, as its price is right (below $350) and the Memory Stick Pro Duo cards it supports are cheaper and easier to find than the new Memory Stick Micro M2 format found in the new Sony Ericsson phones. Additionally, you will get new firmware upgrades via Sony Ericsson’s SEUS free service, which adds to the convenience of the user. A thumbs up!
Pros:
* Outstanding battery life
* Excellent Walkman software
* Superb, loud & clear audio
* Quad-band GSM with EDGE
* Good 2MP camera with flash
* RSS reader and other extra apps
* Fast browser rendering
Cons:
* Low resolution screen
* No A2DP/AVRCP support
* Netfront runs out of memory all too easily
* Can’t read Outlook Express’ MIME-encoded emails
Overall Rating: 8/10
I have a w600I and I love it.
I also have the w600i, its great but i have trouble getting it to charge sometimes and also have trouble turning it on. Also the limited capacity on the internal memory was a disapointment, seeing as i was looking to use this as my mp3 player after my iPod died and i allready had a 1 gig memorystick duo card. But overall its a great phone,and it looks like the w810 is worth the extra cash.
I have the W810i’s little brother, the W800i. I think the 800 looks better and the lenscover is also a big plus! The real difference is in the sound it produces, the 810 makes a heck of a lot more sound!
The W800i was a great phone in its time, last year. The good things the W810 has over the W800 are the updated software, netfront, the rss app, quadband and EDGE.
Hi guys
Does anybody have ever bought something on this site?
I’ve noticed that they have K610i which I’m interested…
All the dealings I had with them were via the osnews label and not as a direct customer, but they always proved professional to me and very receptive to my suggestions.
Does anyone know if the calendar on that phone supports recurring events (one of the most basic features a calendar can have)?
Yes and no. The recurring feature does not exist in the “Calendar” application but in the “Alarm” application. But then again, the Alarms do show up in Calendar, so I guess it’s the same thing.
So can I input, like, 30 recurring “alarms” with texts like “Amy’s birthday”, “Weekly staff meeting”, etc.? Also, can “alarms” be at a different time than the actual notification (e.g., I’d like to be reminded of the staff meeting 15 minutes before it starts)?
Edited 2006-07-03 18:54
No, you can’t do multiple alarms, only a single one. You can’t set the alarm to go off at a different time than it is supposed to ring (that would defeat the purpose of an alarm). However, you can do that with Appointments in the Calendar. The problem with Appointments though is that it doesn’t support recurring events. So basically, it’s the chicken and the egg problem.
Edited 2006-07-03 18:59
> you can’t do multiple alarms, only a single one.
So they are not a replacement for calendar events. This is fine with me, though, because it works how one would expect an alarm to work.
> The problem with Appointments though is that it doesn’t
> support recurring events.
I can’t fathom how anyone would come up with the incredibly stupid idea of creating a calendar without recurring events. That’s absurd! Almost all my events are recurring (birthdays, weekly meetings, anniversaries, lectures, …).
> So basically, it’s the chicken and the egg problem.
Umm.. no, it isn’t. The alarm function in itself seems fine. It’s the calendar that just really sucks.
I just brought home a new K800i an hour ago. :o)
A 3G phone with one 3,2 Mbit cam, and a second one at the front. The price difference down to the W810i was 400 NOK, or 64 USD. I think it’s worth it, even with a little change in size, and I just got internal 64MB of memory (for now)..
I was thinking of ordering the K800i instead of the W810i for this review, but there were a few things that made me go with the W810i instead:
1. I already had a 2 GB Sandisk Memory Stick Pro Duo card. The K800i takes the new M2 format which is expensive, difficult to find, and not in high-capacity volumes yet.
2. The K800i is not quad-band GSM (important in USA).
3. The K800i does not carry the Walkman software.
4. The W810i has better battery life.
Other than that, the K800i beats the W810i in every other category. InfosyncWorld even posted a review of it today: http://www.infosyncworld.com/reviews/n/6873.html
I agree with most of your points made. It’s indeed a very good phone. Photo’s are very bright and sharp (but depending on circumstances such as light, more than a ‘regular’ digital camera). Sound quality and the included earphones are excellent indeed.
Cons:
– Some ID3-tags are cut off halfway
– Playing MP3 really drains my battery. I came nowhere near 15 hours in normal mode. It only lasts like 8 hours here. Could be due to the 2GB card, though. It seems to eat way more energy than the 512MB one that is included in the package. Otherwise battery lifetime is very good.
– Silent mode is not really silent. Taking a picture while in silent mode still produces sound.
Edited 2006-07-03 19:48
> Silent mode is not really silent. Taking a picture while in silent mode still produces sound.
Well, this is really simple to explain: you therefore cannot covertly take photos. Otherwise it opens up the posibility to perverts and paedophiles.
> > Silent mode is not really silent. Taking a picture while
> > in silent mode still produces sound.
>
> Well, this is really simple to explain: you therefore
> cannot covertly take photos. Otherwise it opens up the
> posibility to perverts and paedophiles.
Now that’s just silly. There are, and always will be, a lot of smaller and better cameras that are silent.
How would you react if you saw shoes that have bells on them? Would you say that it’s simple to explain it as it makes it impossible for criminals to sneak up on people? Of course not, you would just call it insane unless the shoes are meant for an elf or something.
Haha perfect!
I found out that it’s different between phones and I don’t know why. I tested it with four SEs; two 800s en two 810s. Mine (W800i) doesn’t make a shutter sound when in silent mode, the other (from a friend) does. And of the 810s only one of them is really silent, the other does make a shutter sound… I looked at the firmware versions, which were the same, but some other codes were different among the two 800s en 810s…
It depends in what country you bought the phone. For example here in the Netherlands we’ve got pretty loose laws for certain things, but apparently I’m not allowed to make a photograph with my phone without everybody within a radius of fifty meters noticing. If you bought your phone in eg. Hong Kong (if I remember correctly) there are no such issues.
Well, the point is that a telephone is most likely the most carried item. Ask twenty people in public transportation if they carry a telephone and 18 will say yes. Ask twenty people in public transportation if they carry a camera and if you’re lucky if someone does.
Edited 2006-07-04 17:42
> the point is that a telephone is most likely the most
> carried item. Ask twenty people in public transportation
It seems you’re missing the point. We weren’t talking about any random group of people, but of “perverts and paedophiles” who want to take photos covertly. There is no good reason for these people to use a phone-cam instead of a vastly superior small digital camera with a much faster lens, better resolution, better optics and longer zoom.
Granted, there are (very few) people who wouldn’t normally take photos covertly, but might if an exceptionally good opportunity presented itself. Still, this can’t possibly be common enough to warrant making the camera annoying for everyone.
This phone is fairly similar to the W800i, which is basically K750i with different firmware and a slightly different case. Okay, it has 3G, but that is not really a big deal unless you want to watch TV. 3G isn’t all that useful on a phone IMO other than that.
So,
Quad band – not relevant to Europe. GSM is all we need. The fact that it does it is, um, nice for Americans, but poinless for me.
All the buttons you describe are present on the K750i. The “Walkman software” is fairly similar to the software built into the K750i, IIRC the main difference is that it has slightly better control over changing the position of the video.
K750i has a radio. K750i has a memorystick DUO port. K750i has Java. K750i is mountable as a hard drive. K750i has the same camera software – in landscape.
K750i supports 3GP and MPEG4. It’s possible to watch them full screen (though the controls over the playback suck.)
Speaker phone – use the volume control to reduce the speaker’s volume.
Browser: the pages I’ve looked at in the Ericsson browser work fine. As for Netfront: I suspect it’s more about the fact that you have almost identical hardware as the W800i internally. The hardware is simple not updated 🙂 Welcome to Ericsson, reselling the same old tat with new firmware! Woot!
Edited 2006-07-03 20:05
Er, what do you think quad band _is_? It doesn’t have anything to do with CDMA. It simply refers to covering all four frequency bands that are used for GSM networks in various different parts of the world. This is a GSM phone. If you mean “we don’t need quadband here in Europe”, then fine, but say what you mean. Don’t say “GSM is all we need”, because that doesn’t make any sense.
err, last time i checked, W810 do not have 3G…
3G = UMTS or CDMA2000. however it does have EDGE, a speed boost on the good old GSM system (or more correctly, the GPRS data transfer system).
the one surprising thing about W810 is the autofocus. something SE normaly only use on their K (camera) line of phones…
General features
Complete music kit
2 megapixel camera with autofocus
EDGE – fast mobile Internet
E-mail, text and picture messaaging
2 megapixel camera with autofocus
E-mail, text and picture messaging
EDGE – fast mobile Internet
Complete music kit
Weight: 3.5 oz.
Sizes: 100 x 46 x 19.5 mm.
Should anyone warn them about that warn them about that? Yes it’s a very small mistake, but it !does! make an impact..
I just purchased one of these after much research.
– For the price point it can’t be beaten.
– It supports 4Gb Duo cards
– You can buy one with a lifetime warranty at importgsm.com (no I do not work there)
– Google’s Google Maps J2ME client works well on it. There are a few other mapping apps that support maps and GPS in realtime via J2ME app + GPS over bluetooth
– The camera.. I compared many shots with a K800. As far as actual picture quality and artifacts are concerned, the two are almost identical (noise, saturation, color, edge artifacts, etc.)
– The speed of writing to the memory stick using a USB cable and the phone mounted as a drive is extremely slow. Buy a card reader and don’t use the phone.
– This phone works great with Flickr’s ability to email a photo to your flickr email address. You just need to use the file manager and email the photos as attachments (the photos are usually too large for MMS).
– The J2ME benchmarks on the W810 are not so hot. Don’t expect to be playing 3d games, although some do work fairly well.
– The RSS reader allows you to synchronize all your feeds in one shot. This is great if you have 20 feeds and you want something to read before you step on the plane.
– The display is small but it has good clarity and is quite readable WRT RSS feeds etc.
– Getting music and apps onto this phone is way too simple. Plug the memstick into your PC, drag and drop the mp3s and JAR files, and youre done.
– EDGE works great.
If you want a good camera, bluetooth connectivity, mp3 player, expandable storage, solid FM receiver, …. then this is the phone to get. It works well with handheld devices (Nokia 770..?) and supports DUN.
If you want a keyboard and good contacts management then try something else like the W600.
greetings,
does this phone allow me to listen to the radio via bluetooth?
on my current phone (k700i) it is not possible to listen to the radio on a bluetooth headset.
first i need to connect a handsfree with cable as an antenna. then i can only choose between listening to the handsfree or the builtin loudspeaker. can the W810i send the radio to a bluetooth headset?
bengt
Of course not. On most phones, the handsfree is working as an antenna, it is REQUIRED to have it for the FM radio to work. Same on the W810i, you can’t do it via Bluetooth because then the radio has no antenna.
thank you for your answer. i find this lack unfortunate.
btw, i think you might not have fully understood what i meant. i know that the handsfree is working as an antenna. even with the handsfree working as an antenna i can still get the radio from the loadspeaker. so i think it should be possible to get the radio from the bluetooth headset in a similar manner. provided that i keep the handsfree connected, so that it may continue to work as an antenna.
bengt
Phones can only transfer its sound to EITHER the handsfree OR the bluetooth headset. When you have both hooked up, the handsfree takes precendence.
my k700i can transfer its sound to either handsfree, loudspeaker or bluetooth headset. it allows me to choose between all 3 for phone calls, but only between handsfree and loudspeaker for radio.
i had hoped this was a design oversight on the k700i.
i would find it useful to be able to choose between all the possible sound sources (eg handsfree, loudspeaker and bluetooth headset) for radio too.
are there any phones available that gives me this possiblity? or is it true what Eugenia says, and all phones have the same limitation?
bengt
Erm, maybe I am just a bit picky, but I come here for new on open source – so, what exactly is open source in this phone???
Open source? If you’re refering to “OS” in “OS news”, then that means “operating system”, not “open source”.
oops, I didn’t ever realize that. The high rate of information on free OS’es
made me think of OS as Open Source. But right, I should have realized there’s also a lot of info on Windows and Mac.
But also, which doesn’t exactly match with “Operating System” a lot on programming(Languages), GUI Toolkits etc. … whatever, it’s a nice point of information anyway…
Another pro (that all SE phones share) is the ability to navigate with the number pad as opposed to the joystick, which speeds up navigation of menu’s greatly.
That’s probably because some network operators provide a branded version that has this ‘feature’ disabled.
edit: Why can’t I respond to threads, again!? I just can’t believe that the place in the reactions depends on a client side interpretation of some (javascript?) code.
Edited 2006-07-04 17:27
You can disable the camera shutter sound via custom unlock. Here’s one:
http://cellcorner.com/xshp/unlock-phone-codes/remote-unlock-by-cabl…