 Just
as Nokia have decided to enter the flip-phone market, rivals Sony
have decided that the time is right to produce a slide phone that is
as practical as it is pretty. So what exactly is so special about
Sony Ericsson’s decision to enter the corner of the market dominated
by Samsung so long?
Well, first of all, everything. Samsung’s D500 started off the craze
initially (a phone still amazingly popular even though it was
discontinued at Christmas) and apart from the recent D900, no
Samsung phone has come close to being as popular.
One of Samsung’s main appeals is the onboard memory of its handsets.
The D500 had around 80MB, the E900 has the same and the D900 has
70MB – the latter two are also expandable with microSD cards (512MB
being available for as little as £20 in some places). Sony’s Walkman
handset comes with 16MB of onboard memory…and a 1GB memory card to
sweeten the deal. This amount of memory is staggering and makes the
Walkman phone good enough to be used solely as a Walkman.
In terms of design, the Sony Ericsson W850i is a nice compact size;
measuring up at 98 x 47 x 21mm and weighing in at 116 grams, the new
Walkman is only marginally heaver than the previous W810i and nearly
the same size when closed. The phone has a nice rounded finish and
sits nicely in the palm of your hand. The phone then slides to
reveal a laser engraved Walkman logo on the back, with nice,
easy-to-manage buttons on the front. The 262k TFT colour screen also
means that the phone has a nice sharp picture, meaning that photos
taken on the handset look fantastic.
Speaking of cameras, 2 megapixels are almost standard on phones
these days, and the W850i is no exception. Clearly determined to
separate the CyberShot and Walkman brands, Sony have steered clear
of a 3.2 megapixel camera on their latest offering. This is no
particular disadvantage though because Sony still have the superior
experience in camera phones thanks to the fact that Sony were
designing cameras long before they bought out Ericsson and started
designing phones. Only Nokia have managed to come close to the
camera quality offered by a Sony Ericsson phone through their
partnership with Carl Zeiss, however can’t offer any of the
usability that Sony can. So top marks again.
 After
complaints from all corners of the globe about the joystick on the
K750i, Sony have decided not to recall it to the Walkman brand. Only
the W800i featured a joystick and I can honestly say that the
decision to scrap it for the W810i was a good one. The directional
keypad on the Sony is fantastic for navigating both through the
phone and through the 1000 songs which can be transferred via the
included USB cable onto the memory card. A nice touch is the long
orange button on the front of the handset which glows and activates
the Walkman feature when pressed. The navigation buttons also light
up and can be enabled to ‘pulse’ along with the music.
Speaking of music, the built-in FM radio features a nifty little
option called TrackID. This means that if a song comes on the radio
that you don’t know, simply record a few seconds and submit it to
the system. TrackID will come back within a few seconds with
accurate information regarding artist, track title and album.
Obviously the only draw-back with this is that a WAP connection is
required and can become quite expensive if you hear a few songs you
don’t know.
So all-in-all, a fantastic handset from Sony Ericsson, who have once
again come up tops with a remarkably featured handset for a very
good price. However with the W830i scheduled for a 2006 release
date, the W850i could well end up finding itself pushed down the
popularity chart in favour of its 3G-less brother.
Review by - Scott Goodacre
Published - 30/10/2006
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