Sony Ericsson W850i review

Sony Ericsson unveiled upgraded Walkman software and introduced its first slider phone in one fell swoop with the W850i, a powerful and versatile 3G mobile packed with cool features.

The danger of sliders is that the sliding mechanisms themselves can be the weakest point, with the spring mechanism wearing looser as time goes on. There’s little danger of this with the W850i though, it’s a heavy-duty unit with a solid feel, made even more solid by the tiny indentations on the back of the handset which add extra grip.

The impressive array of eight buttons on the front of the closed phone means you can call your contacts, adjust the phone’s configuration settings, visit bookmarked web pages and use that all-important music player without having to use the slider.

As well as the standard selection keys used to activate primary functions and unearth further tasks via the ubiquitous ‘More’ key, there are four small hotkeys (back, cancel, internet and shortcuts) and a solid four-way navigation pad. This follows the phone’s sturdy design ethic, which certainly makes the W850i feel more solid but means every press of a nav key has to be quite deliberate.

Under the slider, the keypad is just as solid. Every key press requires a healthy click to register, making texting at speed nigh on impossible.

The Walkman is of course the main selling point of this phone, and the W850i’s outer keypad features a thin orange button under the familiar ‘W’ logo. Press this and you’re taken into Walkman mode, with the music player appearing on the 240x320-pixel screen and the Walkman button and navigation pad illuminating in orange. A solid silver bar directly above the Walkman button means it’s not that easy to press accidentally either.

The Walkman software is easy to use – all your uploaded music is categorised by artist and album, and you can create your own playlists. To find a song, artist or album you want to listen to, just use the navigation keys to scroll through the hierarchy until you reach the song, artist or album you want to listen to. The phone’s own speaker is a little tinny, but the W850i comes with a good pair of branded in-ear headphones that double up as a hands-free set.

The Walkman’s five-channel equalizer features an impressive set of pre-set options, but if you really like your music full-bodied, switch to Mega Bass for an impressive sonic boom. The phone’s built-in 16MB memory is hardly enough for more than a few photos and a ringtone, but the 1GB Memory Stick Duo card that comes with the W850i makes it a worthy mobile jukebox.

The W850i also boasts an FM radio with room for 20 preset channels and access to TrackID, an ingenious song recognition system that samples a few seconds of any song playing on the radio and comes back to you with the artist and title. TrackID can also be used to identify songs you might hear on any loudspeaker system.

The W850i is equipped with a 2-megapixel camera, tastefully worked into the rear fascia and activated by a camera button on the side of the phone. It boasts night mode, a bright (if somewhat redundant) LED flash and a self-timer. You can set brightness and colour modes before taking a photo, and the PhotoDJ utility lets you adjust the balance, contrast and brightness of saved photos.

There’s also a red eye removal filter, and a range of ‘fun’ tools that let you add clipart and frames to photos. Still photos can be captured at 2MP, 1MP or 640x480 sizes, although the video capture mode is restricted to the 176x144-pixel format.

The W850i is a feature-packed phone in a modern format. The dedicated Walkman features makes is as good a music player as any phones available today, and the 1GB memory card means you can take a few hundred songs around with you without losing any pocket real estate. The rugged design of the phone will see it comfortably though the contract, although the heavy-duty nav keys and trackpad may mean your thumbs don’t last that long.

Sony Ericsson W850i technical specifications.