Use the W850i as an FM radio

If you fancy a chance from the music you've been playing on its Walkman or just need the latest news, the Sony Ericsson W850i features an FM radio.

If you want to listen to the radio, you’ll need to use the headphone cable provided with the handset as it doubles up as the FM aerial. Insert this into the connector at the bottom of the phone and a little headphones icon will appear at the top of the screen.

To turn on the radio, starting from the standby screen, press the centre button to enter the main menu. Scroll down and right to highlight the Radio icon and press Select (Figure 1) (tip: you can also enter the main menu and press 9).

The Search button will scan through and find channels automatically (Figure 2), but you can manually enter a station by pressing More, then highlighting Set frequency, entering the frequency (without the decimal point, so 95.8 would simply be 9-5-8) and pressing Select.

Even though you need to have the headphone cable attached to use the radio, you can still turn the internal speaker on. Go to More again and select Turn on speaker when you don’t want to use headphones (Figure 3).

You can continue to use other phone functions without exiting the radio function by pressing More, then highlighting Minimize and pressing Select.

Preset channels
To save a station that you’re listening to as a preset channel, press More when the frequency is visible in the radio, highlight Save and click Select (Figure 4). Scroll down the list of preset channels until you come to a line reading [Empty] (Figure 5).

Click Insert and the channel will be added to the list of presets. The W850i has room for 20 preset channels.

To give a channel a logical name in the channels list, rather than a frequency, click More from the radio control panel, highlight Channels and click Select (Figure 6). Highlight the name of the channel to rename, click More, highlight Rename and click Select (Figure 7). Enter a new name using the keypad, click OK and you’ll see your new channel name listed in the Channels list.

To listen to a preset channel, either use the up and down navigation keys to scroll through the channels (the number appears in the box at the top right of the screen) or press the corresponding number on the keypad, although this only applies to channels 1-9.

To remove a preset channel, from the radio control panel click More, highlight Channels and click Select. Highlight the channel you want to delete and click More. Highlight Delete and click Select. Confirm the deletion by clicking Yes (Figure 8).