Sony Ericsson W880i review

The Sony Ericsson W880i is a significant piece of engineering that makes you realise just how quickly phone technology and design have advanced in recent years.

It's a proper 3G phone with more than 1GB of memory and has two built-in cameras - one a 2 megapixel camera for normal use and a VGA one for video-calls (if and when any UK operator allows it). Yet all this technology is crammed into a tiny 103mm by 47mm by 9.4mm package that is narrower than a standard CD jewel case.

When you first pick it up it's apparent that the Apple iPod was not far from the Sony designers thoughts when they drafted the W880i. The phone has a brushed steel fascia and a rubberized rear casing and sides. The net effect is to create a feeling of solidity that belies the phone's ultra-slim form factor and light weight. It feels more substantial than Samsung's rather plasticky ultra-slim handsets but at the same time it will still slip into a tailored shirt pocket without spoiling the lines of the garment. So on the instant wow scale the Sony Ericsson certainly earns a 10.

The 262,144 colour TFT screen is on the small size - emphasized by its rather redundant 5mm wide black frame - but its 240 x 320 pixel resolution and bright backlight make it very easy on the eye. It seems that Sony's designers also kept an eye on the iPod when it came to the interface design and typeface, as the overall visual impression is one of elegance and legibility. The operating system is also pleasingly responsive.

The phone's W prefix indicates this is a designated Walkman phone and the handset comes bundled with a 1GB Memory Stick Micro card and the Walkman 2.0 player software. There is also support for stereo Bluetooth headphones for those who really want to impress their mates.

However the phone still uses Sony's rather flatfooted Disc2Phone software so transferring music to the phone is much less slick than Apple's iTunes automatic synchronisation. The transfer itself was also rather slow despite the USB 2.0 connnection, taking about 5 minutes an album. (Of course if you have a PC that can write to the memory card the process is much zippier).

More worryingly we couldn't get the Walkman software to view the files we transferred to the phone's memory card. You could still play them by either using the File manager or creating a playlist and adding the tracks - but the standard Artist/Album browse mode in the Walkman software stubbornly refused to find them. Sony insists that this is a bug with our phone and will supply us with a replacement - we'll update you on this when that happens.

(Update: Sony Ericsson did supply us with a replacement and it worked perfectly in this respect. So if your W880i has problems detecting music files demand a new handset).

When you could get to play the songs, the sound quality through the supplied headphones was fine. In particular the maximum volume of the W880i didn't seem to be capped like current iPods (as a means to prevent ear damage, apparently). Inevitably music played through the built-in speaker was sibilant and lacked bass - but as this mode is only ever used by dribbling Chavs on the bus we can forgive Sony this minor sonic lapse.

One music feature worth noting is the W880i's bundled TrackID music recognition software. This has now been promoted to a perch on the main menu and deservedly so - it works like a dream. If you hear a song you don't recognise just boot up TrackID and sample 10 seconds of the tune. In moments the W880i will have checked the sample against an database of over 2 million songs and provided you with the artist, album and track details.

We tested TrackID in a variety of environments, from a crowded pub to a quiet room, and presented it with a wide range of songs and we found it to be 100% successful. It really is magical and a great boon to music buffs whose entire evenings out are often spoiled by vain attempts to put a name to the tune on the jukebox that played hours before.

The W880i also includes a 2.0 megapixel camera but the lack of a flash or autofocus means that it should only really be used outdoors. But we found that pictures taken in decent sunlight came out rather well - certainly on a par with an entry-level digital camera. Video performance was adequate - delivering 176x144 3GP movies at 10 frames per second.

The W880i's phone performance is well up to Sony's traditional standards but with two main caveats. The first is the size of the keys on the keypad - they really are tiny, like metallic grains of rice. People who have normal or chubby fingers will find texting suddenly becomes a very exact process on the W880i - requiring both mental concentration and digital dexterity. The main navigation buttons are also unforgiving - which is a real shame as the OS is otherwise very responsive.

The other drawback we found in practice is the battery life. We simply couldn't get anywhere near Sony's declared specification of 425 hours standby time (that's 18 days, for Heaven's sake - get real Mr Sony!). Our review model would give up the ghost after just three days of moderate usage of the media player and camera - it's definitely a phone that you would religiously charge every night to keep your mind at rest.

But these niggles - though annoying - are more than outweighed by the Sony Ericsson W880's stunning design and feature set. Sony have obviously set out to beat Apple at their own design-led game and they have near as dammit nailed it.

In the W880i Sony has created a shiny, tiny object that will inspire as much craving as any iPod. And that is praise indeed. An early contender for the best phone of 2007.

Sony Ericsson W880i technical specifications