Sony Ericsson W760i

...but being that its a Sony (my preferred brand) and the spec. that was listed on the website (plus I, of course, made a quick search online including on Ciao for other reviews and saw no real red flags on that front), I was happy to 'take the plunge'.

Now ive used it for a few months perhaps this is a better time to review it, although I will say that I bought it mainly for the camera function, there are a number of features it has which ...
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The Sony Ericsson W760i is quite feature packed, which may surprise you given the compact size and look of it. It works by pressing and holding down the circular 'end call' button, it should vibrate within 5-10 seconds to indicate it recognises that your asking to switch it on and then it shows the Sony Ericsson logo, after 10 seconds your given a screen where you tell it whether to start up in normal mode or in flight mode (flight ... more

- Introduction -

I had been meaning to type up a review on my phone for some time but alas I haven't felt very motivated to type up new reviews lately, so this is a few months later. I originally bought it on boxing day, after browsing on the Argos website for sales bargains. I admit it was very much an impulse buy but being that its a Sony (my preferred brand) and the spec. that was listed on the website (plus I, of course, made a quick search online including on Ciao for other reviews and saw no real red flags on that front), I was happy to 'take the plunge'.

Now ive used it for a few months perhaps this is a better time to review it, although I will say that I bought it mainly for the camera function, there are a number of features it has which I have either hardly used or simply haven't used, as I have no real need for them, so I can't comment thoroughly on every aspect of it but I'll gladly explain what it offers and how well it works given my own experience of it. Now on with the review...

- Features/Basic Operation -

The Sony Ericsson W760i is quite feature packed, which may surprise you given the compact size and look of it. It works by pressing and holding down the circular 'end call' button, it should vibrate within 5-10 seconds to indicate it recognises that your asking to switch it on and then it shows the Sony Ericsson logo, after 10 seconds your given a screen where you tell it whether to start up in normal mode or in flight mode (flight mode presumably disabling some functions that could clash with certain electronics on a flight), you make your choice using the sort of scroll wheel type circular buttons in the middle of the phone and then press the middle button (with the play/pause icon), then it should start up in again about 5-10 seconds. My one is on the O2 network, so I see an O2 background and then press the same button again to load the main menu.

The main menu shows an array of icons representing the main features the phone offers. These include

* Messaging - you can send text messages, either basic text only messages or SMS (picture messages) or there's also an option for email, though I haven't set that up personally. One nifty feature available when you send a text message, however, is the ability to copy and paste text, which I've used before and found pretty useful. Say you start out typing out a message and then think oh no, ive worded that the wrong way, well you can highlight the text, then select copy and then clear it from the screen, put the cursor where you want to move it to and then select paste (from the options menu) and it'll move the text there, so thats a fairly worthwhile/useful feature.

* Camera - You can take digital still photos or record video clips. The in built digital camera can be found by sliding the phone up (its a slider phone, by pushing the top of the 'lid' of it, the phone number buttons appear and if you turn the phone over, you see the small camera lens behind, next to where it says '3.2 megapixel' which is the cameras maximum resolution). There are a nice range of options within the camera section, including the ability to change the shoot mode, adjust the picture size, set it to night mode, use a self timer (im not sure there's much point in that, where could you prop it up so it wouldn't fall over? a camera phone tripod?), there's also an option for white balance, effects, picture quality (either 'fine' or 'normal', ive always used it set to 'fine'), shutter sound (you can choose from four, some are quite fun) and so on. If you have the camera set to camcorder/video mode you get other options, such as video length, microphone settings (whether its on or not) and so on.

* Walkman - You can listen to MP3 files on this phone. Looking at the circular button I already mentioned in the middle of the main part of the phone, you'll find the main audio navigation buttons. By that I mean the play and stop, fast forward and rewind buttons. The volume can be quite loud and the quality isn't bad. Given that the phone is branded with the famous Walkman logo, you'd expect it to be quite good for playing back music and the sample clips it comes with shows off that ability quite well, though I have to say I don't use it for playing music really, I have a dedicated Sony Walkman MP3 player I use for that, ironically. I have tested it and it sounds quite good though. You do get a hands free set with the unit too, so you can use that to listen to any music without disturbing people around you too. The phone has a built in expandable memory card slot, it takes M2 memory cards and my one came with a 2gb card free of charge, so that would give you room to import a good number of tracks, at least maybe 10 albums or so's worth? (depending on what else you might want to put onto the memory card that is), not bad!

* The internet - Yes you can access websites/pages using the mobile internet, although the screen is fairly small for this (well the screen is about average sized for a mobile phone but compared to a laptop or even netbook the screen for viewing webpages on is pretty tiny!). You can add bookmarks and that sort of thing too, like on regular browsers/computers.

* Organiser (or organizer, of course it has the US English spelling) - this consists of a number of small options, again ive hardly used these but for reference it includes - a calendar, a tasks sections (you can add either a task which is typed out like a text message, or a phone call as a task), alarms (so you can get it to sound an alarm at a certain time to remind you to do something, I believe, there are 5 alarms offered), a timer, stopwatch, calculator and file manager, where you can view all the files currently on your phone or all the files held just on the inserted memory card and you can sort these files by file name, date, file type or file size. You can also view the status of your memory card here, so you can see how much space is left both on your built in phone memory and in your memory card uh space.

* Entertainment - This section includes apps (which seems to be quite a trendy term to use, ala iPhone adverts and such like) such as a radio function (you need the hands free to use this though as the cord acts as the radio antenna), TrackID which should identify the song your listening to, a record sound feature/option, a few DJ apps (VideoDJ, PhotoDJ and MusicDJ), these are Sony apps which let you edit video, photo and music files and also there's a section for games that are built into the phone. There are 7 built in games, including quite a big name game, 'Need for Speed ProStreet', other game names include Asteroids, Extreme Air Snowboarding and Rollercoaster Rush 3D. The games seem to be made by digital chocolate, if that means anything to anyone(?). The graphics aren't too bad, they are a bit blocky but the games are quite easy to get to grips with, which is something I appreciate, having never been a fan of complicated games myself lol, so im happy with them. The music can get a bit annoying but you can turn the sound off, so thats a plus too haha.

* Location services - It does say in the phones manual that the phone is able to use some GPRS (global satellite positioning) functions, which can be accessed through the 'location services' option on the menu. Here you'll find 'tracker', 'my favourites', 'status info', 'log' and 'settings'. I can't really comment on this set of features as I know that these particular features are (please correct me if im wrong but I have read this online and its warned in the manual that this may be the case too) disabled for pay as you go customers, certainly on the O2 network and quite possibly on other networks too. I don't have a phone contract since I dont make enough calls or send enough texts for it to be worth it, I barely use £10 worth of credit a month, so, it doesn't really make any difference to me but its perhaps worth knowing that the phone does have this function built into it anyway.

* Other basic features - Now onto lesser features. This phone also has the following -

- Bluetooth connectivity
- USB connectivity (the phone comes with a USB lead and its quite quick to transfer data from the phone/memory card to my laptop)
- Speed dial (9 number options)
- Divert call option
- Display options (you can change the wallpaper, main menu layout, screensaver etc.)
- Sounds and alerts (you can use ringtones or video ringtones apparently. You can select any MP3 track you have on the memory card as a ringtone, so you could create your own ringtone on your computer, upload it to the memory card as an .mp3 file and then select it as a ringtone through the appropriate menu, if your so clever or inclined lol)

Also on the internet when I researched the phone for about an hour before I purchased it *ahem* well I did say it was quite an impulse buy, normally I'd spend at least a day researching items of such a price but oh well lol, it claims that this phone is quad band, meaning that it should work in the US and not just in Europe. A tri band phone will work in the UK and Europe and quad band phones should work in the US too, possible other countries, im not 100% sure. I also believe its 3G compliant too, though the phones menus say nothing to confirm that but I believe that is the case too...

- My Experiences -

- General

Yes, well this is the main part of the review really. I felt that obviously it would only make sense to start out by explaining what the phone offers and I hope I've done that well enough but you can always go to google and search for it by its model number if you want that sort of information in more detail.

Well as I say I bought this phone on boxing day so ive had it for just over three months and I've used it make voice calls, send and receive text messages, to take literally 100s of photos and a few video files and to surf the mobile internet (which stung me credit wise, I don't think ill bother using that much in the future, its cheaper doing that at home on my laptop lol).

My main bug bear with this phone, which I really wanted to warn people of, is the middle button in the sort of circular button thing that ive mentioned already, in the middle of the phone when its not fully opened up to reveal the number keys (the button with a play/stop icon on it). Its just too small really and its happened too many times for my liking that I'll press it, as it is the main button to use to select functions and ill wait and it'll take a few seconds to process and then it shoots ahead of the option I wanted to select. I think the buttons on this sort of circular part of the phone, their just too many and their too close together. This isn't to say that it never works but if im out and about and spot something I want to take a photo of and I rush to select the camera or to navigate the menu, its happened multiple times that the cursor has hot past the option I want, which, trust me, does get frustrating! I do, however, like how much quicker it is to process photos and videos once recorded/taken, compared to my old phone, which seemed to take almost a minute after a photo had been taken, before it would let me take another pic. I can't say im the most patient of person and this is one thing I really wanted from my new phone, a phone that would take better quality pics and vids quicker. It does take a few seconds to process but its alot quicker than my old phone (if anyones interested my old phone was an O2 X4).

- Camera quality

As far as the camera quality is concerned, well its not a dedicated camera itself, it is of course primarily a phone, so I didn't expect it to be brilliant quality but a step up from my old phones camera quality was hoped for. My old phone offered 1.2 megapixels as the highest resolution and this phone offers 3.2 megapixels as the highest resolution, though you cant send photos in such high resolution through picture messaging or zoom in at that resolution but you can just generally take pics at that resolution and upload them to your computer later on using USB and the quality difference I'd say is there, it is better but only fairly marginally. I think it can produce sharper, clearer photos but only really if you take photos in daylight and if you don't have a shaky hand, if you know what I mean. I don't think there would be much difference if I compared it to other similar camera phones offering this resolution really, at a guess. I'm attaching some photos I took using it to this review, you can judge for yourself what you think about the quality of the camera, the photos may have been resized to fit Ciaos settings but you should get a rough idea of the quality it offers. If you want brilliant photos then obviously invest in a stand alone camera but I do like to have a phone with a semi decent camera, so that I can always take a pic when im out about about as I don't always have my camera and batteries to hand but I always keep my phone with me, or most of the time anyway.

- Battery life

The battery life is quite good, so far it lasts quite a few hours before its down even half way as far as the battery life logo goes, its lasted over a day without being charged, which I think is fine. If you use the Walkman features or camera alot then I'd imagine the battery life will be dramatically reduced but so far im perfectly happy with the battery life of this phone, it suits me for my purposes fine. One thing I've always wished is that phones, like cars and computers and everything else, would use standardised buttons and steps to complete general tasks, like when your texting, this phone uses different buttons to load different options and at first it confused the what-nots out of me lol the star button meaning something different on this phone than it meant on my old phone, however having read the manual and trying it out a few times, I got used to it. It just takes a bit of trying out and getting used to, really, like most such items.

- Display screen/phone size in general

I like that the screen/display uses a good proportion of the phones size, in that given the phone is quite small and compact (it should easily fit in an average sized jacket pocket), the screen uses a good amount of the space it takes up (if you know what I mean), so its not tiny, I don't get a headache from trying to read what it says, infact the text is very clear and visible, so thats a plus. The whole phone, to give you an idea of its size, fits snugly into the palm of my hand, so its not a big brick and its not a small, fiddly or awkward device either. I also like that when you slide it up to reveal the phone number keypad, the number buttons themselves are quite large and easy to use, so you don't have the problem with the buttons being too squashed together unlike with the other buttons on the front of the phone.

- Memory card slot

The phone comes with an expandable memory slot and it accepts M2 type memory cards. The one I got from Argos came with a 2gb M2 card, which I thought was very generous! more than enough space for a mobile phone, hence why ive taken so many photos to make good use of this card lol anyway it can be found at the top of the phone. It is a bit fiddly to use as its quite thin and there's a protective flap you have to move out the way before pressing down on the card for it to eject.

- Conclusions -

Ok so what else can I say? its a phone with plenty of features in it, most of which to be realistic I quite possible won't use but some of them are quite handy and I enjoy using the camera, even if it doesn't offer the same picture quality as you'd get with a dedicated digital camera. The phone has a nice display and the copy/paste text option within text messages is handy. Voice calls are easy to make and I've not had any real issues with it, it is perhaps a little slow to boot up/start up initially but its quite quick to process pics and videos, alot moreso than my old phone was, so thats good. The only real nuisance factor ive found with the phone is the buttons on the main front of it in the circle shape, as I say, their too close together and the phone can be a few seconds slow to load your rquest and then it thinks you pressed the wrong button and selects the wrong screen, which can be really frustrating if your in a hurry to load something, to text or call someone but that doesn't happen all the time, it must just be when im busy and rushing so im more prone to press the wrong button by mistake I suppose. I think they should maybe re-design that element of the phone as it does annoy me but that is about the only down side of the phone in my opinion.

I got this phone with the 2gb memory card, hands free earphones, USB cable, CD, mains charger and manual for about £90 in the Argos new year sales, whereas before then it retailed for about £129.99, so I think I got a fair bargain, especially with the memory card thrown in. It is rather boring in black colour but you can get it in a number of other colours I believe, have a look at the manufacturers website or elsewhere if your interested in the choice of colours but I think it was worth it to have saved £30-£40, even if I am stuck with a boring handset colour.

Its not the best phone in the world but it offers a pretty comprehensive list of useful features which should satisfy quite a few people, from taking pretty decent photos (in daylight) and offering mp3 playback, to text and picture messaging options and the mobile internet, plus all the other features, its not a bad choice of phone for anyone wanting a decent mobile. Its a good size and it offers a good range of options, so, if your looking for a new phone then I'd say have a look at this one, just be careful when using the aforementioned buttons!

I hope you found my review useful, thanks for any and all r/r/c's. I may also post this on Dooyoo UK under the same username, IzzyS. 

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