Sony Ericsson W850i Walkman > Reviews (148)

Following on from my horrendous experience with the Benq Siemens EL71 I was hoping that I was in for better luck with my next choice of phone. I decided that I was going to upgrade my contract and go 3G (so I could have decent net access on my laptop) and also get the phone I'd originally wanted - the Sony Ericsson W850i. Was this worth the buyout fee of my contract? Read on....

Basically what the SE W850i tries to be is a decent MP3 player combined with a mobile phone and something approaching a digital camera. Well it also has an attempt at being a video iPod too - strange but true. SE know though that the main competition at the moment is in the MP3 and music market so that's where they've aimed.

The phone looks pretty nice. Being a slider it's fairly short when 'closed' and measures just 4" high (6" or so when 'open') about 2" wide and less than an inch deep. It's black with orange details on it and there is a little orange bar under the screen that acts as a quick button to the media playerapplication when pressed if the phone is open or the keys are unlocked. Side on there are a couple of small silver buttons that raise the volume and activate the camera. If you look at the back then you have a small speaker with silver decals and the camera lenses. I'm pretty crap at describing phones, but I've had a try. As far as I'm aware there are no fascias for the phone, but I've seen 'crystal' protectors for the phone that clip on to the phone and they do work decently. The idea is that if you drop the phone then the protector cracks and acts as a shock absorber.

On a side note the phone is a bit of a brick by modern standards. It's not the biggest I've seen, but it is quite deep so you do know you've got the phone with you. I think that the vast majority of this depth is because it's a slider and you also need somewhere to pop the Memory Stick Duo (which goes into a slot at the top of the handset).

The phone memory is also expandable to 2Gb which means you can throw a lot of music, images and video clips on the phone. The format, as I've mentioned, is Memory Stick Duo. This is the same format that is used in Sony's Playstaion Portable so if you have a PSP then you can use the memory cards in the phone. MS Duo aren't the cheapest cards though if you want to buy an official Sony one. It will set you back around £22 in the right places for a Sandisk version.

So looking decent and having an expandable memory doesn't make a great phone. Is it really any good? Let's start with the media player.

As media players go it does everything you'd expect. It plays music in both the 'handsfree' mode (with the earphones in) or as a normal player through the loudspeaker. The loudspeaker isn't going to allow you to create a wall of sound, but it does a better job than most other phones. Headphones wise it's pretty good and a nice feature is that the handsfree kit allows you to pull out the ear pieces that come with it and pop in your own headphones as long as they have a standard 3.

5mm jack. The added advantage of this is if you have a 3.5mm male to male extension you can wire the phone into a speaker system (if you don't want to shell out for the official speakers). You can set up playlists (although I must admit that I haven't read the manual to figure how to do this :o) ).

You can also play videos on the phone and as the memory stick is 1Gb and the screen size is 240 x 320, if you're technically savvy you can encode full videos. For around a 90 minute film you're looking at around 90mb, but this is using the 3GP codec and you need to have an encoder that supports 3GP (I'd recommend ImToo MPEG Encoder). Watching videos on that small a screen for an extended period of time isn't great and you can end up squinting, but it's great if you're desperate and likely to get bored.

There is also an FM radio on the phone. This requires the handsfree kit to be in as it uses the handsfree kit as an antennae. The radio can either be listened to with either the headphones or on loudspeaker if you fancy that. The radio has a couple of cool functions like flicking to mono if the reception is bad, telling you what station you're tuned into (and being able to save the frequency) as well as something called RDS (radio data service which allows the phone to change frequency to the best automatically).

The camera on the phone is pretty nifty. It's 2 megapixel and I can state that it outputs some pretty decent pictures for a camera on a phone. I've took some decent shots with this camera and although the flash is little more than a light and doesn't really help matters if you need a decent flash. The phone does have an application that allows you to use the light as a small torch or to flash an SOS sequence in morse code. I thought this was a pretty call feature and a good way of attracting attention if you need it.

Call wise it's pretty crisp and as it's 3G it also supports video calling. Video calling has always been a hit and miss affair as far as I'm concerned and you can end up with the audio desynching with picture (and still no busty women ringing me up wearing French maids outfits either :( ). The phone book allows you to add birthdays, notes, addresses (both physical, email and web), pictures which are pretty standard as well as setting an individual ringtone for the contact.

The SMS function allows you to send SMS, MMS, Email and RSS!?! These are pretty standard functions with exception of RSS. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and allows you to get feeds from sites like blog and news sites. I'd be wary of using this though as it does class as data and you will be charged for data access as opposed to SMS (at least with Orange you do).

Other functions in the phone are games and entertainment. The games and entertainment have games (obviously) as well as things like photoDJ and videoDJ which allow you to mess around with the videos and pictures on your phone. You also have the bog standard suites like sound recorder, memos and a small personal organiser.

The bluetooth application is fun as it allows you to do all manner of PC related jiggery pokery such as control your mouse with bluetooth and control media player. This is fun if you're wanting to use a PC in your bedroom, but can't be bothered getting out of bed. My friends call this "the lazy b*stard" function, but it's still kind of neat :).

Interface wise it's a doddle. You basically press the menu button, get the little icons up and then navigate around the screen. If you're unsure what a function does you can simply tap the right select button

Now you may be in for a surprise when you turn the phone on. You get asked do you want phone mode or flight mode. Phone mode is your basic phone, but flight mode is a kind of restricted phone feature. SE know that a lot of people are using this phone as a media player and they've allowed a profile where the phone can be used without sending the plane you're on plummeting to the ground by interfering with the sensitive equipment on the plane. Some functions such as the radio and making calls and sending SMS and data are turned off, but this is the whole point of the profile.

With this phone you get a 1Gb MS Duo card and a data cable (needed to transfer music to the phone if you don't have bluetooth) as well as the handsfree kit and a driver disk for your PC. Now this is one of my bug bears with this phone. Sony Ericsson make absolutely pants phone software. While the synch software is better than the SE software I had with my K700i it still lacks if you want to transfer applications and games you've downloaded to your own PC. I'd recommend Float's Mobile Agent (google it) which is a far more powerful application. You will need to read the documentation with it to get it set up right, but once it's done it's a lot better than the SE software.

The USB cable, when installed, allows you to also use the phone as a modem. This means that you can then access the internet on your laptop or PC. Remember that this means that you have to pay data charges for this, but you may be able to get some bandwidth deals of your mobile phone provider.

One problem I've always had is battery time. The battery time on this is excellent. I watched a couple of 90 minute films with the screen brightness turned up and the battery had a small dent in it. The media player and radio hardly take anything up and the standby time and talk time is also pretty good.

My main niggle with this phone is the fact that the D-pad has the quit to main screen button too close to it so if you have fingers that aren't really accurate and you're playing games then it can be to easy to jump out of it by mistake.

Overall this phone is excellent and SE show us how a phone with an integrated media player should be done. I can't help but wonder whether it was in response to Apple's iPhone that they started on this series, but I can guarantee that I'm unlikely to be changing my phone soon.