Sony Ericsson W850i Walkman > Reviews (148)

I got this phone as part of my contract with Carphone Warehouse. Jonny's got the older version and has had Sony Erricsons before so I knew from him that Sony Erricson phones are a reliable brand. Something which is essential for me as I have had bad experiences with Motorola and LG phones in the past. The W850i is one of their walkman phones and so amongst other features it has a pretty good walkman. I'm a big on my music so getting this phone saved me from replacing my broken MP3 player, bargain!!!

According to the Sony Ericsson website their Walkman phones have recieved numerous awards. The W850i itself earned the company awards for #1 Hot Buy from "Stuff", Best music phone from "What Mobile Awards", Best for Music from "FHM" and "T3's" Most Wanted award. Not bad eh!

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Looks, Availability and Price
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Well its a pretty stylish phone. It is a little bit bigger and thicker than the sleek LG shine and Razrs of the world but those phones don't have so many great features and from personal experience, the looks don't exactly last either. Now this phone is 9months old and still looks brand new. That's despite been literally thrown at Jonny's head, droped out of the bathroom window onto a pile of bricks and kept in my pockets with keys...do you wonder why I needed a hard nut for a phone?
It's one of those slidey-upey phones which apparently is more reliable than flip phones as the ribbon isn't put under as much strain. I prefer these slidey phones as they're easier to open and close and they don't look huge when they're open either. One thing is that mine has started to wobble ever so slightly but it's barely noticable and hasn't caused any problems really.

As far as price goes you can get this phone from amazon for around £130 locked to a network or £200 unlocked to all networks. Or you can just do what I did and get recommended by a mate who's on dialaphone so that they get a £40 bonus and you get a free phone and a Nintendo DS Wey Hey!!!

This is still a fairly new phone and therefore it's still stocked in most of the high street shops and online. So you have the option of shopping around for the best deals.

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What's in the box
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Your new shiny phone, 3.6v battery, charger, earphones, a USB cable with the cd thingy to put into your PC and a 1GB "Sony memory stick duo pro" which is absolutely essential as the phone's internal memory is very limited by all the cool features. You can also buy extra memory cards if you want. Unfortunately the phone will only accept Sony's memory sticks and these are expensive. For example a 4GB one will cost you £35 from amazon. Not worth it when you can make room on the memory card by transferring unused but still wanted photos and tracks to your PC.

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Features
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You will be glad to know that I'm not going to go into great detail about every single little feature. Take my word for it that the usual stuff is just that...Usual. The phonebook stores loads of contacts, you can use photos for your wallpaper and screensaver dah da dah so do I really need to elaborate any further?

Walkman version 2.0. This is the main feature of all these walkman phones. All you do is press the orange button at the bottom of the screen and it opens up your walkman without having to go through the menu. You can sort all your tracks into playlists and go from there or just play randomly from your stored files. If you want to send a text or something then you can back out and the music will keep playing until you tell it to stop.
The sound quality is brilliant for a phone. The speakers are quite loud really and pretty clear. As with most phones the bass is deffinately lacking but it's still alot better than anything myself or my mates have had previously.

TrackID program. This is a pretty cool feature which will identify and name a track that you play to it. Just click the button to start recording a track that you're listening to and the phone will record for about 20seconds. Then it will search through a database for a match which only takes about two minuites and then up pops the title, artist and album. You can't download the track to your phone which is a bit poor but at least you get all the details and can download it from napster or something like that. The only drawback with this program is that it tends to struggle with anything that's not mainstreem music. I tried to get the details of a Speed Garage track off one of my Niche CD's and it came back with Sesame Street so I tried again and got something to do with Speak N' Spell??? Never mind!

Face Warp Program. This is found in the applications part of the phone. Baisically what you do is take a picture of somebody's face and the program will twist and mishape their picture. This has been the cause of more entertainment than the xbox! Every time I feel like I need a laugh all I have to do is look at the funny pictures it comes up with!!!

2MegaPixel Camera. This camera is pretty good but not the best Ive seen. It's got loads of different options like a light and a video camera. The pictures are clear and sharp without any blur which is good but there is no zoom feature in the photos bit, only on the video camera??? The video camera itself is pretty bog standard quality. The videos aren't jumpy or blury and the microphone picks up sounds pretty well.

Video DJ. Using this feature you can string several Video clips and sounds together to make a mini movie. It's pretty awkward to get used to but once you've mastered it, it's great for boring journeys.

3G for video calling. This is becoming a much more useful feature of new mobile phones, as nearly every new phone has it. Baisically if you and your mate have 3G then you can make a video call and talk through the speaker phone. The camera for this is located at the top of the screen and gives a pretty good picture depending on the signal strength. The picture is sometimes a bit blurry and jumpy when the signal is low but I get a good reception in my area so it's not usually a problem.

FM Radio. You need to have the earphones plugged in for this and bear in mind that you can't recieve or make phone calls or texts whilst using this function.

Again the sound quality and reception are both great but because I tend to miss phone calls It's not something that I use often.

As with alot of new phones you can put it into "Flight mode". This means that whilst you are on an aeroplane you can use all the features of your phone that do not need to use a signal. So everything but calling, messaging or internet services baisically.

There are also the usual WAP, Bluetooth, predictive text, MMS, infrared, Java games, polyphonic ringtones, alarm clock etc. If I was going to write about all the features then I would be here all week so let's just say that besides what I've mentioned, all the standard features are there.

There is also Email and RSS feeds, (current news feeds), features. Neither of which I have used so I can't comment but they're there if you want them.

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Mumbo Jumbo stuff that you may want to know.
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screen 262,144-colour TFT or 240x320 pixel
Phone Size 98 x 47 x 21 mm / 3.8 x 1.8 x 0.8 inches
Phone weight 116 g / 4.1 oz
The battery will give you up to 370 hours standby time and up to 9 hours of talk time.
The phone's internal memory is limited due to the many features. Mine says that it has 12MB free which is plenty for your phone's contacts and whatever else gets stored there.

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How is it to Use?
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There then I think I've said everything I want to say about the features. Moving on to ease of use. Well I've never had a Sony Ericsson before so I can tell you from a newbie's point of view that this phone is simple and self explanatory. With the exceptions of typing you can access and use most features by using the soft keys without opening the phone. Some of the features like the video DJ take a bit of getting used to but it's not really all that difficult.

One nutoriously awkward feature for everyone I know is the dictionary. The predictive text normally gets turned straight off with me but I actually found this one benificial and a time saver!!! The dictionary contains just about everything in the English Language. If you use text language and it can't find the word you are looking for then the "spell word" option comes up for you to teach your phone how to spell your way. Unlike with my Razr the dictionary actually remembers new words, how novel!!!

One drawback is that the keylock feature is a bit of a boob. All you have to do to unlock the phone is press the two soft keys in succession. This is something that my pockets mastered in no time at all and I've often pulled out my phone to find it accessing the internet! Twice now it has downloaded two video clips which cost me 35p each the swine. I think it's a ploy by the manufacturers to earn them more money!!!

Other than that slight problem everything is great. The menus are easy to navigate and the features are by and large self explanatory.

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That's All Folks!
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So all in all I am rather happy with my phone. Yes it's not the best looking out there but it's alot more durable than those fashion phones. The walkman feature is brilliant and the 1GB memory stick stores loads of photos and music. It says in the manual that it will store up to 1000 songs! Anyway even if you do run out of memory it's easy to transfer unused files onto a PC so you will never have to delete those dodgy pictures that you love to keep! I would recomend this phone and it gets 5 stars from me because the many many benifits and unique features far outweigh the drawbacks of not having a super duper camera any day!