This little gem is my latest in what is becoming a long line of Sony Ericsson phones. Mr Sony Ericson the 1st was my W800i and we had a ball together, I pushed his buttons he vibrated in my pocket we got along great, until tragedy (puts hands up starts dancing remembers who sang it and stops) struck and Mr S E went diving in the PIQ’s sink. He kind of teetered on the edge of working; his back light slowly fading to nothing, but then the condensation set in and he was a goner, all I thought was lost, but I had insured his little life and so along came Mr SonyEricson the 2nd in the name of the W810i practically the same phone with just some updated features…I was truly happy again, we took photographs and made videos together, he vibrated in my pocket, my fingers danced over his little buttons as I kept my nearest and dearest abreast of my life, passed on jokes and occasionally spoke to people…Until….
I first saw him on the net, small, sleek, gorgeous, a whole gig of memory for my tunes, I knew I had to have him as soon as my contract with Mr SE 2nd was up.. and here he is…
*Was it worth the swap?*
This phone has all the good things that Sony
Ericsson phones have going for them in terms of being packed with features which I’ll go into more depth about shortly; but all this is packed into a phone that is only 10mm in depth, just over 10cm long and weighs in at a mere 71grams. Yet it feels just as robust as any other phone I’ve had.
Drop test? Hoping not to try that one, but as it’s so little it fits snugly anywhere I’ve put it so far, including my purse!! Oh and well I was listening to the mp3 player whilst wearing my bikini the other day and I thought, now where to put it….course, stick it the top of my bikini bottoms, now now before you shout at me it was in the leg section against my thigh!! Sheesh!!
**Features** Menu/Navigation The menu on the W880i differs slightly from the others as it has a ‘homepage’ I checked the Sony Ericcson site and this is not how it is portrayed there, it shows the standard buttons and a shortcuts button, so, my homepage menu is something that has been provided by my network and the manual (yes, I read and understood) tells me that this menu could be slightly different depending on which network and subscription. I am with orange and this is MY phone so…
With Orange you will get a list down the right hand side of shortcuts, (although they aren’t really very short, depending on whereabouts on this menu you are heading for) this menu unlike the navigation button cannot really be changed, there is an option to change the menu from ‘consumer’ to ‘professional’ where you can change the content of one area but this is right at the bottom so going via the main menu button isn’t any slower. My favourite area, “messaging” is towards the bottom so to get to my blank text using this menu I have to press 5, yes 5! buttons, going by the standard menu button its only 4! Ok not that much different but think of the wear and tear on my fingers with that extra key press when I send 100 texts a day!!
Begrudgingly, although I didn’t really take to it at first and pinned for being able to change the 4 shortcuts on the navigation button, (this menu only leaves you the choice of changing the left and right buttons) I am kind of getting to like it, it has a VIP contacts list allowing quicker access to five of your favourite people to either video call or message, and the messaging icon does tell you how many new messages are in your inbox. There is also an events button where the menu button used to be which lists all your recent texts and calls and you can access them quickly that way, which is good too. So although you can ditch this menu, I’m prepared to let it stay a while.
*Memory* The phone itself has a 16mb memory and the good thing about this phone is your text messages are stored here rather than on the memory card so the amount of music, video and pics you store does not affect the amount of texts you can store, at the last count I had 210 stored on mine, all telling me I’m gorgeous of course!!
The phone then has an extra 1gb of storage capability on the memory card, and so far on there I have: 6 albums, about a dozen dodgy photos and couple of videos with a further 412mb left for me to fill
*Camera* The camera it has to be said isn’t quite as good as on the W810i the macro setting has disappeared and due to the size of the phone there is no light, so if you are looking for a better camera then the cybershot would probably be a better bet. Sony Ericsson seem to either put everything into the camera or the Walkman, I chose the Walkman and the camera will suffice. It’s still 2mega pixel and always in my hand ready for those priceless moments of capturing kids mid tant thus ensuring said picture is around to include in their 18th birthday celebrations.
*Walkman* The walkman now includes a music store and in some case a track ID feature that allows you to send a few bars of a song over the phone, which then searches the web and sends you a text giving you the song details…cooool!!
Your music is very easily downloaded to your phone via the disc2phone software and I am pleased to see that the software has been updated and whereas in the past if you chose to download from c:/my music each track would be stored in a separate file making your phone storage messy and having to create a playlist in order to put the album back together, this has now been sorted so you can either pop a cd into your computer and let the software convert and download, or download albums you have already stored. Just like any mp3 player it will show you the artist, album and song title either on the Walkman or if you chose to minimise the screen it will scroll across the main screen, I like that!
*And the rest* Navigating the menus is straightforward enough, and there is a demo tour and information/help key with useful tips.
You can do all the usual stuff like setting a theme, use what is on your mp3 player as ring tones, or message tones, (people really like my Insomia one it makes me want to dance wherever I am!). and you can use video ringtones as well on this model if you wish.
There are five alarms to get you up in the morning, you can chose the tune and include text and pictures too, mine says get up you lazy sod, and my picture is of a sack to remind me what will happen if I don’t get to work on time!!
You can make yourself a ‘to do’ list and an alarm will remind you, you have not done what it was you had to do; you can make yourself notes to remind you what you mustn’t forget too, although the only downside to this feature is if you want to view the note on your screen (which lets face it, is the only way your going to remember you put a note on there in the first place), you have to switch the ‘hompage’ menu off first – bit daft but I guess you can’t have it all. The calendar works the way of all phone calendars, put appointment, place time etc on set alarm, alarm goes off to remind you – job done!!
You can of course browse the web, oh and the W880i has 3G capabilities so you can video call, yay, don’t know anyone else with a video phone though, boo!
I must mention welcome back to the option of having the time in standby so you don’t have to keep lighting the phone up to see if you have a new message, I loved this feature on the W800i and really missed it on the W810 so I’m over the moon to see it on this model.
The phone also comes with a software suite so you can synchronise phone and computer, adobe photo album to put your pics in, file manager for easy moving of files hither and thither and quicktime player to view your vids.
So, as I started off saying was it worth the swap? Yes I love it it does everything I want it too yet it is small and as perfectly formed as it’s owner so I am a very happy bunny, but my only word of advice if you fancy one yourself, go and try one out where you can try the keypad, the buttons are not so much buttons as little oblong sticks for want of a better description, they stand quite proud of the keypad and take some getting used to, I am used to doing the two thumb text thing and only realised how much I use my nail tips rather than my actual thumbs to type, so I am having to readjust to this, also with the phone being so slim the two thumb approach means there is less to grip. I have very petite dainty little thumbs so the small size of the keys isn’t a problem however if you have large fingers I suspect you may well struggle to hit one key instead of a whole row.
Mr Sony Ericsson the 3rd however is a welcome little friend in my pocket or bikini leg and he’ll be sticking around for about…oh 18 months I think!! xx
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
the primary use of a mobile phone is as a phone!!!! gosh someone is showing their age :-)
Averilla 25.01.2008 23:50
Sorry but I sort of forgot it was a phone you were talking about. What about reception on the phone and battery life etc ? Let me know if you add these and I will re-rate, sorry but for me the most important things about a phone are these, the extra features should be secondary. Av
Jun 15th, 2007
exceptional by (23%):
very helpful by (75%):
somewhat helpful by (1%):
