Sony Ericsson W810i Walkman

...for me now owning a Sony Ericsson w810i mobile phone. I had been using the same phone, a beat up old Nokia, for more than 5 years and needed something new, as the battery had faded so much that it was next to useless. Not owning a digital camera or a portable music player made me turn my attention to the music phones on the market.

I eventually settled on the w810i for a number of reasons. My flatmate had the old k750i, which was a ...
...with its leading "w", the Sony Walkman mp3 player. The shortcut button is easy to get to and the options are well laid out, allowing you to choose between the songs based on song title or by artist. There are minor annoyances in that everything is in the "w" range's bright orange colour and that the ring tones are available on the Walkman as well, which can get in the way, especially when you're playing through tracks rather than ... more

I'm a strange combination of Luddite and skinflint, always reluctant to go for new technology when the old stuff still works fine and is easier to understand and never diving in to buy the latest shiny new gadget just because it is new and shiny and preferring things that do more than one thing, so I don't have to buy more things than absolutely necessary. It is this former that left me without a CD player until the very late 1990s and the latter that caused me to buy a PS2, so I could have a games console and a DVD player in one, rather than buying one of each.

The combination is responsible for me now owning a Sony Ericsson w810i mobile phone. I had been using the same phone, a beat up old Nokia, for more than 5 years and needed something new, as the battery had faded so much that it was next to useless. Not owning a digital camera or a portable music player made me turn my attention to the music phones on the market.

I eventually settled on the w810i for a number of reasons. My flatmate had the old k750i, which was a pretty impressive phone and one I liked the look of. It was certainly more attractive than the rather garish w800i, being black rather than white and orange, and it didn't have the weird looks of some of the new Nokia mobile phones. So, despite having used nothing but Nokia mobiles up until this point, I transferred my allegiance.

If you like your mobile phone to be a fashion statement, then the w810i certainly isn't going to be the one for you. Personally, I want my mobile phone to look like a mobile phone, so that when I'm walking around making a phone call, there's no doubt that's what I'm doing. So this is just a lump of black plastic with a screen at the top, a key pad at the bottom and, as it usually the case these days, a camera lens on the back. There are a couple of extra buttons on the sides to control the camera and the Walkman and some fancy shaped extra buttons, but that's really about it. Unlike a large number of mobile phones on the market these days, it doesn't flip, swivel, slide, fly or make tea. It's small, it's black and it looks like a mobile phone and that's just the way I like it.

What I'm less keen on is that way it all seems put together. Whilst not small by the standards of today's phones, it does feel very small and insubstantial compared to my old four year old Nokia. I was concerned it would slip out of my pocket and I'd not notice, as that happened once with the heavier old one and I was lucky to get it back. Fortunately, the small size means it slips more easily deep into the bottom of my pockets and stays there.

Maybe it's the small size, or maybe it's the weight at only 99 grams, but I have no confidence that if I drop this phone, it's going to bounce. Again, my old Nokia hit the floor regularly, once in the middle of a large puddle, and whilst the cover occasionally came off and it bounced away in several parts, it never stopped working and the bits always went back together. With this phone, it feels that once it gets dropped, that will be the end of it.

I don't much like the battery cover, which is very stiff and difficult to slide off. I don't have any trouble with my hands, but if I did, I should think removal of this cover would be next to impossible. Fortunately, it's not something you're likely to need to remove all that often, but I would prefer to have the option, should the need arise. The screen is large and plastic, which is all very well, but it's this part of the phone that you put to the side of your head on a regular basis and once it starts getting dirty or greasy, it's very difficult to keep clean. The same is true of the camera lens on the back of the phone, which is without any kind of lens cap, unlike on the k750, so if that gets scratched by being in your pocket with your keys or dirty, the picture quality is greatly diminished, although you can clean the camera lens fairly easily with a cotton bud. I don't like the cover to the memory card slot, which is made of flimsy soft plastic on what feels like a weak hinge and which seems quite likely to rip off if you catch it on something.

The accessories aren't too sturdily made, either. The charger, headset and the USB cable which connects to your PC for music and photo transfers end in a plastic bit with insubstantial looking metal connections, which look like they could be easily damaged. So far this hasn't happened with mine, but the fear is there. Even the plug on the charger feels lighter and less solid than a usual plug and this is a cause for concern. I don't much like the earpieces on the headset earphones either, but these are, thankfully, easily switched for your own headphones. Although as the supplied earphones are designed to connect just to the microphone section of the headset cord, to do that does leave you with a huge length of cord which is very easy to get all tangled up and, as these things are, very difficult to undo again. The other bit that annoys me is that they all fit into the same slot, so you can't use the phone with the headphones whilst you've got it on charge and you can't save time by charging it whilst you're downloading music, although it does charge itself a little every time you connect to your PC.

Once you're able to look past the slightly dull and cheap looking exterior, you find that what you have is a phone packed with features and added bits. There are phones with better cameras and this one doesn't offer access to Microsoft software like some or use iTunes as the music player like others. But as an all round package, it does look like one of the best phones on the market.

The menu is nicely set out, with all the options represented pictorially on the screen at once, so you don't have to scroll anywhere to reach any of them. In addition, there is a dedicated Walkman button for direct access to the music player and you can set the centre button to provide shortcuts to the functions you use most often, which I have set to the alarm, my text messages and my phone book. Going through the menu is simple enough, though, with a clear label at the top of the screen telling you which option you're looking at and the pictures clear enough that there is never any doubt which one you're about to select.

The main one of these is the feature the model number proclaims with its leading "w", the Sony Walkman mp3 player. The shortcut button is easy to get to and the options are well laid out, allowing you to choose between the songs based on song title or by artist. There are minor annoyances in that everything is in the "w" range's bright orange colour and that the ring tones are available on the Walkman as well, which can get in the way, especially when you're playing through tracks rather than by albums. Also, if you're using the short cut button to start the Walkman, it defaults to the last track you were playing, regardless of whether it finished or not and no matter what you might have added since.

These minor niggles notwithstanding, the phone is set up to be a remarkably good mp3 player. It is very clear on the screen which songs you are selecting, if a little bright to the eye and it's easy to scroll up and down the lists looking for what you want next. The memory is large enough to hold a decent amount of music and I've had ten full CDs on mine at any one time. Getting those CDs to the phone is pretty easy as well, with the Disc 2 Phone software supplied uploading to the phone from my iTunes faster than I can generally import the songs from the CDs in the first place.

The controls for the Walkman are easy to use, if a little fiddly. Although you can go through the menu at any stage to select, play or stop the music, there are little buttons on the side of the phone to accomplish this. On either side of the screen, near the top, is a volume button on the right hand side, which can also be used to cycle through the tracks if held down and a play/pause button on the left. These enable you to change tracks and volume without removing the phone from your pocket. However, as the two buttons are quite similar in feel, so you have to feel for where the screen is to get the right one. This done, however, it's easy to use. The power the Walkman takes is less than I thought as well, as I can get nearly a week's worth of 90 minute commutes out of it between charges, enough to play all the ten albums I've managed to get uploaded to it between charges.

Sadly, the radio function isn't nearly as good. Unlike the Walkman, which will play through the speakers, the radio requires the headset to be attached as the cord acts as the antenna and the function will not work without it. Even worse, my radio will not pick up anything other than a local FM radio station and refuses to find anything else on the FM dial, even the national stations. Given that I rarely listen to the radio anyway, and much of my music listening is done on the Underground where I wouldn't get a radio signal, this is only a minor loss to me. That said, I would really like to see a radio with a Medium Wave function, so that I could listen to the football on BBS Radio Five Live whilst travelling. Given that very little is on the MW band these days, I somehow doubt that this option will become available in future, either.

The next major feature is the camera, which seems pretty good to me, as someone who has never had a digital camera before. It's only a 2 mega pixel image, which is quite poor in comparison to the current mobile phone cameras, which offer twice that, or more. However, this is impressive when compared against the original digital cameras, which were significantly less. This resolution, combined with a large screen, means you get a very clear image of the picture you're about to take. Unlike the latest breed of Sony Ericsson, however, the w810i does not have the Cybershot function and so you do need to wait for it to focus. Pictures can some out quite blurred if you try to take them before the focus has settled down.

This apart and if you're careful, the pictures come out looking great. My current profile picture was taken on the phone and it's certainly equal in quality to the previous one, which had been taken with a proper digital camera. Taking the pictures is easy, with a shortcut to the camera by pressing the camera button on the top of the phone (or the side, depending which way up you're holding it) and the same button used to take the pictures. The button is quite obvious and easy to press, although it can sometimes take a while to focus and so get the best picture, which can be quite annoying when you're taking pictures of people. As for action shots, this isn't really the best camera for them, as it's a little too slow. There is a zoom function of up to four times, although this is on a separate button, one of the ones used for the Walkman and it isn't as easy to zoom in as it is to take a picture. Unfortunately, there is a lack of control over the zoom and you can either zoom in very quickly and lose the accuracy, or take your time over it and risk losing the shot. The lack of a flash you can control makes things awkward as well, giving you only the choice of having the light on or off when the photo is taken, or selecting the night mode, which gives the picture a slight orange tinge.

There's plenty of room for storage on the phone for pictures. I've taken it on a stag weekend and to a wedding as my only camera and have come back with between fifty and a hundred photos each time, with no warning from the phone that it was running out of memory space. Uploading the pictures to a PC is very easy as well, just connecting the USB cable and it will drop them onto the computer for you automatically. The phone comes with a version of Photoshop as well, so you can manipulate the pictures any way you like afterwards.

The remaining features are useful, although not always entirely impressive. My phone came with a couple of Java based games; the Tetris-like Quadrapop, which is easy to master and gets pretty boring very quickly and JC Does Texas, a kind of flying game which isn't quite as easy, but doesn't have much variation to keep it interesting. These games may vary depending on the network, however, as I have noticed that on other models and they can be added to by downloading new games to the phone, which I am yet to try, having little interest in playing games on my mobile phone. The light, which doesn't work so well as a flash for the camera, is ideal as a torch, so you never need scrabble around for candles when there is a power cut or a fuse blows, as with the phone, you'll be able to find them easily. I wouldn't recommend using it for too long, though, as I wouldn't want to guess how difficult it might be to replace the light and it's pretty hard on the battery.

Many of the other features are pretty standard for mobile phones these days, with a calendar, task lists, and an ability to change your settings. These are generally pretty easy to find through the menus and the phone leads you through what you need to do to change them and in some places, such as when you change the screen brightness, even flashes up some helpful warnings and advice. One feature worthy of mention, however, is the alarm. On my old Nokia, this has a loud piercing alarm sound which never failed to wake me up. On this phone, there is not an equivalent tone, with none of the pre-programmed tones, which are all intended as ring tones after all, being suitable for the purpose. I did try setting one of the songs I had on the phone as the alarm tone, but this didn't work so well either and I found that I had slept through the alarm and had to buy an alarm clock. By itself, this isn't enough to put me off the phone completely, but if you rely on the phone as an alarm, this may not be the model for you.

One other very useful feature is the key lock. Most phones have these now, to stop you dialling numbers whilst the phone is in your pocket, but the w810i also has an automatic key lock. This can be set so that the keys will automatically be locked less than 20 seconds after the phone has been idle. This is an invaluable service for someone who keeps forgetting to lock the key pad on their phone. It can get quite annoying if you're as forgetful as I am, though, and keep putting the phone down before remembering something else you were going to do 20 seconds later and having to unlock the phone again. One thing to watch out for as well is the power save. The phone is set to go to a blank screen after about 30 seconds of non use, but if you have a photo screen saver on there, it does seem to shut down faster than that. When I first owned the phone, I thought it had a fault and was cutting out, as the screen kept going blank, but it was just the power save.

I would not recommend using the phone as a web browser, though. It may be that the T-Mobile web service I use is slower than some, but with this being a GPRS phone and not a 3 G compatible phone, it seems to take ages to get to any pages. If I were on a price plan that allowed free WAP browsing, I might mind this less and if I had a slower internet connection at home than Broadband maybe it wouldn't seem so slow, but it does seem that every page takes forever. I restrict my web browsing to finding out football results when I'm a long way from a TV or the internet otherwise and can't wait to find them. For everything else, the connection is slow enough and expensive enough that I find myself able to be patient.

Whilst the phone itself is pretty drab, it's fully customisable in terms of what's on the screen. You can add any of the photos you have on the phone as wallpaper and a screensaver and any song can be set as a ring tone. Personally, I would recommend both courses of action, as the backgrounds and profiles that came with my phone are a little dull and drab, much like the outside of the phone. However, the total flexibility of setting ring tones means that, if you've got a wide enough taste in music, you can put a really obscure track on that no-one else would have as a ring tone and never mistake someone else's phone ringing for your own. The downside being that if you select a quiet track, it can be quite difficult to hear in a pocket, especially where there's a lot of background noise like on a train, as the speakers aren't all that good. That said, the vibrate alert is pretty good, so you'll nearly always catch that.

Whilst the phone is pretty good as a camera and as a Walkman, I believe that a phone should never lose track of being a phone. Sadly, this is not always the case, with some preferring to be a fashion statement over being a phone and the w810i falls into a similar trap; it wants to be a Walkman more than it wants to be a mobile phone.

Given that it seems to be more popular to send text messages than to make phone calls these days, it's natural that a phone should be better for texting. That is the case here, although given that the w810i isn't terribly good at phone calls, that's not really a surprise. To account for the large screen size without making the phone unwieldy, the actual keys are quite small and this can take some getting used to. If you've got thick stubby fingers like mine, this can make texting a bit of a chore, especially if you're trying to do it quickly, as I find myself frequently hitting the wrong keys. I can't think of a single occasion where I have successfully used the word "tomorrow" in a text message and got it right first time.

In all other respects, sending a message is pretty easy. It's easy to switch between capitals and lower case and to add numbers and punctuation with the press of a button, like most phones. The predictive text can be a bit annoying as it doesn't contain words which seemed quite common to me when I first started using it, although this would probably have been true of any phone, having trained my old one with the words I used the most. It also has an annoying habit of giving strange options after some words, like offering "going" and "goinh" and then remembering typos for ever more, so if you select the wrong one, it will present you with both options. On the plus side of this, it also remembers everyone you've sent a message to previously, so if you go to send a message; it doesn't insist you go through your entire phone book looking for the person you send it to. If you're frequently sending texts to someone called Matt, as I am, who would normally be buried in the middle of all the options, this can speed things up considerably. The other impressive part of this phone is that it saves messages based on size, not by the number of messages. I've had nearly 200 messages in the phone, both in the inbox and outbox, before the phone has warned me I've got a few too many and clearing either a single message or a whole box can be deleted quickly and easily.

As for phone calls, this is far less impressive. Again, the best part is the storage of the numbers you have previously dialled, which is the first thing available from the main screen. Physically dialling a number can be a little trickier, thanks to the small size of the keys, but thanks to the large screen size, the numbers come up in large type, so you can easily see what you're dialling.

Making a call is easy, but it's the quality of the call that lets the phone down. The locations of the speaker and the earpiece are not at all obvious, being built into the phone somewhere. I've discovered that if I hold the phone a certain way, people struggle to hear what I'm saying and a lot of people have commented that they can hear a lot of background noise more clearly than they can hear me. It helps that I'm fairly quietly spoken, but this still shouldn't be the case so much of the time. In terms of hearing people talking to me, the same thing is often true. When I hold the phone a certain way, actually the way that feels more natural to me personally, I can often not hear the person on the other end of the call. When I hold it slightly differently, this problem goes away, but it's often in this position where the person I'm speaking to can't hear me so well. Maybe I just have the wrong sized head for this particular model, but I would like to be both heard and be able to hear when I'm speaking to someone.

I've had to get around this problem by using the hands free kit, which works well as an alternative. Again, I'm not entirely sure which is the best part to speak into, but I've never had any problems using the hands free method of calling. Whilst this is acceptable, I don't like being forced to use a certain method of calling as the norm, preferring to have the choice between all possible methods.

Whether or not to buy this phone really depends on what you're looking for in a mobile phone. If, like me, you were looking for something with multiple uses, particularly as an mp3 player, and you're not looking to make a style statement, then this is not a bad choice. If you're the kind of person who wants their phone to shout out about how cool you are, then this really doesn't make the statement you're hoping it will. For someone who wants this to use for talking and texting on a major scale, this isn't the best phone I've found for either.

On the plus side, as there have been a number of models released since the w810i, with it now being more than 6 months old, it can be obtained for free from the mobile phone networks, if you're taking out a new contract. For something that will act as a camera and mp3 player, this is a remarkable offer. However, this will tie you in to a contract of between one and two years and if you're naturally clumsy or have a habit of losing phones, this really isn't a choice to make as I remain unconvinced of the robustness of the phone or the accessories and far too scared of what might happen to test dropping it on the floor.

Prices on pre-pay for this model are still prohibitively expensive, with prices from £149.99 available. Even on contract, an upgrade can set you back £99.99 or more, which really isn't worth it unless you need both a camera and a mp3 player as well as wanting a more up to date phone. Personally, I'm more than happy at having paid £49.99 for all the technology on this model, especially as my old phone was four years old, making this one look a lot better and fancier than it really is in comparison with today's models.

This certainly isn't the ideal mobile phone for everyone, or maybe even for most people. But it does most things well and the others very well. It's definitely a jack of all trades and master of few kind of phone, but if that suits you in a mobile, as it does me, there'll be few complaints, just the same minor niggles I have. If you cannot live without your mobile phone, however, I would suggest you either find something better or cheaper to live with.  

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