Sony Ericsson W850i / W850  

I had the chances to get my hands on Sony Ericsson's brand new W850i Walkman phone. Some or many of you know, I love Sony Ericsson, that coming from a person who's first phone was a Motorola V300, it means a lot. Through the years, I have played around with a lot of Sony Ericsson's, and let me tell you this, they make amazing phones.

Long story short, I want to come up with a review, to explain how I feel using this phone. Even for those who don't like reading reviews, think that It's just my opinion; I'm trying to help out people with choosing this phone. Also, I know brownmin, one of my close friends has done a review, but I want to take a more in depth approach to this review (with lots of my sexy picstures). Being said my first review, let's get started shall we?

I will be covering many things in this review, from basics, to in-depth, so bare with me as I'm trying to do the best job of explaining this phone to others as this is my first time writing a review, and I'd like to thank Treatz for basing my review off of his style reviews.

I will be covering the following, and more in this review:

• Reception
• Sound Quality
• Camera
• Specs
• Aesthetics
• Gaming
• Walkman / Radio

Reception
Being a Sony Ericsson user, I have experienced a lot of phones with different kind of features, some with great reception, some with poor. But let me tell you this, this phone, is amazing. Screw the 850, it does great without it, when in a basement, no dropped calls, no noise/disruption, everything is knock on wood. So in the evolution of non-850 Sony Ericsson's, this is a great choice.

This phone's reception impressed me a lot. I did a couple tests, outdoors, indoors, and in the basment (best place for you 40 year olds ) The first test I did while walking, great quality, no disruption, no dropped calls, everything was steady and great, even full bars. The next test was indoors, this test was again a great test, very good reception with no problems what so ever. The last test was in the basement, I still got very good reception, almost full bars, and still no problems with dropped calls or distortion, so A+ on the reception part of the W850i.

What I was amazed about, is when compared to the W810i (850 + EDGE), it was on-par with the W850, almost exact reception, and I thought the W850 got even better quality.

If you want a great phone, with great call quality and reception, even though lacking the 850 band, this is a winner

Sound Quality
Incoming - The W850 has great incoming sound, pretty much in-par with other phones, but the W850 seems to be louder than my W810 and K800, which is a good thing for those who are complaining about low sound with they're handsets.

Outgoing - The outgoing sound is good aswell, as this time the mic isn't in front of your mouth, but a bit further. When testings calls, I have found that it's very clear, people can hear me well, and no static/noise/disruption in the calls. I remember recieiving a call from a friend via W600i and for some reason it sounded terrible, like I seriously mean terrible. W600's are known for having great sound, guess that one was a bad apple.

Camera
The camera, well let's keep the details short. The W850 packs a nice 2MP camera; but what's that hybrid? No AF (Auto Focus) or Macro? What gives?

Yes. Sony Ericsson has failed us this time by not incorporating AF, Macro, and Zoom in this lovely handset, but like brownmin said, I'd rather the MP3 over the Camera anyday. But I have a different take on that. Since I love photography, and take beautiful superb shots with camera phone such as my W810 and K800, I would want a camera that atleast has AF, and macro would be even more of a +

But not this phone, so If you want a great camera, W850 will do the job decently, but not as well as K750, W800, W810, etc.

Basically when using the camera, you have all the basic settings (Video Camera, Shoot Mode, Picture Size, Night Mode, Light, Self-Timer, Effects, White Balance, Picture Quality, Shutter Sound, Time and Date, Reset File Number, Save to) But in the W850, you have an option to select the picture size by keypad (by pressing 1 you choose either VGA, 1MP, or 2MP)

like other SE handsets, night mode is toggled by pressing 7, and the light is toggled by pressing *

Here are some examples of pictures taken with the W850:

Aesthetics
This phone is very sexy, yes sexy, you heard me. When you first see this phone, it's amazing, you'll never know it's a slider, and the colour of it is nice too. I like the way they made the chrome back plate when you slide, and the back plate and front, very appealing and sleek looking.

If white just isn't your thing, the phone is available in Precious Black aswell.

Screen
The screen on the W850 is nice, lots of colours, sharp, and visible in sunlight, but not as bright as a W810 or a K800.

Keypad
The keypad is very nice on the W850, though has a nice soft plastic feel to it. When dark, it glows snow white, and on the actual front, when in Walkman mode, all the buttons on the front are lit up orange, when out of Walkman mode, it's snow white. Very nice

What I like the most about the keypad is that is is nice and big, has space inbetween the buttons, so you don't feel that your fingers are being squished like some SE handsets. This keypad is sort of based on the W810/W300 keypad, but nicer, I find it comfortable when text messaging or dialing numbers

The front keypad is very nice. It is different, no joystick, or d-pad, but sort of a nice touch keypad. I like how you don't have to squeeze so hard to break the phone, and that's it's not too sensitive; I also like how it's been made sort of the K800, with the back, C, web, and shortcut buttons. Most of all I find great is the Walkman button, instead of the usual orange W symbol, the W850 has a orange line that lights up, when pressed it activates Walkman mode and then the whole front keypad lights orange, very nice.

Menu
Ah, the traditional standard menu. This menu is basically the same through the newer Sony Ericsson's. If you know how to use one Sony Ericsson, you'll now how to use the rest (except the UIQ phones that is )

The W850 has two themes, the standard "Walkman" theme, and a theme called "Grouped". The theme called Grouped is sort of the W810 equivalent of Orbit, a very nice flash menu that rotates when under a sub-category and make the vibrate everything changed.

I have had some time to explore through the W850, and have found some features I have not seen on other handsets. But I won't spoil that and get to it later.

SMS
I'm going to have to quote Treatz on this, as he is totally correct.

Originally Posted by Treatz: SE, quite simply is The king of T9 sms.
SE T9 rules the roost for ease of use. It allows custom words, it allows custom alphanumberic words, IE, Z500, 6230b GSM850. It has a list of words as you're typing which can be turned off if you don't like it. It guesses the word even if you're not done writing it, IE, I type Snowe and SonyEricsson pops up because I've saved it in the dictionary. It has the ability for you to go into your custom dictionary and see the words you've entered and delete some that you no longer want or need which is amazing for when you slip while entering a custom word and enter it wrong, like Fidm instead of Fido... whoops!! The SE SMS system is the smartest, easiest, most powerfull SMS system that I have EVER used. Ever.

What else I have found great about some recent SE phones is the availability of sending SMS's in the background (sending an SMS, then pressing back until the front screen, with the message still being sent, not canceled )

Build Quality
The W850 has a nice build, knock on wood. Not one of those sliders that you barely touch and it's already open, but a great solid slider.

Gaming
Lot's of MP3's, yeah you'll listen to them, but what else is great? Games! Yes games, the great thing about them, is that they're still JAVA based games, the bad thing; 240x320. Meaning If you've previously owned a K750/W800/W810, you'll have to find new games to fit a new resolution, unless you want them to look weird.

There are 3 games that come stock with the W850. Juiced, QuadraPop, and Treasure Towers. These are ok, but I only wish SE's would come preloaded with more better games, not saying racing cars isn't fun

Basically it's the same way playing games, not much has changed. What I like though, is the Bluetooth multiplayer games, for K800 users who have done this, you'll know what I mean. F-U... N? Yeah, it's plenty of fun.

Walkman / Radio
Another Walkman phone. Well it does the basic things of playing songs; but taken to another level. This Walkman UI I like, it makes me want to use the phone to listen to songs rather than using an MP3 player. Let me tell you, the new Walkman UI is very nice. Featuring a new way to browse your media, being able to have album art in your songs are pretty cool, a definite +

like other Walkman phones, the W850 supports MP3 and AAC file formats.

The sound on this phone is great, the speaker is amazing! Crisp, clear, and LOUD sound.

The W850 comes with HPM-70's, probably the best earbud's I've ever used, and a 3.5mm adaptor incase you don't want the awesome earbuds, (i.e. using headphones)

What I did notice in the W850, is that no longer does it have Videos in the Walkman mode. I think that now they realized Walkman = Music, and Videos =/= Music. Eh? But who cares about videos? Back to music shall we.

What I like most about this W850, is like a funlight type of keypad, where like I've stated before, when in Walkman mode, the front keypad lights up orange. But let's take this to another level. Sony Ericsson has made a new feature, it is called Light Effects. What does this do you ask? Well, here is an animated .GIF of what it does, pretty cool.

It basically strobes by the pattern of the music, even though the screen won't be on all the time, it's pretty cool for the 10 seconds it lasts

Also what's new with the W850 Walkman interface, is a new way to browse through music; from a nice sleek menu.

Another feature that I haven't seen on other SE handset's, is the new TrackID feature. This feature allows you to identify music from either the FM radio, or an external music source, and it sends it over the internet, and then you'll recieve the song title, artist, and album name, if available.

Pretty cool new feature, but don't want to test it out because I don't have a data account, and does want to pay extra monies.

The radio. The radio has stayed the same, pretty much old boring radio but just looks nicer, supports Stereo sound, RDS, and AF.

Ratings