Sony Ericsson W850i

The W850i Walkman phone is the first 3G slider in the range. The phone includes a 2 inch QVGA 260k colour screen and a 2 megapixel digital camera with 4x digital zoom as well as 1Gb Memory Stick Pro and 30 hours music playback.

Our Sony Ericsson W850i Review

Sony Ericsson W850i Sony Ericsson have produced some of the best phones on the market this year and the W850i is one of the top sellers. Thoroughly deserving its Walkman branding the W850i is one of the best music phones available.

With a standard 64Mb internal memory expandible to 1Gb (free on some contracts), USB connection and a very high quality pair of stereo headphones Sony Ericsson have made sure the phone can match up to all but the most expensive of MP3 players. The memory is expandable thanks to the hot swappable Memory Stick PRO Duo in case 1Gb is not enough for your vast music collection.

As you would expect from a high end Sony Ericsson the handset is very well designed and looks great. The phone is available in a choice of either precious black or golden white and can be transformed with a series of Style Up covers available separately.

The screen is very clear and measures 240 x 320 pixels (the same as the Sony Ericsson camara phones). It can be customised with background pictures and themes which alter how the menu is displayed. Navigaton of the various functions is very intuitive with a powerful icon driven menu and a nice tabbed feature allowing easy movement through the sub menus.

Obviously the main feature of the W850i is the music player and it certainly lives up to expectations. The player runs on the Sony Walkman 2.0 platform and is extremely user friendly. The 3G internet connection allows users to navigate directly to the Sony online music store to download and stream tracks very quickly. An integrated FM radio with high end features including RDS to display the station name on the screen as you listen. The screen can also cleverly display a selection of sports results, weather forcasts and news headlines in addition to the track details as you listen. The innovative TrackID feature allows you to record a few seconds of a song from the radio and, using some integrated song recognition software, look up the name of the track, the artists name and album name at the click of a button.

As well as the standard MP3 formats the W850i supports polyphonic ringtones and ACC formats. A useful and very addictive MusicDJ feature allows ou to create new ringtones with a variety of built in sounds and instruments. Sony have also included a PlayNow feature so you can try Java games and listen to track before you buy them. As you would expect from a Walkman the W850i has a powerful Mega Bass feature to give rich quality sound and a great listening experience.

Despite being filled with music player software there is still room for a good quality 2 megapixel digital camera with 4x digital zoom in the Sony Ericsson W850i. Although there is no flash the built in light is almost as good and allows you to take great photos in the darkest of locations. With 1Gb of memory the video recorder can store huge amounts of film which can be edited to include a soundtrack and spliced into other clips using the professional quality VideoDJ software.

Face to face video calling is made possible thanks to the 3G connections and a secondary VGA camera located above the main screen. If you need to use the phone in your car the handsfree speakerphone gives clear sound and allows you to have a full conversation without touching the handset.

Like other high end Sony Ericsson phones the W850i has an RSS feed reader so you can keep up to date with your favourite news.. Other features include Bluetooth, USB connection and infra red.

With a power hungry MP3 player and a large amount of storage space you may expect the “850i to have a poor battery life but it will outlast most mid range phones by a considerable margin. With 9 hours of talk time and 400 hours of standby time you won’t need to charge more than twice a week at worst.

Weighing in at 116 grams and measuring 98 x 47 x 21 mm the phone is surprisingly small considering the specification. The handset supports SMS, MMS and email messaging so you can send photos, voice clips and songs to your freinds

Another good feature common to the high end Sony Ericsson phones is a flight safe mode. This allows you to listen to music and play games on your phone during a flight without worrying about airline restrictions. This feature is also useful in hospitals and other mobile phone free zones.

As you expect with a top of the range phone all the features available on mid range phones are also included such as icon driven phone book, calendar, alarm clock, stopwatch, timer and file manager.

If you are looking for a music phone then the Sony Ericsson W850i is a fantastic phone to buy.