Sony Ericsson W8

Overview

Best music phone of its time

Sony is famous for its Walkman phones with high quality sound and playback experience. Sony Ericsson W8 is a phone, which does not have many ‘phone’ features but excels in sound quality.

Sony W8 Design and Build Quality

Look wise this phone tops the charts. It looks modern, stylish, and highly desirable. Available in vibrant colours such as Azure, Orange, and Red, the phone catches the eye at the first glance. The phone’s body is entirely made of plastic and is easy to hold in hand. The screen is scratch resistant but the colours on the screen are not so good. The phone weighs only 104 grams and feels comfortable in an average hand. If you have large hands then you will have some problems in handling the phone. The dimensions of the phone are 99 x 54 x 15 mm. The phone’s battery lasted comfortably with 6 hours of operations.

User Interface and Comfort to Use Sony W8

The phone has a 3-inch TFT capacitive touchscreen, which is of very good quality. However, the colours on the touchscreen, which are supposed to be 16M, do not seem to be. There is a slight yellow tint on the surface, which lends a warm tone to the entire display. Backlighting is not very effective. The phone runs on Android software Éclair. The phone has 128MB of internal storage and 168 MB of RAM and has room for external memory up to 16GB using a SD card slot. The processor is 600 MHz the phones processor is average at its best. The home screen has only one widget but subsequent screens can have any number widgets that you desire. The UI of the phone is quite intuitive.

Telephony and Phonebook

The phone has unlimited address book and call log facility with options of voice dialling and multiple contacts per number. The phone supports both 2G and 3G networks, which can be used for calls and internet. Being a Walkman phone, Sony Ericsson W8 has very good call quality.

Messaging and Emails

The phone has SMS, MMS and Email, Push email and IM capabilities. Threaded view of messages is possible.

Gallery, Photo Viewer and Video Player

The photo viewer of the phone does not have many features but just a basic photo viewer. The video player on the phone plays MPEG format videos and for other formats you will have to download an app. It can play videos up to 800x480 resolution that looks good on its screen. Watching long movies is definitely not a pleasure.

Sony W8 Music Player and FM Radio

Great expectations are there from the music on this phone and it fills up to 80% of those expectations. The phone comes with premium earphones, which are very useful if you want to have full music experience. You can sort music by artist an album name and create playlists and search in it. The FM radio is quick to latch on signals.

Sony W8 Camera and Image Quality

The phone lacks in many areas when it comes to the picture quality. The phone has a basic 3.15MP camera with no flash or autofocus. Taking night time pictures from this phone is a pointless exercise. Geo tagging is one feature that is available with the phone. The image quality is OK and close up pictures tend to be blurry. The phone does not have a secondary camera.

Video Camera and Video Quality

The phone records basic VGA videos @30fps. The recorded videos look satisfying on the phone but when transferred on PC they are highly unwatchable.

Sony W8 Connectivity Options

Wi-Fi, GPRS, Bluetooth, USB, and 2G are some of the connectivity features available on the phone.

Organiser and other utility tools

The phone has basic utility tools such as organiser, alarm, calendar, clock, and voice memo. These can be accessed from the phone screen.

Web Browser and Applications

The phone’s built in browser supports Adobe flash, pinch to zoom and JAVA. The phone comes preloaded with applications like Facebook, Gmail, Google, YouTube, and Google talk. The internet browsing speed is very good in both Wi-Fi and 3G.

Google Maps and GPS

The phone has inbuilt accelerometer, proximity sensor, compass and GPS. The GPS latches in few seconds and Google map searches are very fast.

Distinctive Features of Sony W8

The phone has the ability to search the web and recommend the user similar tracks to the one they are listening to and even play them back using the YouTube app.

Value for Money

The phone is prices at INR 9500 (approx., may vary) in the Indian market, which is a reasonable price considering it is an entry-level phone.

Verdict

The good points of the phone include a surprisingly smooth processor, good audio quality, and good GPS. The negative points of the phone include poor camera, old OS, and average battery life. The phone ears 3 stars out of 5 from us.