Ben
12th December 2005, 11:30 PM
Well, it has been a good 10 days since I received my W900i, and the ride has been impressively smooth. Infact, the smoothness would probably convince these guys (http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/S/spacecadets/) that they've been blasted into space.
The handset is now in general retail, thanks to Vodafone offering their exclusive white version, and you can tell. I've had a good few SIM-Free handsets in excess of a month before launch, and all of them have had, what can I call them, 'peculiarities' that I've endured for the phones life. I have a 7210 to this day that crashes if I access the gallery using a certain path, but hey, I love the thing! The W900i, however, hasn't crashed once, has turned itself off once (though I have no idea why - someone else was playing with it at the time...) and has completed every task I have requested of it without complaint. Now come on folks, that's quite an achievement!
I've set my W900i to prompt me to check for updates when I switch it on. To date it hasn't found anything, which I'd expect, but I'll let you know when it does actually pick something up. Currently my firmware version is, erm, "R5AC011 prgCXC1250252_CHINA_SA" - yeah. As per usual, you access this menu via > *
Using the Walkman has been a real joy. Anyone who has tried to use their Nokia handset as an MP3 player, especially with the supplied headphones, will have found the quality disappointing and the phones ability to multitask pretty dismal. Well, this is certainly not the case with the W900i. You'll have to get used to brief pauses in your music to allow for message alerts etc to be played, and obviously to take calls, but texting, browsing and otherwise using the phone while you're listening to your favourite groove has been nothing short of perfection for me. I've set my own settings on the EQ and the result is audio perfect for my tastes. The loudspeaker is usable, and loud enough for me to listen to music while I'm in the shower. Well done Sony.
The Camera has also been an absolute joy. As a Sony Cybershot DSC-P200 user the W900i has a definite familiarity about it. The whole camera has to be used in landscape mode with the swivel folded away, basically looking like any reasonable compact camera. Snapping in normal mode is quick, but noise levels due to the inherent small lense in all cameraphones at the moment quickly adds to noise in low light. Night mode is superb, but you could find yourself waiting around five seconds for the capture to happen. If you're not good at fake smiles then you'd best get practicing! :)
So, there we have it really. Camera and Walkman all in one. This is a very impressive converged device. Add album art and a larger lense (not to mention optical zoom) and it'd be spot on. But wait a second, this thing is also a phone. Oh yeah!
In-call quality is lovely, can't fault that. I think it's actually a little better than the 6680 but that's really due to the positioning of the speaker on the 6680 being displaced by the camera. I've not had any complaints from the folk on the other end of the line about being able to here me, so I can assume that's all A OK. The phonebook is typical Sony Ericsson and very usable, quickly populating itself from Outlook without any fuss. Generally installation was pretty faultless, though I did need to restart before my PC would pick it up. I'm liking that I can plug in the USB cable and access both the phone memory and memory card as individual disk drives, but I'm not liking so much that I have to wait for the phone to restart in 'file transfer mode' before that can happen. One nice touch is being prompted whether you want the phone in music or phone mode when you turn it on - so you don't need to worry about firing this baby up on a plane.
Vodafone Live! works beautifully, though as this is now a released handset on Vodafone that is to be expected. Vodafone TV is absolutely exceptional. It works flawlessly. Unlike on the 6680 the W900i can switch to full screen mode without needing to stop playback, always nice, and tracks downloaded from Vodafone's music archive also play back well and sound convincing.
Other nice touches include showing the exact battery level in percent when you press one of the volume keys while the phone is showing the main screen. It also shows free memory and the date. Neat.
The one thing you're going to battle with if you buy this, though, is the opening mechanism. Boy is it lucky that you can use a good deal of the functionality without opening the thing. If you owned an S700i then I daresay you'll love it as the assisted opening is definitely a help, but if, like me, you're used to candybars then this'll be a challenge. For the first 7 or so days I ended up firing the thing out of my hands on several occaisions - there's a real knack to opening it up (it's now upside down) and 'tossing' it back to the right-way-up! It does, however, look incredibly cool when you pull it off ;)
I can also safely say that you'll all hate the buttons. The ones on the front all feel tacky with the only exception being the central play/pause key. The numeric keys are recessed too far and made out of the same naff materials used on the outer keys. Sony have always used weird materials (I had Aibo accessories made from vegetable plastics that actually melted when left in close proximity to a radiator one night...), but this is like the interior of a BMW 1 Series! I don't know what makes established manufacturers think they can use such plastics, but there we go.
That's all for the mo - more coming soon with some more live pictures. All in all I have to say that you wont be disappointed with this handset. It's an excellent 3G device, but it's not small!
The handset is now in general retail, thanks to Vodafone offering their exclusive white version, and you can tell. I've had a good few SIM-Free handsets in excess of a month before launch, and all of them have had, what can I call them, 'peculiarities' that I've endured for the phones life. I have a 7210 to this day that crashes if I access the gallery using a certain path, but hey, I love the thing! The W900i, however, hasn't crashed once, has turned itself off once (though I have no idea why - someone else was playing with it at the time...) and has completed every task I have requested of it without complaint. Now come on folks, that's quite an achievement!
I've set my W900i to prompt me to check for updates when I switch it on. To date it hasn't found anything, which I'd expect, but I'll let you know when it does actually pick something up. Currently my firmware version is, erm, "R5AC011 prgCXC1250252_CHINA_SA" - yeah. As per usual, you access this menu via > *
Using the Walkman has been a real joy. Anyone who has tried to use their Nokia handset as an MP3 player, especially with the supplied headphones, will have found the quality disappointing and the phones ability to multitask pretty dismal. Well, this is certainly not the case with the W900i. You'll have to get used to brief pauses in your music to allow for message alerts etc to be played, and obviously to take calls, but texting, browsing and otherwise using the phone while you're listening to your favourite groove has been nothing short of perfection for me. I've set my own settings on the EQ and the result is audio perfect for my tastes. The loudspeaker is usable, and loud enough for me to listen to music while I'm in the shower. Well done Sony.
The Camera has also been an absolute joy. As a Sony Cybershot DSC-P200 user the W900i has a definite familiarity about it. The whole camera has to be used in landscape mode with the swivel folded away, basically looking like any reasonable compact camera. Snapping in normal mode is quick, but noise levels due to the inherent small lense in all cameraphones at the moment quickly adds to noise in low light. Night mode is superb, but you could find yourself waiting around five seconds for the capture to happen. If you're not good at fake smiles then you'd best get practicing! :)
So, there we have it really. Camera and Walkman all in one. This is a very impressive converged device. Add album art and a larger lense (not to mention optical zoom) and it'd be spot on. But wait a second, this thing is also a phone. Oh yeah!
In-call quality is lovely, can't fault that. I think it's actually a little better than the 6680 but that's really due to the positioning of the speaker on the 6680 being displaced by the camera. I've not had any complaints from the folk on the other end of the line about being able to here me, so I can assume that's all A OK. The phonebook is typical Sony Ericsson and very usable, quickly populating itself from Outlook without any fuss. Generally installation was pretty faultless, though I did need to restart before my PC would pick it up. I'm liking that I can plug in the USB cable and access both the phone memory and memory card as individual disk drives, but I'm not liking so much that I have to wait for the phone to restart in 'file transfer mode' before that can happen. One nice touch is being prompted whether you want the phone in music or phone mode when you turn it on - so you don't need to worry about firing this baby up on a plane.
Vodafone Live! works beautifully, though as this is now a released handset on Vodafone that is to be expected. Vodafone TV is absolutely exceptional. It works flawlessly. Unlike on the 6680 the W900i can switch to full screen mode without needing to stop playback, always nice, and tracks downloaded from Vodafone's music archive also play back well and sound convincing.
Other nice touches include showing the exact battery level in percent when you press one of the volume keys while the phone is showing the main screen. It also shows free memory and the date. Neat.
The one thing you're going to battle with if you buy this, though, is the opening mechanism. Boy is it lucky that you can use a good deal of the functionality without opening the thing. If you owned an S700i then I daresay you'll love it as the assisted opening is definitely a help, but if, like me, you're used to candybars then this'll be a challenge. For the first 7 or so days I ended up firing the thing out of my hands on several occaisions - there's a real knack to opening it up (it's now upside down) and 'tossing' it back to the right-way-up! It does, however, look incredibly cool when you pull it off ;)
I can also safely say that you'll all hate the buttons. The ones on the front all feel tacky with the only exception being the central play/pause key. The numeric keys are recessed too far and made out of the same naff materials used on the outer keys. Sony have always used weird materials (I had Aibo accessories made from vegetable plastics that actually melted when left in close proximity to a radiator one night...), but this is like the interior of a BMW 1 Series! I don't know what makes established manufacturers think they can use such plastics, but there we go.
That's all for the mo - more coming soon with some more live pictures. All in all I have to say that you wont be disappointed with this handset. It's an excellent 3G device, but it's not small!