Sony Ericsson w800
Last week I purchased a new phone and had been awaiting its arrival. I purchased the Sony Ericsson w800 walkman phone. It was mentioned a few weeks ago on Digital Life TV.
As soon as it got here I totally geeked out over it. It is a little phone with some very powerful features.
Features at a Glance
2 MegaPixel Camera + Light
Video recording + Playback
Mobile Internet
Mp3 Playback
FM Radio Tuner
External Memory Slot(proprietary Sony Memory Stick Duo)
Bluetooth wireless
Infrared port
I am extremely impressed with the amount of time and thought that was put into designing this phone.
The pictures are clear and have good color. The light cleanly illuminates and doesn't wash out colors. Night mode slows the exposure down for dark situations. Overall I think the camera is excellent and could work as a stand alone device. It has three special shoot modes panorama, frames and burst. Panorama you can line up three pictures into one long picture. Frames is kinda goofy, I think it is dumb, all it does it pull up a picture frame like you see at carnivals. Burst mode is extremely cool it takes four pictures in very rapid succession for action shots. The light is also useable as a flashlight and it also is programmed to blink out SOS. Crazy. I took the following picture with the camera feature. Please click on the picture to view the full size.
The Video recording is novel to me but not all that impressive. It is really low resolution.
I couldn't play with mobile internet decided not to spring for the ability that feature yet and even if I did it wouldn't work(more on why this wouldn't work later).
Mp3 playback is clear and doesn't slow down or get jittery while using camera or video. Which means the phone has the processing power to handle both operations simultaneously without loss of quality. Impressive. Another extremely nice quality is that I can use any headphones I want. The hands-free cord has a standard 1/8th audio plug. Or I can just have it play through the phones speakerphone which is still very clear it just sounds a little flat compared to a real radio speaker.
FM Radio Tuner. Freaking sweet addition. However I don't like that fact that it uses the hands free cord as an antenna. Means I have to have it plugged in in order to listen to the radio. But my disappointment is tempered by the fact that I'd usually be listening to it via the headphones through the hands free cord any way.
The Sony proprietary memory sticks are ok as far as proprietary crap goes. It is where I can save all my pictures, movies, and mp3s. I can also stick that memory into my computer and transfer things back and forth between the devices. Which is extremely cool because other phones you had to buy special cables or use their internet services to transfer things to yourself and it was painfully slow and costly. It came with 512mb of space and I think that is ok as a standard but it can handle a 2gb stick without problem.
Bluetooth is sickeningly awesome. I can transfer contacts, calendar info, pictures, movies, internet connections, and remote control my computer. Yes, thats right I can control my computers mouse pointer and activate a limited number of keys with my cell. phone through Bluetooth. Who needs a presenter mouse when you have a cell. phone. Sweet!
Infrared is kinda neat. I can do most things that bluetooth can do with the exception of remote control. That kinda disappointed me because I expected that I could program my phones infrared to work with my television's infrared remote. But alas Bluetooth left my expectations to high. Oh well.
With all that said this phone is something I might compare to a swiss army knife of portable technology. It is extremely cool, way geeky, and basically made me very geek-giddy.
Final Summation
PRO's
Swiss Army Knife of Portable Tech. and absolutely geeklicious.
Con's
EXPENSIVE
Only one US cell. phone provider supports it and that is T-mobile. THIS IS A BIG CON at the moment....
On a unrelated note. T-Mobile has completely dropped the ball. I put in for a phone number transfer and a new account on Friday and I still don't have service as of this moment. I've called support and went through 1, 2, 3, and am currently dealing with the 4th tier of Support HAA! AAH AAH AAH(In my best sesame st. Count impression) I'm told that usually the switch takes like 15-20 minutes. T-mobile's automated account management would instead for me lock my account from activation(absolutely nothing to do with the phone) and there is something wrong with it to a point that nobody in tiers 1-3 can fix it and that their system for creating new users is "experiencing technical difficulties". So now I'm waiting for an "Engineer" to contact me to tell me "It should be working now" via another line. Unfortunately, I do not have another phone line. My cell. phone is my only method for vocal communication at an extended range. For the moment my neighbor is graciously letting me borrow one of her 2.4ghz cordless house phones. Danke neighbor. No long distance calls... I promise. Scout's honor.
As soon as it got here I totally geeked out over it. It is a little phone with some very powerful features.
Features at a Glance
2 MegaPixel Camera + Light
Video recording + Playback
Mobile Internet
Mp3 Playback
FM Radio Tuner
External Memory Slot(proprietary Sony Memory Stick Duo)
Bluetooth wireless
Infrared port
I am extremely impressed with the amount of time and thought that was put into designing this phone.
The pictures are clear and have good color. The light cleanly illuminates and doesn't wash out colors. Night mode slows the exposure down for dark situations. Overall I think the camera is excellent and could work as a stand alone device. It has three special shoot modes panorama, frames and burst. Panorama you can line up three pictures into one long picture. Frames is kinda goofy, I think it is dumb, all it does it pull up a picture frame like you see at carnivals. Burst mode is extremely cool it takes four pictures in very rapid succession for action shots. The light is also useable as a flashlight and it also is programmed to blink out SOS. Crazy. I took the following picture with the camera feature. Please click on the picture to view the full size.
The Video recording is novel to me but not all that impressive. It is really low resolution.
I couldn't play with mobile internet decided not to spring for the ability that feature yet and even if I did it wouldn't work(more on why this wouldn't work later).
Mp3 playback is clear and doesn't slow down or get jittery while using camera or video. Which means the phone has the processing power to handle both operations simultaneously without loss of quality. Impressive. Another extremely nice quality is that I can use any headphones I want. The hands-free cord has a standard 1/8th audio plug. Or I can just have it play through the phones speakerphone which is still very clear it just sounds a little flat compared to a real radio speaker.
FM Radio Tuner. Freaking sweet addition. However I don't like that fact that it uses the hands free cord as an antenna. Means I have to have it plugged in in order to listen to the radio. But my disappointment is tempered by the fact that I'd usually be listening to it via the headphones through the hands free cord any way.
The Sony proprietary memory sticks are ok as far as proprietary crap goes. It is where I can save all my pictures, movies, and mp3s. I can also stick that memory into my computer and transfer things back and forth between the devices. Which is extremely cool because other phones you had to buy special cables or use their internet services to transfer things to yourself and it was painfully slow and costly. It came with 512mb of space and I think that is ok as a standard but it can handle a 2gb stick without problem.
Bluetooth is sickeningly awesome. I can transfer contacts, calendar info, pictures, movies, internet connections, and remote control my computer. Yes, thats right I can control my computers mouse pointer and activate a limited number of keys with my cell. phone through Bluetooth. Who needs a presenter mouse when you have a cell. phone. Sweet!
Infrared is kinda neat. I can do most things that bluetooth can do with the exception of remote control. That kinda disappointed me because I expected that I could program my phones infrared to work with my television's infrared remote. But alas Bluetooth left my expectations to high. Oh well.
With all that said this phone is something I might compare to a swiss army knife of portable technology. It is extremely cool, way geeky, and basically made me very geek-giddy.
Final Summation
PRO's
Swiss Army Knife of Portable Tech. and absolutely geeklicious.
Con's
EXPENSIVE
Only one US cell. phone provider supports it and that is T-mobile. THIS IS A BIG CON at the moment....
On a unrelated note. T-Mobile has completely dropped the ball. I put in for a phone number transfer and a new account on Friday and I still don't have service as of this moment. I've called support and went through 1, 2, 3, and am currently dealing with the 4th tier of Support HAA! AAH AAH AAH(In my best sesame st. Count impression) I'm told that usually the switch takes like 15-20 minutes. T-mobile's automated account management would instead for me lock my account from activation(absolutely nothing to do with the phone) and there is something wrong with it to a point that nobody in tiers 1-3 can fix it and that their system for creating new users is "experiencing technical difficulties". So now I'm waiting for an "Engineer" to contact me to tell me "It should be working now" via another line. Unfortunately, I do not have another phone line. My cell. phone is my only method for vocal communication at an extended range. For the moment my neighbor is graciously letting me borrow one of her 2.4ghz cordless house phones. Danke neighbor. No long distance calls... I promise. Scout's honor.
posted by JC at 1:15 PM
11 Comments:
Update: After talking with T-mobile support again today I found out that my trouble ticket was never sent to the 4th tier, there was some kind of communication error. Man they are really trying to piss me off. Ticket is in now and I'm hoping to receive a call tomorrow stating that it should be working now. Grrr.
It works! It finally works! Woohooo.
That list of features is really amazing. I thought we were reaching some sort of physical limit on miniaturization, but apparently not with cell phones!
I think, you have made a good decision buying this phone, but I also think that it is very expensive at today. But finally, I'm very happy with my w800.
Actually Cell. Phones up until very recently were quite behind the curve when it comes to miniturization. They are catching up I think. Cell. service providers are the main pushers for cellular tech. and well they don't negotiate a high bar with cell. phone manufacturers. They would rather serve up the same old crap and rest on their telecom-donut munching laurels, a trait they inherited from their landlinelocked parents. Sony, Dangerous, Nokia, N-gage, and other phone manufacturers are venturing the exceptions on their own. Which is risky but I think the manufacturers found it to be worthwhile. Soon I think cell. phone-portable electronic integration will explode. I just wouldn't expect the service providers to support the new features too quickly. Tis all consumer speculation.... Yet I'd love someone to explain how I'm off the mark...
yo dawg i am importan seller/buyer and i am importing 2 w800 to sell and i want to know what sony offers with the box and can u use loud speaker in mp3 player
Ash: Google search is your friend. I ran a search for Sony w800 and came up with http://www.mobile-review.com/review/sonyericsson-w800-en.shtml It is review with the 411 you are looking for.
Pretty cool cellphone, i had some problems transferring the mp3's but i guess is my computers problem, not the cellphone. I was really dissapointed when i see the video resolution and that you can only record during 10 seconds, pretty short time for a cellphone of this kind.
At first I thought the video recording limit is 10 seconds also. Somehow it started working for me. Now I can record as long a video my memory has space for. Sorry I don't remember what I did to change that setting but the phone can definitely record clips longer than 10 seconds.
The only downside is that if I hold the phone with one hand and try to take photos, sometimes the picture would come out fuzzy and sometimes the delay between the button pressed and the actual photo taken is quite long. I notice the similar problem on an old Sony 3Mega pixels camera I have. Need a steady hand.
I can also recommend a cool app for Sony’s. It’s called i-Citizen and it came out recently. It’s the world’s first 3D world and the k800 works like a charm on it. Its fun to play and you can meet people and chat to them as you might have guessed. They have promotions where they give away PS3’s and Xboxes to people in a place called i-Bid in the app. Its beta release was announced in March 2008 and anyone can give it a try. You can get it from your mobiles browser or your pc by going to http://wap.icitizencommunity.com.
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