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In order to continue with the 'Walkman revolution' -- after their joint venture of 2001 with Ericsson -- their sister concern Sony Ericsson resurrected their Walkman brand in 2005. 2 years and over 15 models later, Walkman phones have found a niche in the market for being phones that are capable of doubling up as portable audio devices as well. They're music-centric phones that are packaged with good quality earphones, memory options, easy music transfer solutions and lastly, a good media interface. Today I'm checking out one of the latest additions to this series, the W910i. 
Bundle: - Sony Ericsson W910i phone - HPM-70 Ear-phones with 3.5mm converter port - Battery charger - USB data cable - Software CD - 2 GB Memory Stick Micro M2 Card - USB M2 card reader - Instruction manual 
Design The Sony Ericsson W910i is the third slider phone in the Walkman series. At first sight, the W910i brings along that sort of Japanese appeal to it which symbolizes a combination of style and functionality. Although its footprint is dimensionally large, the W910i is pretty slim; measuring at a 12.5mm thickness. At just 86 grams, it's light and comfortable to carry around. The phone doesn't look as catchy or sturdy as the Motorola RAZR2, but it won't be missed by on-lookers. It seems to be moderately tough to take a couple of beatings. Here's an explanation of what is placed where: Front: The first thing that you'll notice about this phone is the large 2.4 inch display. Above the screen is the earpiece, accompanied by the secondary video-call camera and the multi-functional A/B styled buttons. Below the screen lies the 5-way navigation pad, 2 soft-keys, call accept/end keys (which have made a come-back in recent SE phones), the activity menu key and the cancel button. Lastly, the ambient light sensor is placed in the corner just below the screen. 
Top: The Walkman key has been promoted to the top right corner in this model along with the on/off button on the opposite side. The strap-holder lies next to the walkman key. 
Right: The right consists of the volume keys, the Memory Stick Micro M2 card slot, and the camera shutter key. 
Left: This side has the charging/data/headset connector, which is a rather odd placement that Sony Ericsson has started to incorporate in recent models. 
Back: The camera lens is placed behind the phone. The battery cover and the speaker grille are located below. 
When slid, the phone reveals the numeric keypad. The buttons are arranged vertically in 3 lines. 
The sliding mechanism is soft but firm at the same time. It's one of the better sliding mechanisms I've seen and I think it's durable enough to last for a long time. Overall, the phone's buttons are quite comfortable to operate and one can shred messages on its keypad with full velocity. I feel that the Walkman and the camera shutter buttons should have been a tad larger. Features The Sony Ericsson W910i is a quad-band world phone. The large display has a QVGA (320x240 pixels) resolution and supports up to 262k colors. It has the latest in connectivity including high-speed 3G HSDPA support, EDGE, and Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP. It can handle up to 3.6 Mbps speeds over 3G. Lastly, the good old USB 2.0 wired connectivity is also supported. The user interface is updated from previous generations. The third version of the Walkman interface has gone through a major make-over. The phone has 40MB of internal memory, and is packed with a 2GB Memory Stick Micro M2 card. 
The W910i supports the following media file formats: Sound: MP4 (AAC, AAC+, E-AAC+), MP3, M4A, 3GPP, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, WAV, G-MIDI 1, SP-MIDI, RealAudio 8, iMelody, XMF, WMA Video: 3GPP (H.263, H.264), MP4, RealVideo 8, WMV Image: GIF, JPEG, BMP, WBMP, PNG, SVG Tiny 1.1 Animation: SVG Tiny 1.1, GIF, Flash Lite 2.0 The camera is a standard 2 mega-pixel shooter and records video in QVGA resolution at 15fps. Special features added to this phone include the built-in accelerometer; which enables the possibility for auto-orientation of the screen as you turn the phone and the 'Shake Control' feature which lets you skip tracks by simply shaking the phone. Another addition to the W910i is the ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts the brightness according to the external light conditions. Other than the typical support for SMS, MMS, and E-mail, this phone also supports RSS feeds, video blogs, and can render complete HTML pages in its NetFront browser as well. The W910i has a Lithium-Ion 930 mAh rechargeable battery. Stand-by time is rated up to 400 hours and talk-time at 9 hours respectively. Lastly, it includes FM Radio, TrackID music recognition service, flight mode and other basic organization features. Performance The network coverage was good. The voice clarity was excellent and I did not face any call drops. The volume from the loud-speaker is decently audible during calls as well as the music. The screen is of good quality and portrays the gorgeous user interface very well. But the external glass protecting the LCD is prone to fingerprints so you'll need to wipe it from time to time. The ambient light sensor is very effective and it immediately changes the brightness as soon as there is a change in the external environments. Thus this feature helps to reduce strain to your eyes and also saves some battery power. The sound quality from the HPM-70 headphones was fine. But the ear-phones did not sit firmly in my ear and kept falling from time to time. 
Photos look good on the screen. The videos play with decent quality but not very smoothly. While a clip or two is OK, I wouldn't watch hour-long movies on it. The new Walkman interface is pleasing to use. It categorizes your music very neatly according to genre, album, artist, year, etc. and you can set custom play-lists. Album art is supported. Also supported are Audiobooks and Podcasts. There's also a SensMe feature which plays music according to a particular mood that you choose. The sad part about SensMe is that it only tags the moods of the songs which have been ripped using the Media Manager software. So unless you're willing to rip your entire CD collection again for the sake of this feature, it's pretty much useless. The thing that really spoiled my mood was the slow working of the new interface. My guess is that it's probably due to insufficient processing power and RAM, which is not able to cater the heavy-duty graphics of the UI. It takes about 3-5 seconds for the screen to auto-tilt whenever any media is already being played. The lag reminded me of the older Sony Ericssons. The accelerometer is also not very accurate. Sometimes the screen would wrongly go into the landscape mode. Plus, the Fitness application that's available in the mid-end W580i model is missing from the W910i. The accelerometer is also used for the "Shake Control" feature. While it is definitely cool and unique, it seemed pretty gimmicky to me. I don't really see people shaking their phone every time they want to change a song unless they really want to know how painful a RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) can be. A2DP performance was above average. I paired it with the Motorola S9 Stereo headset and the sound quality was good. But there would be connection losses which at times caused a lag while listening to songs. The provided Memory Stick card reader is very nifty. You just have to pop the memory card into this device, and it instantly turns into a pen-drive. You can then easily copy data at high-speeds over its USB 2.0 interface. 
The provided PC Suite software is helpful to sync contacts and other content. The Media Manager software somewhat resembles Apple's iTunes in terms of form and functionality. The camera shots are of decent quality. They look good on the large screen and are comparable to any previous generation Walkman phone. The camera neither has auto-focus nor a photo-assist light. There's no improvement in this department over earlier generations. 2 mega-pixels has become a standard in phones these days and I had expected a bit more from this premium segment phone. Thankfully, the video capture resolution has been bumped to a decent QVGA one. It captures videos with an above average quality as well. The phone's battery lasted for exactly 1.5 days with heavy media usage (including listening to songs wirelessly), a lot of fiddling around with the interface, and about half an hour of talk-time. Conclusion The Sony Ericsson W910i package comes for a street price of Rs. 18,200. This sort of a price is expected for a premium-segment Walkman phone that incorporates some of the newest technologies. But I'm looking at it from the Indian consumer's point of view, where 3G services are expected to roll out somewhere in the second quarter of 2008. That's still a good 6 months away. So if you're contemplating to buy this phone right now, keep in mind that you'll be paying for some of the features that you'll not use for at least half of the next year (maybe even more). So, the choice is yours. If you're really dying to own this phone and don't care about the money, I'd advice you to go ahead. It's a good phone that performs in many areas and will not disappoint. Review unit sourced from : Weber Shandwick
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