| Sony Ericsson W880 |
| General |
| Network | Umts / Gsm 900 / Gsm 1800 / Gsm 1900 |
| Announced | 2007, February |
| Status | Available |
| Size |
| Dimensions | 103 X 46.5 X 9.5 Mm |
| Weight | 71 G |
| Display |
| Type | Tft, 256k Colors |
| Size | 240 X 320 Pixels, 1.8 Inches |
| | - Wallpapers, Screensavers |
| Ringtones |
| Type | Polyphonic, Mp3 |
| Customization | Composer, Download, |
| Vibration | Yes |
| Memory |
| Phonebook | 1000 X 20 Fields, Photo Call |
| Call Records | 30 Received, Dialed And Missed Calls |
| Card Slot | Memory Stick Micro (m2), 1 Gb Card Included |
| | - 16 Mb Internal Memory |
| Data |
| Gprs | Class 10 (4+1/3+2 Slots), 32 - 48 Kbps |
| Hscsd | Yes |
| Edge | No |
| 3g | Yes, 384 Kbps |
| Wlan | No |
| Bluetooth | Yes, V2.0 With A2dp |
| Infrared Port | No |
| Usb | Yes, V2.0 |
| Features |
| Messaging | Sms, Mms, Email, Instant Messaging |
| Browser | Wap 2.0/html (netfront), Rss Reader |
| Games | Yes + Downloadable, |
| Colors | Flame Black, Steel Silver |
| Camera | 2 Mp, 1600x1200 Pixels, Video(qcif); Secondary Vga Videocall Camera |
| | - Java Midp 2.0
- Walkman Player 2.0
- Trackid Music Recognition
- T9
- Image Viewer
- Picture Editor
- Picture Blogging
- Organiser
- Built-in Handsfree
- Voice Memo/dial |
| Battery |
| | Standard Battery, Li-po 950 Mah (bst-33) |
| Stand-by | Up To 425 H |
| Talk Time | Up To 6 H 30 Min |
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Sony Ericsson - W880Sony Ericsson's W880 9.5mm Thick Walkman Phone
At this point in time, most mobile phone enthusiasts are fully aware of Sony Ericsson's Walkman line of music phones. You might even say that the company is known for them by now. What they have never been known for, however, is thin phones. Ever since the launch of the Motorola RAZR that seems like so many years ago, many of the manufacturers - particularly Samsung - have been racing to produce thin handsets. Sony Ericsson just kept chugging along putting out solid, and well tested, designs.
Flash forward to CES 2007, when the company showed the first photos of the W880, the subject of our review. It was a solid change of direction for Sony Ericsson. Sporting a bold, sexy, and, for the first time, thin design, it appears that Sony Ericsson W880 is finally ready to move the company into the thin-is-in game.
MobileBurn would like to take this opportunity to thank MobileCityOnline.com for supplying us with the W880 used in this review.
Physical Aspects
At roughly 9.5mm (.4") thick, the first thing you notice about the W880's compact body is how thin it is - especially for a phone from Sony Ericsson, who is quite new to the thin game. Its 103mm x 47mm (4.1" x 1.9") body is clad on the front with a semi-gloss black finish and a grippy soft-touch orange coating on the back (a silver version is also available). The fixed-focus 2 megapixel camera's lens is located on the back of the W880, while the front plays host to the forward facing low-resolution camera used for 3G video calls. While most aspects of the W880 feel quite compact, nowhere is this more the case than on the front of the device. The 1.8" diagonal display might be small by most people's standards, but the d-pad and keypad keys are downright tiny.
Somewhat ironically, the very small size of the controls account for my largest complaint with the device. From a usability standpoint, the W880 is very difficult to use for people with either large hands and fingers, like me, or long fingernails (not like me). The d-pad's small upward protruding top and bottom edges help some of the time, but still leave me wanting for more room in general. The two softkeys and the dedicated web, shortcuts, back, and C (clear) key are also very small. Small as they might be, they are still significantly larger than the tiny metallic orange keypad keys. Visually these keys make for a striking design, but from a practical viewpoint they are inconvenient at best. For women with long'ish nails, the keypad could well prove itself unusable without relying on some finger gymnastics. No question about it, the Sony Ericsson W880 is a device that the potential buyer really needs to test out before making a purchase.
As one might expect of a phone with such small dimensions, the W880's display is also a bit lacking in size. The 1.8" transflective TFT display is very bright and sharp and can display up to 262k colors on its 240x320 pixel screen, but it also a bit cramped. This isn't a display that people with sub-average eyesight are going to appreciate, though I expect it will suit its target demographic of on-the-go music lovers pretty well.
Though small, everything about the W880 feels very solidly built, with the possible exception of the spring loaded volume control that is located near the top of the right side. Also on the right, near the bottom of the phone, lies a dedicated camera button that is a bit difficult to use due to its narrow profile and countersunk position. A similarly styled Walkman button is located on the upper left hand edge of the device. The countersunk design of the Walkman button is not a particular problem in this case since the user can look at the button when it needs to be pressed, which is not typically the case with a camera shutter button. The two other features on the left edge of the phone are the Memory Stick Micro card slot and the unusually positioned Fast Port connector that is used for wired headsets, charging, and USB connections.
Missing from the W880 is a dedicated power key, something that Sony Ericsson had been including on most of its recent designs. That oversight, while unfortunate, probably isn't going to turn away any potential buyers the way that the cramped ergonomics of the device as a whole might. At a mere 71g (2.5oz) in weight and roughly the same size as an iPod Nano, I can see how Sony Ericsson had some engineering issues to deal with in designing the W880. I just feel that too many sacrifices were made to keep the device small and light.
Core Functions
In spite of its diminutive size, the Sony Ericsson W880 is a very solid all-around performer when it comes to core phone functionality. It supports GSM networks on the 900/1800/1900MHz bands as well as 3G UMTS on the European 2100MHz band. I tested the device primarily on T-Mobile USA's 1900MHz network and found it to be a stellar performer in terms of audio clarity and reception. The device also performed equally well on AT&T's dual-band GSM network. Our test unit managed a very solid 7 hours and 20 minutes of talk time in our tests. The only thing lacking a bit was the speakerphone. It appears that the W880's speaker, which is also likely quite small, just didn't have the output power needed for use in less than ideally quiet locations. The speakerphone provided the remote caller with top notch sound, however.
The W880 also has the nuts when it comes to contacts and profiles. The contacts system supports multi-character searching and sports a slick tabbed interface in the record editor that makes it easier to find what you are looking for. This is important since most of the data points found in Microsoft's Outlook application can be synched with the W880. The W880's 7 profiles provide the user with something for most every occasion. All of them can be edited to suit, and include support for call forwarding/diverting as well as defining a list of contacts that the profile will accept calls from. A separate flight mode is also available. About all that is missing is some sort of timed profile support.
When it comes to voice dialing on mobile phones, Sony Ericsson is sadly still a few years behind much of the competition. The W880 relies on voice tags that have to be separately recorded for each phone number in each contact that they are to be used with. Newer speaker independent systems used by many of the company's competitors offer a far more flexible set of features. With that said, the included voice tag system in the W880 does work properly. On most devices a speed dial can be accessed by long pressing the corresponding key on the keypad. This is not the case with our O2 Germany W880, which instead uses a long keypad press to jump to the corresponding contacts in the contact list. Holding down the 6 button, for example, would take the user to the list with the first Mark, Matt, or Maria selected, since the 6 key is linked to M, N, and O. There is a visual speed dial application on the W880 that can be assigned to the Shortcut key's menu for quick use. Caller ID photos are used in the application, and the keypad can be used from there to quickly dial a particular contact.
The messaging system in the W880 is pretty solid. SMS and MMS are fully supported and easy to use. POP and IMAP email support is also included, and a wide variety of options for downloading headers or a certain number of bytes of each message can be set. The T9 predictive text is fast and has some limited support for word prediction and completion. The included RSS news reader works well with the built-in web browser when it comes to skimming and reading content from favorite websites.
In terms of data, the W880 puts out a middle of the road performance. While it has basic UMTS 3G data on the 2100MHz band, it supports only slow GPRS data on GSM networks. That's a bit disappointing for a high-end phone like the W880. At least it is equipped with a solid Bluetooth 2.0 system that includes A2DP stereo support.
Multimedia / Applications
Certainly one of the primary reasons one seeks out a phone like the Sony Ericsson W880 is because it is a top notch music player. Sony Ericsson's Walkman music player ranks among the best available on a mobile device. When paired up with the included Disc2Phone software, moving and transcoding music for playback on the phone is a cake walk. The player itself supports all of the expected options like shuffle, repeat, and equalizer settings. Playlists can also be created and edited on the device itself, which is handy. The only thing that is lacking, best I can tell, is the ability to control the music playback when the application is not running in the foreground. There are no dedicated track controls and the d-pad is not usable for such tasks, either. The player works well with Bluetooth A2DP headphones and with normal 3.5mm plug equipped headphones, thanks to an included adapter. The adapter can be used with the included headphones or any of hundreds of other commercially available units sold today.
The W880 is equipped with a decent fixed-focus 2 megapixel camera. The camera is reasonably sharp most of the time, as long as there is at least a couple of feet of space between the phone and the subject of the photo. This rules out any kind of macro type shots, of course, but that is to be expected. The camera's automatic white balance system performed very well, generally outperforming the manual settings that are also available. The camera's user interface is quite good, and I was pleased to find the addition of an on-screen guide to the keypad shortcuts. These shortcuts allow the user to do things like change the resolution of the photos being shot, or enable night mode, without having to access the menu. The W880 can record low-resolution videos, but the maximum resolution setting of 176x144 won't impress too many folks.
The W880 ships with the reasonable NetFront web browser that can handle normal HTML websites at least as well as Pocket IE on Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform. Large websites will be cut up and reformatted so that they fit into a narrow column that can then be viewed on the phone. This isn't always the most convenient way to view a website, but it is better than the alternative: not viewing them at all.
The W880 offers its owner a truly vast assortment of applications. Just on the PIM side of things, there is a calendar, task list, alarm clock, world clock, timer, stopwatch, calculator, and password vault (code memo). The calendar is particularly useful, especially since it, like the contacts, synchronizes with desktop computers and servers when used with the free PC Suite software of the built-in SyncML client. Also included on the W880 are the various Sony Ericsson DJ apps. VideoDJ, PhotoDJ, and MusicDJ all let the user create, edit, and save multimedia clips of differing types. Sony Ericsson even includes a Bluetooth remote control application for controlling Microsoft PowerPoint presentations with the phone.
If that still isn't good enough, there are a ton of 3rd party Java applications and games that can be loaded onto the W880. Many of them available for free. With a few hundred contacts and calendar appointments loaded, our review W880 still had about 13MB of built-in storage available for applications and multimedia files. The included 1GB M2 card provides enough storage so as to make the internal storage space a non-issue.
User Interface
The user interface used on the Sony Ericsson W880 is quite mature. Having originated with the T68 back in 2001, it has received a myriad of upgrades over the years and is now a very finely polished system. It is still evolving today, albeit at a far slower pace than in years past. All of the general traits that the user interface has shown over the past couple of years remain: the keypad keys can be used for quick navigation, there are tabbed screen interfaces where there is too much data for a single screen, and it offers cascading option menus where appropriate. All quite good.
Some of the newer changes to the system involves the Shortcuts menu. The Shortcuts menu can be called up from anywhere in the phone now - not just from the standby screen. The menu items can be changed and reordered easily, and additional tabs provide quick access to bookmarks, missed events, and a list of applications that are running in the background, such as the Walkman player. Once configured to best suit the individual user, the Shortcuts key can be a great time saver.
Other changes that I have noticed are more subtle. It seems that somewhere along the way the themes system picked up the ability to support transparency. With the Walkman theme selected, for example, pop-up info windows are semi-transparent, allowing the underlying text and graphics to be seen. It is quite subtle, but pretty none the less. The current time of day also appears on all screens that have the system status bar showing at the top of the display - even when using the web browser. I've also noticed that some of the pop-up informational windows no longer timeout, instead waiting patiently for the user to hit the OK softkey to acknowledge them.
This brings us to one of the very few complaints I have with the UI: the aforementioned info windows. I have always disliked the fact that they timed out when they appeared to be waiting for the OK softkey to be pressed. If your timing is unlucky, as mine seems to be, you can quite easily end up pressing the softkey a moment too late and mistakenly get the function associated with that softkey on the following screen. That can be frustrating. The fact that the OK timeout varies from task to task adds an even larger element of chance that shouldn't exist. In short, if the screen is meant to display for a few seconds and disappear on its own, then there should be no softkey function to dismiss it. And if there is an OK softkey assigned, there should be no timeout. One or the other.
Apart from that, though, the UI is very consistent and predictable. Users should be able to adapt to it quite quickly. The 3x4 icon grid main menu and tabbed interface should make sense to most people right out of the box. Sony Ericsson's UI may well be the best out there on a non-smartphone, but there are still a few minor tweaks needed.
Conclusion
With its bold color scheme, Nano-like form factor, and solid music player, the Sony Ericsson W880 could be the perfect device for somebody that wants a phone and music player with them at all times, but doesn't wish to be weighed down by multiple devices. It is not going to be the perfect device for people interested in heavy text messaging or web browsing. The ergonomics of the design just don't allow for that.
Given a better keypad and d-pad controller, the W880 would have earned a better rating. As-is, I can only give it a solid "Recommended" rating instead. |
| Common misspellings on this brand: osny , soy , ericeson |
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