The basic Walkman phone (Sony Ericsson W595)

Member Name: Nickycool

Product:	Sony Ericsson W595
Date:	11/11/09 (91 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The walkman, easy to use

Disadvantages: no new features really

Yes, another phone review. I haven't done in any in ages. I still work for Vodafone so in the last year, I've had a quite a few phones. So this is the first one of many.

...Overview of the W595...
Design: It's a slide phone that comes in different colours. Vodafone only does it in the black with a red backplate but I have seen it in blue and pink. The list from the Sony Eericsson's website says that it comes in Cosmopolitan White - Jungle Grey - Ruby Black - Peachy Pink - Lava Black - Active Blue - Sandy Gold - Active Silver. The phone has proper buttons for the keypad and side buttons for volume and the Walkman functions.
Features: It's a 3G phone with a 3.2-mega pixel camera on the back which is protected when it's is slid down and VGA on the front for video calling. As it's a Walkman phone, it has a MP3 player; stereo bluetooth, Shake control and many more music orientated features. It has all the usual features that you would find on a phone these days like WAP, email, MMS, alarm clock, calculator and many more. It's a quad-band phone with an internal memory of 40MB and memory card slot that takes a Sony Ericsson M2 memory card up to 8GB.

...Walkman...
It's a Walkman phone, so of course you expect good quality sound and MP3 player functions. You can access the Walkman part of the phone with the flick of a button on the side. This brings up the Sony Ericsson's version of a MP3 player, the format hasn't changed at all for a few years now. It tells you the album, song, artist and has room for album art. The navigational buttons for the Walkman are quite standard. You have your play/stop, rewind, fast-forward, up and down buttons for scrolling through your playlist. It's easy enough to add songs to your playlist (as many as you like) Either bluetooth it from friends, transfer it through your PC or download it from the internet. Also if you sync your music with Windows Media Player if you have any album covers attached to your songs, it will transfer this info to your phone as well. You can set music to shuffle or repeat, rate individual tracks, adjust the equaliser or watch visualisation on the screen. Also, it plays a variety of music formats including MP3, AAC files and protected Windows Media files.
So what's the quality like? Well, with the headphones that you get in the box, the music sounds brilliant. It's one of the best Walkman phones on the market at the moment but they haven't really changed much since the W850i. Though saying that, why fix something when it ain't broke?

Other music features on the phone are

Track ID, which if you record a few seconds of a song, it will search the internet and send you the information of what song it is, by whom and off which album it is. It's quite good but it doesn't seem to be able to recognise mashed up songs but hey ho, nothing is perfect.

Shake Control - You press the Walkman button, you shake it for side to side horizontally and it skips the track. It's a bit of novelty feature of the phone. Yes, it's amusing for the first couple of times but there's also the button that's called the fast forward for skipping tracks.

Ringtones - It's pretty standard these days that the ringtones can be MP3s and that they can be used for calls, messages, emails, alarms and so on. This one does it so no problems there.

...Battery Life...
Sony Ericsson says that the phone has a standby time up to 385 hours and a talk time of up to 9 hours. I think that the battery life is good, it used to last me about 3-4 days depended on my usage but I have had phones that have had longer battery life than this. Though saying that, the more you put on a phone and as technology gets more advanced in the phones, the less the battery time seems to be.

...All about the menu and phoning...
The menu may look different depending on what network it's on but Sony Ericsson haven't changed their menus in a long time either with Vodafone nor with other networks. They sometimes changed the order of it but you still get the main headings like Entertainment, Calls, Contacts, Walkman, Camera, File Manager, Messages, Organiser, Alarm Clock, Video Calls, Settings, Vodafone Live.

Calls are quite easy to make and receive on this phone. No dedicated green or red call buttons but still easy. The quality of the incoming and outgoing calls are fine. Have had no problems. Reception is good but if you're not a good 3G reception area, turn it off in your settings and save a load on battery! It has the feature speaker phone which is great when you're talking family and everyone wants to hear.

...Camera...
It has a 3.2 mega-pixel camera/video camera. As it's a Walkman phone, the camera isn't the best but it's brilliant for outdoor shots in the daytime. It has no flash or even light, evening and night time are a little bit on the grainy side. Indoor pictures aren't bad but sometimes too much light or too little light does make the picture unviewable. You can put little frames around your pictures. Funny but a novelty that wears off after awhile. It only has a 2.5x digital zoom, which is a little unimpressive but all in all this camera has capture brilliant pictures.

...Messages...
Text messages are easy to do on this phone. Not really changed much. I had about 1000 messages in the inbox. The more text messages you have in the inbox, the more the phone seems to slow down so you're better off deleting your messages so often.

...Added features...
Google maps - it uses the network's to find your position but this can be way off about 3 miles out as it's trying to pinpoint your location by triangulation through the masts in your area. The more masts you have in your area, the better google maps can find where you are. You have map, satellite and traffic mode. I love the satellite mode as you can see a lot of details, your garden even sometimes your car parked outside your house.

Geo tagging - you can tagged your pictures with information on where it was taken. I personally didn't use this feature but sounds like a good idea if you take a lot of pictures of similar scenery.

Support PictBridge. Basically, this is for connecting your phone to a printer. You use the USB cable next to for example HP photo printer and it will print any photos that you have on your phone memory or memory card. It's fast and easy.

...In the Box...
Phone with Battery and Battery cover
Charger
USB Cable
2GB M2 Memory Card
Headphones
User guide and Manual
CD with Software for the phone

...My thoughts...
I loved this phone when I had it but it felt a bit boring after awhile. Sony Ericsson haven't really changed anything on the phone to make it more appealing. I've had a lot of Walkman phones and they haven't really changed since the W800i which is a couple of years ago. Also Sony Ericsson's phones now seem to always have software problems. I never had a problem with this phone but I know that a lot of people that bought it have had. The battery life is good but I just feel like there's nothing about this phone that makes it stand out from the crowd. Don't get me wrong it's a good phone but it's one of the more basic phones these days especially when you have the Iphone, HTC Magic and Nokia N97 etc lurking around. I've seen it in the shops for between £100 - £150 and Free on the lowest contract.

Summary: If you want a basic phone with brilliant music, this is the one for you

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