An attractive phone with some not so attractive features. (Sony Ericsson W880i)

Member Name: SubKutz

Product:	Sony Ericsson W880i
Date:	26/09/07 (249 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Call quality and looks.

Disadvantages: The camera and something I can't work out.

After months of me moaning and groaning, my boss finally gave me a work phone. Using my own phone for work I was basically throwing my free minutes down the drain. O.k, it's not brand new, he kept that one for himself. But beggars can't be choosers.

The candy bar shaped phone looks fantastic. It's black and looks and feels metallic. After biting on it, I'm pretty sure it is metallic. I couldn't believe how slim the phone was either. 9.4mm from front to back. I gave the phone the trouser test. Long gone are the days of phones bulging out of your pockets. The phone has a nice large screen with navigation and key pads below it. You get an anti slip/slide/fall off/grippy thing on the back of the phone. It works fine on tables but when I placed it on the dash of my car I might aswell have took a out hammer and beat the thing to death. The phone was crashing and bashing off the windscreen and driver and passenger dash board sides. Keep the phone in your pocket or in a stand if your driving.

Most phones these days are designed either to have a really good camera or a really good mp3 player. You never really find a phone with both features giving you 100%. So what's this phone? Well I'd say it's more of a music player. The Sonys camera isn't really that good. You don't have a flash, there's no auto focus and the camera is 2 mega-pixels. I had to take about 2-3 pictures of the same thing because that's how many times it takes to get a good shot of the thing your snapping at. They seem to have wasted some space by giving you two settings when taking a picture. The settings are fine and normal. They look exactly the same. You get a video recorder aswell. Like the camera the recorder is a big let down. I wont even bother wasting my finger energy on it. Ohh, one good thing, the camera has a timer. Actually it's not a good thing. As the phone is so thin you need a snake charmer or some sort of propping device to keep the phone upright. Propping the phone results in the camera pointing at an upward angle. No good if you want full body shots.

Here's a quick tip. Don't buy this phone and think ''Ohh it's got a camera, I'll sell my digital camera on ebay and make a few quid'' The phone looks very good. This may fool you in to thinking its camera is going to be top notch too. Trust me, it's Rubbish!

To help compensate the pathetic camera, Sony give you a good music player. The sound is of high quality. You can listen with your headphones or with the external speaker. The player is nice and easy to get around and you'll have no trouble sorting play lists out and so on. Transferring music is simple, a little slow but simple. Just install the software and away you go. You get a few EQ settings, very important for adjusting to different styles of music or earphones. Your able to do other things while listening to music, you don't have the keep the player interface on. One thing that did disappoint me was the lack of an FM radio. I like radios on phones.

With the phone you get a 1 Gigabyte memory card. Easily enough space for over 100 songs. I'm pretty sure you will be able to find a bigger card if you want to use this as your main mp3 player. I think I probably would if I didn't have an iPod. The card does allow you to save pictures and videos too. But why would you want to? As I've said before, the quality is poor.

Here's a list of the phones supported media formats.

MPEG-4, 3gp, H.263 video, AMR audio, H.264, AAC and MP3.

Now on to messaging. Text messaging might take a while to get used too. The keys are set out funny and are rather small. After about a day I was fine. Not to long really when you think about. It's not like you keep a mobile for a day is it? Anyway you can send text messages and photo messages. You can also send emails, browse the internet (the screens a bit small for doing that) and you get something called RSS newsfeed reader? I don't know what that is.

As with all phones these days there's bluetooth. This allows you to send pictures, videos and music to your friends phones magically without having to connect the two phones with a cable.

The phones contact book holds 1000 names. You can save to sim, phone or both. You can add Mobile, Home, Work, Fax and Other numbers. I've found that because it's a work phone I do actually fill in 4-5 of those fields.

As I've said before in a previous phone review and I'm likely to say again. A phone with a complicated menu is a bad phone. All is well with the Sony. Everything is kept clear and simple. It looks pretty damn nice too. A nice 3-d effect and funky graphics.

Now a feature I get to test out quite a lot. The quality of calls. As with most things on this phone, it was excellent. Free of any crackling or echoing. The speaker phone was o.k, not the best if you have to move away from your phone to pick something up. I would suggest using earphones, but if your moving to get something you have to take the phone with you. Not good if your carrying. There's also a front VGA camera for making video calls to, just make sure you have 3g turned on.

Battery life was fair. I managed to get 2/3 days out of mine before I needed to charge. If you deactivate 3g you will save some battery life.

So for a quick description. All in all the phone has good points and bad points. It does it's main job well. Making calls. The camera is rubbish but to compensate that that they give you a decent media player. Why not offer both?

Would I buy this phone myself? No. I don't think it's quite there yet.

Summary: A nice phone I guess. I wouldn't want it as my main phone though.

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