Walking on Sunshine with the W880I (Sony Ericsson W880i)

Member Name: Nickycool

Product:	Sony Ericsson W880i
Date:	09/03/08 (1115 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Walkman, easy to use, battery life

Disadvantages: Camera isn't the best but not the worse

Yes, another phone review. Well, what can you expect when I work with them every day. This is the phone that I loved and lost in a taxi and the phone my fiancé still has. When I got mine, it only came in Black but now this phone is available in many different colours either on contract or pay as you go.

...Overview of the W880i...

W880I is the replacement for W850i. There are quite a few differences between the two but also similarities.

Design: It's a very slim phone (103.0 x 46.0 x 9.0 mm) that comes in three different colours. Black, Silver and Gold. It's a candybar phone that means that it doesn't slide, flip or swivel. The buttons are small and shaped like a dash.

Features: It's a 3G phone with a 2-megapixel camera on the back and VGA on the front for video calling. As it's a Walkman phone, it has a MP3 player; stereo bluetooth, Track ID 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 16Mb and has a memory card slot that takes a Sony Ericsson M2 memory card.

...Detailed look at the phone...

...Da Music...

Of course, this phone has an MP3 player and many other gadgets to do with music. Like every Walkman phone, it has a dedicated button to flick to the MP3 player whenever you like.

On this phone, it's an orange button on the left-hand slide. Just press that and the music player will just appear from nowhere. There's no limit to how many songs you can add to the playlist unlike some other phones that I have owned. So what's the quality like? Well, with the headphones that you get in the box, the music sounds brilliant.

Also, it plays a variety of music formats including MP3, AAC files and protected Windows Media files. You can set music to shuffle or repeat, rate individual tracks, create playlists as long as you like and adjust the equaliser.

But, yes, there's a but. When the headset isn't in and it's just playing your ringtone for example, it does sound a bit tinny compare to W850I. This could be because the W880I is a small and thin device whereas W850I was big, fat and bulky. Even the black one that I had sounded better than the silver one that my fiancé's got and they are the same phone. Maybe my pop, soft rock and R'n'B songs sound better on this phone than his indie, rock and metal songs.

Other music features on the phone are

Track ID, which if you record a few seconds of a song, it will search and send you the information of what song it is, by whom and of which album it is. Sounds good but never tried this.

MegaBass, which enhance the bass frequencies and gives your music more body. This really works when you have your headphones in. I've played some live tracks while I've been on the bus and if I closed my eyes, it was just like I was there.

Ringtones or as they like to call it Music tones. You can use your music for as your ring tone, message tone and alarm clock. I loved waking up to Pink's "Last to Know" instead of my annoying Samsung tone that I have now.

Stereo Bluetooth. Ok Bluetooth is not limited to just music but it does have a special feature so you can listen to your music through a headset via your Bluetooth. I've tried this at work on the Motorola Music Headset and it's great, not that I ever bought the headset at £60 even if I did get discount, it worked fine with wired headphones.

...Battery Life...
Well, you all know how I like my long battery life and this is definitely the phone to give it to you. The Sony Ericsson website says that would get 425 hours on standby and 6 and half hours on talk time and I actually believe them. The longest, this phone ever lasted me until dying was 4 days when I had forgotten my charger when I went away. The battery may be thin and small but it sure does keep its charge.

...All about the menu and phoning...

The menu may look different depending on what network it's on.

Entertainment - This is where you can find all your Java games (demo), Video DJ and Music DJ where you can make your own tunes. It's a bit naff.

Calls - This logs all recent, missed, dialled, answered calls and also the duration of the call and when the person called.

Phonebook - This is where you can find all your contact on the SIM or on the phone.

Walkman - This is the Walkman and where you can find all your music in one place or you want to get to the Walkman straight away just press the orange button on the side.

Camera - Here you find your camera or video camera to capture those special moments.

File Manager - the word says it all. It manages your files: videos, photos, music and other files you might have happened to put on your phone.

Messages - This is where all your SMS, MMS and emails are stored. This is only where you can change your settings for your texts and pictures messages. So if you're having problems, just take a look there first.

Organiser - This is the place to find your alarm settings, calculator, timer, stopwatch, Worldtime map, etc

Alarm Clock - Yep, if you're too lazy to hunt through the Organiser for your alarm, they made a special place for it on the menu for easy access.

Video Calls - If you can get a 3G signal and the friend that you will be phone can too then you can happily play/seriously have a conversation with video! You can see the other person and they can see you. That's what the VGA camera is for on the front.

Settings - This is where you go if you want to change anything like ringtones, message tones, brightness, themes. Yes, you can dress up or dress down your phone in different themes. I like the one with the pretty lights lol.

Vodafone Live - This option might vary on some phones. On none branded phone, it's generally Browser and others it's their network's home page like mine is 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!

...Camera...

It has a 2 mega-pixel camera/video camera. It's not a bad camera but not the best I've seen. It's brilliant for outdoor shots in the daytime. You can not fault it but as it has no flash or even light, evening and night time are a little bit on the rubbish side of the picture. Indoor pictures aren't bad but sometimes too much light can hinder you just as much as not enough light so the quality of the pictures depends on where you are. You can put little frames around your pictures. Funny but a novelty that wears off after awhile.
Also it only has a 2.5x digital zoom, which is a little unimpressive but all in all this camera has capture brilliant pictures compared to my Samsung D900I and U600 and do you know why? The response rate. The response rate of W880i is quite fast so instead of taking a picture 5 seconds later, it takes it 1 second and believe me that does make a different for those unexpected moments of fun or silliness.

...Texting...

It's quite simple to text on this phone though the thin buttons may hinder you for a while until you're used to them. Like all phones now, you have the option of ABC, 123 or T9, which is predictive text but the T9 on this phone is a little bit special because not only does it predict the word that you want to insert but also the next word which is good if you always send similar texts.

This phone seems to store more than 500 messages but the problem with that, one it takes ages to delete them if you want keep certain messages because you have to go through the list one by one and also having a lot of text messages stored on the w880I seems to slow it down. Like a PC that hasn't got enough hard disk space. So it's best to delete your text about once every two weeks so you don't have that problem.

Yep, you got it another reason why I love this phone is that you can choose your own message tones. Anything on your phone or memory card.

...Connecting to the PC...

In my box, I got a USB lead, which connects the phone to my PC. You just install the software onto the PC, connect the phone and away you go. Well, it should be that way. As I'm used to the Samsung software, it took me ages to work out how to use it. At first, I couldn't find the pictures that were on the memory card or even on the phone. I tried to load my music onto it and it just seem to take ages transfer even though that bit of the software called disc2phone is really easy to use. Just have to pop in your CD in your PC and it will convert and rip the songs onto your phone or you can use choose to transfer songs that you have already ripped through Windows Media Player or other methods.

In the end, I got the hang of it but if you're used any other phone software and you're not that techy then you might struggle to get the software to work in the way that you want.

...Other Info...

WAP or the Internet is very fast on this phone especially when it's picking up a 3G signal. Also when you're downloading songs or video from for example Vodafone Live! it's fast. I've even tested against the Samsung U700 at work. Downloading the same song and W880I won. Yes, I know. Sad but I was very bored.

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.

Like I said before, it has bluetooth. I have no problem Bluetoothing anything to any phones that I pick up.

The back button on the Sony Ericsson are always very useful so no difference on this phone.

...In the Box...

Phone with Battery and Battery cover
Charger
USB Cable
1GB M2 Memory Card
Headphones
User guide and Manual
CD with Software for the phone

...My thoughts...

I absolutely loved this phone until I lost it. I would have bought it again if I could have afforded it. After you get used to its small buttons, it's a brilliant little phone to use. The battery life is great, it's easy to phone off, text and take pictures though the quality could be a lot better but I would think that would be due to the fact that it's soo thin. Only annoying thing about this phone is the browser button, it's so easy to accidentally push. That and that you have to lock it all the time. I did make quite a few accidental phones calls but all in all brilliant phone and I will definitely get its upgraded version W890I, just have to make sure that they haven't changed it too much.

...Price list 09/03/2008...

Vodafone store - Available in Gold free oncontract and Pay as you Talk for £150. Nearly New on Pay as you Talk £125 in Black and Silver.

Vodafone Website: Available in Silver for £135 on Pay as you go and available on contract free in all colours.

Phones4U website - Available in black for free on Contract on Vodafone, 3 and Orange. Also available on pay as you go in Black from £129.95 Orange.

T-Mobile website - Available in Silver free on Contract. Available in Silver on Pay as you go for £149.99.

Carphonewarehouse website - Available for free on Orange (black and Silver), O2 (Black) and T-Mobile (Black) on Contract. Available on O2 (Black) £189.95 when bought with £10 top up and Virgin (Black and Silver) £119.95 when bought with £10 top up.

O2 website - Available in Silver on Contract for Free. Not available on Pay As you Go.

Orange website - Available in Black on Contract for Free. Available in Black on Pay as you go for £129.99 when bought with £10 top up.

Summary: Lovely phone with brilliant battery life and Walkman

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