Review of Sony Ericson W910i – Without Looking AroundOur guest proceeds from the most functional Walkman-device. But the problem is that the music phones aren’t the domain of Sony Ericsson only.Table of contents:
The K800i and the W850i started a new merchandise line of the company; with slight differences in some specifications, they gave SE two new products. The first half of 2007 saw the development of the middle-priced segment of the mobile market, which could boast about the pair Walkman and K-series handsets differing, as a matter of fact, only in design. At the same time a slider form-factor was presented also in the middle segment by two disputable phones – the S500i and the W580i. However, it was crucial to launch a renewed successor of the W850i, as the W580i offers just another design in comparison with the S500i. To begin with, let’s try to name the criteria characterizing the W910i as the successor of the W850i, which is capable to rival with music phones of other vendors. As to the music part of a successor we’d like to see the better ergonomics when wiring our headphones, the higher output with the wired headsets, the same large navigational key allowing to control the player without looking at it. The second things, we’d appreciate, is a autofocus camera and other minor improvements. To expect this kind of changes is the main mistake of those waiting for the successor of the W850i. The customers pay attention on the functionality only, while the company cut this strategy of development and bet on the image area. The word “image” means in this case not the top-branded devices like Nokia 8800. Speaking about the image, they made notable the thinness of most devices launched in 2007 and paid special attention to the design. It was the appearance that was paid the most attention when creating our today’s guest Shinobu or the W910i. We will return to the speculations about the succession of the W910i to the W850i, as well as its positioning among the music phones and other things a bit later. But now let’s look at the handset closer. Design   The W910i is a slide phone measuring 99.1x50x12.5. With the moderate weight 86g it is very pocket-friendly.  Holding the device in the hand you imagine a credit card, rather than a common mobile phone. Much of it is owned to the thinness of the wide casing and sharp edges of the front panel.  Near the top end of the front fascia you see a small earpiece covered with the fine grille. To the left of it the manufacturer placed the CIF camera used for the video calling. The sides of this pad are occupied by the context keys, which we have already met in W550i, K800i/790i, W850i. The keys launch the viewer in the stand-by mode, as well as they can be used when gaming, but in the latter case they are doubled on the declines of the navigational key.  Below you see one of the main merits of the devices – the TFT screenWith QVGA-resolution and up to 26200 colours. But the main advantage of the display is its 2.36inches diagonal line. Before it we see the same screen in the S700i, while the other devices of the company feature the smaller matrix. The W900i utilized the 2.2” display, which is nowadays placed in the K850i. With the latter we’d like to compare the W910i. The screen gives the most pleasant impression. Even on its maximum brightness the backlit doesn’t hurt your eyes; with the softened contrast the screen provides very nice colour scale. Looking for the first time, you may think that the colours of images are worse than ones in the other devices of the vendor, but after a couple of days you come to the conclusion, that the too bright colours of the K850i annoying your ease are rather drawback, than advantage. The screen does well in the sunlight; though an image gets a bit faded, a text remains readable. The viewing angles are 140 degrees in all planes. When the viewing angles are bigger, the colours become unpleasantly distorted, moreover the soft protecting plastic of the screen is noticeable. The fact that the company hasn’t used the mineral glass to protect the screen is a big defect, as the utilized plexiglas can be easily inflected till the stains near the screen edges.  Under the screen the casing thickens on a millimeter and this slant, as the designers planed, is perfectly used as the thumb support to close the slider. The navi pad consists of the double soft- and call send key, under which you see the jutting out Active Menu key. The right side of the front panel is equipped with the double call end and soft-key. To the right of it you may notice the light sensor, which tunes the screen backlit in the rank (-10;+10)%. The call end button rises under the reject “C” button. In spite of the tine size the keys are handy to use thanks to the wide distance between them. We called the buttons “double ones”, as they are made in the shape of the concaved rocker keys, though they are compound of two detached keys. In the middle the phone features the round silver navi key with the “OK” button shaped as the sphere. The navigational key jets out of the casing on a millimeter, consequently the prominent edges rule out the occasional pressings. In general the navi pad has the mediocre ergonomics. The buttons have short travel distance and distinctive click. The bottom part of the casing has a slightly curved slant resembling the one found in the younger cousin W850i. The slant goes till the very end of the casing; the idea turns to be good, as the rear fascia features a handy finger stop. The upper part of the slider has no rest, that’s way its bottom slant can be used as the rest to open the handset. The slide mechanism doesn’t run even the half of the way, the sliding is perfectly noiseless. In general the sliding mechanism is almost the perfect one. We have feeling, that the halves of the slider are linked only with magnetic field, as the identical fields pushed off in the similar way.  The numerical keypad consisting of the flattened glossy keys had been widely discussed till the sales began. The question was whether the buttons cracked in the same way as in the W580i. Fortunately, the buttons grew wider, that is way you almost absolutely safe from broking them down. Though if you are manage to press the right and left edges of a button simultaneously, the latter can crunch. We wonder, why they haven’t utilized this keypad in the S500i and the W580i. The buttons have short soft travel distance with noiseless click. Blunt tipping turns to be difficult, but it is the only problem. The backlit of the navi pad has a dull orange colour, while the numerical keypad is backlit with scarlet light.   The ends of the casing feature the silver line which occupies the bottom end of the rear panel in the place, where the rest of the finger is.  The left end features Fast Port to the wired accessories. When wired with the headset, the phone can be easily used with the left hand, at least it is handier than with the W880 and W610i.  The right edge of the device houses a big stripe hole, which is set next to the short volume rocker key.  The latter is slightly concaved and has a short travel distance and tough click, which is rather advantage, than flaw. The dedicated camera shutter release key looks like a small bump on the casing. The key has to be pressed with a strengthening finger tip, which is rather unhandy. These two keys surround the M2 memory card slot covered with the soft rubberized plug.  The latter is unhandy, as the cut in the casing isn’t wide enough to open it with a finger nail – you’d better use a knife-like device. If a card has already installed, you can press the plug down till it cracks, after that the card pulls the edges of the plug out and you can pick it up. Our sample has a removable plug, that’s way we were safe from troubles when using the cardreader.  The bottom end is free from any element. The Walkman sign is printed on the label, which can be removed. Instead of it you see the white underlayer of the grey plastic. By the way, the paint of the phone edges fades after a week in use.  The top end of the main half of the slider is occupied by two small keys locating near the hole of the loudspeaker and camera. The first key is the power button. The second – the player key necessary to work with Shake Control. The buttons are both tough; though it comes in handy in case of the power button, as to the player key we prefer more tender one.  The whole red part of the rear panel is made of the plastic with a aforementioned rubberized Soft Touch coating. The top angles feature the heads of the fastening screw. Under the left one you see the jutting out 2mpixels camera lens framed with a silver band.   The protecting plastic of the objective lens is soft, thus the scratches are quite possible. Under the camera lens you see a small red LED, which is on when you switch on the phone, as well as make clips. The socket for an external antenna is covered with the plastic plug located under the battery cover.  Below you see a silver rest with a polyphonic loudspeaker on its inner side. This solution seems to be interesting, as when on the table, sound isn’t muffled and at the same time, you it is a handy place for the long finger.  Near the rest the rear panel houses a plastic slider fixing the cover to the small jut. The cover itself has a small free play in both directions. To remove the cover, the handset is equipped with two cut on the sides of the casing. You should hook the cover with a nail and pull back.    Under the cover you find the 920mAh Li-Ion battery BST-39. It runs 2 days in use with 20 minutes in the talking mode, one hour in the playback mode and half of the hour for the work with other functions. It seems to us, that 18 hours and 54 minutes in the playback mode (this result we get with the Hpm 82 headset with common headphones) can’t be taken as a right performance. The main reason is that in this mode the screen consumes the minimum energy, while in reality it needs much energy. This fact is proved by 4 hours we got, when gaming. The onboard battery doubles as the block to a sim, which has a slot without a spring.   That is way, to install a sim-card you have to pull it in the slot in the way the sign runs. To pull the sim down, you have to suck it with a finger, but in the heat or frost you fingers may fail to do that. That is way the vendor provided it with a chamfer on one side of the slot allowing to hook it with a clipper-like device.    A200 First and foremost, we’d like to answer all the questions about the comparison of the new program platform and the previous one. We made up our mind to review the program shell from the very beginning, that will be the right thing in this case. In the stand-by mode the corners of the top part of the screen houses the traditional 5-degree signal strength indicator and battery indicator. They frame a field for different system indicators, from missed events and active Bluetooth to silent alert mode.   Below on the screen you can find the operator name and system information. The bottom part of the screen shows date, digital clock and timer counting, if it is any started. The first thing attracting your attention is a bold used in the titles of soft-keys. It becomes as small as the date indicator. The changes are caused by the improvements in the phone control system. This is a second, after A100, friendly step of Sony Ericsson towards the more compatible content, developed to the Nokia S40-series phones. Now in the bottom of the screen you see signs both to the soft-keys and affirmation button. But unfortunately, it has no effect on the possibility to appoint the soft-keys. The latter are still bound with the certain functions. The left key opens the Multimedia Gallery, the right one – phone book. The joystick has now broader capabilities – it can start the Java midlet. Active Menu remains unchangeable, so it is worth no repeat.     The available call send and end buttons partially affected the ergonomics. From one hand, they made the soft-keys free from a function to send call, thus raised the ergonomics in the phone book. The end button allows to forget about long pressing the back button, that we used to move into the stand-by mode. From the other hand, here the phone has a drawback, which was partially improved in the Walkman-solutions featuring the dedicated player button. The thing is that, the call end button turns off the player during the playback. Is it handy, it isn’t. To enter the main menu you press now the central affirmative key. The menu consists of 12 items, which are demonstrated in the style depending on the set of the preinstalled icons. In case of the W910i, there is a mode displaying icons either as the standard 3x4 grid or as a carousel in the Eclipse theme. The main menu lacks now the File Manager. It was done in order to stimulate a user to try the main novelty of the A200. This function is likely to be fixed after the joystick decline by many fans of Sony Ericsson. As it used to be, there is a digital navigation through the main menu, as well as in most submenus.    Among the minor improvements we can mention the better animation of the floating windows, as well as not very pleasant message notification, which displays both message type and sender. CallerID is implemented in the same way: the half of the screen displays either image or video clip assigned to the contact. The profiles are still limited by 7 add-ins, which can be changed in terms of the following parameters:
6 profiles may change the names, but the images remain unchangeable.       The support to the Flash-animation in the themes becomes a customary thing in all A200-baesd phones of the company. The W910i ships with preinstalled theme Eclipse allowing a wallpaper to be moved on the screen with the help of the place indicator utilized in some other cases.    Phone book In terms of the quick search we can mention the correct search by first name and second name, as well as by all phone numbers. As usual, the search is made by the correspondence to the entered name or first numbers of a phone. For example, if you are looking for a number 8 999 000 65 01, the phone shows it after you start entering 8 … in the search field. We’d like to remind you, that Windows Mobile provides search from any place, and the abovementioned phone number is shown, if you enter, for example, 65. The same is with names and second names.        The phone memory saves up to 1000 entries and 7000 phone numbers. Each contact may include the following information:
     The list of calls is very simple. When selecting a number, you see date and time of the call. The calls can be sorted into received, send, missed calls, as well be shown in bulk.    Messages The handset comes with a handy application to create SMS/MMS. As usual, you are enabled to view the emoticons as pictures. The maximal size of the text message amounts to 1188 symbols.    The MMS application remains unchangeable. It has eye-catching interface to create compound messages up to 300Kb. You are enabled to attach audio files, pictures, video clips. The necessary apps to create attachment may be opened right from this menu (camera, voice recorder).      The email client allows to adjust a new account through five steps. Firstly, you enter your name and email address. Then follows login and password, after that the phone suggests your receiving the other settings from the server Sony Ericsson.com/support. If there is no access to the Internet, the last two steps are as follows: choose the connection type (POP3, IMAP4) and enter incoming and outgoing servers.         The changes of the interface include only the new background of the reading/writing windows of messages.        All attachments can be saved in the phone memory – that is very handy. Organizer Let’s look through the Organizer apps.  The first one is a functional alarm clock allowing to create up to five alarms. To each of them you can adjust time, recurrent. The phone also makes it possible to choose alarm signal or radio. It is pleasant that you can rename the alarm (for example, to name it “it’s time to dine” instead of “alarm 03”), as well as fix an alarm picture. (If we are talking about dinner, there is a plate with soup).     Calendar There are two ways of viewing: monthly or weekly with each day having an hourly schedule. After choosing the necessary weekday, you can quickly create a reminder. The latter has lots of settings. They are as follows: subject, start time, duration, reminder (5-30 minutes before), recurrence (daily, weekly, monthly, early), location. To cap it all, you are enabled to add small description of the event. As you see, the reminder is not the perfect one, but it is rather good taking into account, that it isn’t the separate organizer, but just a function of the mobile phone.        Notes Here you can create common notes 254 symbols long.   Timer It is a common timer. You fix a time to within a second, and see the count in the stand-by mode.  Stopwatch creates up to 9 laps.    Calculator is noticeable for the possibility to extract root.   The presence of the code memo is very intrigue. In the rest, the 4-digit password symbolizes only, that these notes are very important.    Multimedia Menu The main distinguishing feature of the A200 is the main reason why the W910i and the K850i were announced with a big delay. It is a multimedia viewer, who was greatly changed in the platform. As we’ve already said, the viewer now lacks the common file manager, which is can be found now in the organizer item. Now let’s discuss why it is interesting and whether it is handy in the everyday use. The design of the interface almost copies the menu of Sony PlayStation Portable. The vertical shifts have a nice animation; to the right of an item you see semitransparent floating balls. To chose a necessary item you can use either the affirmative button or decline the navy key to the right. The main menu consists of five items; each of them we’ll discuss separately. They are as follows: photo, music, video, stream-TV and settings.   Settings In this item you adjust the screen orientation. As the phone ships with a orientation sensor, the most of users like the auto rotate. Though those, keen on using the phone when laying, are likely to appraise the possibility to turn this option off.    TV The W910i allows to use video streaming, for example to play back a RM-clip from the Internet.  Video This menu item includes all supported video clips, both made with the camera and others. The window to choose a clip has a vertical list capable to display five clips labeled with thumbnails. The latter are static; when cycling through them, the phone has some jerks.   The clips can be viewed with a rate amounting to 30 frames per second. The player has an option to scale a picture when in the landscape mode. After you switch on this orientation the first 3 seconds the screen displays the semitransparent signs of the context keys and duration scale. Then they disappear.  Photo The main novelty of an application is a photo viewer. It can sorts out the stills by latest photo, photo and other pictures. When opening the latest photo, you view photos in the viewer. The camera album has a monthly sorting. The collection section saves all images added to the folder “favorite”. The last item shows all pictures stored in the folder “Pictures”.      Let’s enter the camera album. Each month has a thumbnail changing each 5 seconds. We choose the month we need and go to the table of photos, which have this date in EXIF. When looking through the thumbnails below, in the mode of three columns, we see both photos done in the chosen month and the other photos marked with another title. In this viewing mode you can choose the marked image as a wallpaper, contact image, screensaver or greeting. When you choose a thumbnail, the latter is growing smoothly on 20% and in the same smooth way it shrinks, when you choosing the next image. When you press the Option key, a picture smoothly occupies the whole screen. After pressing Back, the image smoothly goes on its place in the table without covering the next pictures. It is an eye-catching moving, though you may get tired of it after a couple of weeks.      After we’ve chosen a picture, we go into the viewer. There in the first 3 seconds we see semitransparent signs and symbols of the declines adjusted to the navi key. The context menu of functions lists all standard options of the picture viewer. There as follows: send via Bluetooth, print, PhotoDJ editing and slide presentation.        The latter can also be started after pressing the Play button. When we press it, 5 ways of playing appears:
As the vendor intended, this emotional way of displaying photos is the most suitable one to the slide-show. The name of this system of presentation is X-Pict Story. Each of the “moods” has its type of melody and special type of cycling through the pictures.        In many cases the effects resemble the comedy detectives of 70th shot in the southern states of the USA. To describe the smooth and nice-looking movements of pictures is dull, so we’d rather try to compare from memory our guest with Nokia N76.
It is a short table. It turns out, that the styles of passing are the only advantage of the A200 over the Nokia multimedia smartphones. Music Hurray! Walkman 3.0 is available since now on all phone regardless the presence of the Walkman sub-brand. As our review model does have it label, player item appeared in the main menu right after the described above multimedia menu. Now it has a dedicated player key to open and minimize it locating on the top end of the handset. Of course, the second version of the player was well elaborated and functional in comparison with its rivals, but the competitive vendors have already introduced some new interesting player versions during the last year. The most successful was Nokia, that updated the interface of the music focused smartphones since the N81, and furthermore, S40 5th Edition can boast about rather eye-catching player interface. The main difference of the third version of the player is that it is integrated in the multimedia menu and the list of sorting is almost copies the other lists in this program. The same as in the second version, to cycle through the library, that is leisurely refreshed each time when you insert the memory card, doesn’t necessarily need to use the OK button. It is enough just to decline the key to the right in order to choose and to the left – to go back. The icons of the sorting times have been moved in the left column and became vertical ones. The context menu, that is called up by the left soft-key hasn’t been changed.       The playing window consists now from the thin progress bar occupying the whole width of the window. The bar has above a small window of Album Art, icons of playing back modes and the current position of the track in the playlist. There is also an information line on the top, where you see the indicators of the signal strength, battery, notifications and time. Under the line the screen displays the played time and the rest time, ID3-tag and symbols of the navigational key. It is interesting that the navi key itself is equipped with these symbols. When pressing up and down, you call up the current playlist occupying the half of the active window. After changing the orientation in the landscape one, the symbols of the navi key move to the right sight of the scrolling bar.   The settings feature a common visualization instead of the album cover, shuffle and repeat settings. Here you can also switch on one of the most disputable improvements of the W910i – Sense Me. It works in the following way: when you shake the handset upwards, it switches the shuffle mode. Pull it to the left, it switches the previous track. With the pull to the right, you hear the next track. This function works without pressing the dedicated player button on the top end of the phone.         The equalizer has 5 lines. The other remains unchangeable.    The sound quality hasn’t changed in comparison with other phones of the company. The same concerns the maximum loudness. It is enough only for the ear-buds-like type of headphones.  The phone also houses a FM-radio supporting an automatic search for the channels and RDS info stations. All active channels can be saved in the 20 memory cells.     Connectivity The phone comes with Bluetooth 2.0+EDR module running at 100-120 KB/s. The device provides steady connectivity either when transferring bulky files or with a wireless headset. The main improvements of Bluetooth is that now you can minimize the windows of data transferring. To connect the W910i to PC via cable is the simplest task. There is nothing new in it; the safety cutting off by means of Windows utility is another drawback inherent in Fast Port. Games The phone comes with three preinstalled games.  Marble Madness 3D The game is not the new one, but it has new unusual way of control. You put the handset parallel to the flow and start declining it in different planes. Where you decline it, there the ball rolls. The game is rather captivating, but you may feel bored already on the second level.      V-Rally 3D These races are much better than the Rally 3D, which was described in the review of the 5610. Good graphics, manageable control, possibility to use the landscape mode make this game even more attractive.         Luminines Block Challenge Honestly speaking, I had been playing this game for totally five hours, but still failed to grasp the idea of it. The game has a fighting plot, but instead of fights you win scores playing tetris.     Performance Jbenchmark1: 8246 Text: 2952 2d shapes: 1951 3d shapes: 913 Fill rate: 759 Animation: 1675 Jbenchmark 2: 1224 Image manipulation: 370 Text: 713 Sprites: 646 3d transform: 727 User interface: 21972 Jbenchmark 3d Jbenchmark 3d hq: 454 Jbenchmark 3d lq: 472 Triangles pear second: 37414 Ktexels pear second: 1543 Jbenchmark hd Smooth triangles: 36865 textured triangles: 32446 fill rate: 1397 ktexels gaming: 162 (5,4 frames per second) Camera The phone is equipped with a 2megapixel camera without autofocus. It is rather strange to see this camera, as even the W890i ships with the 3.2mipixel camera. The camera interface copies the one in the photo focused flagship model K850i. The exception is the number of items in the menu and cycling through modes (photo, video, viewer), which can be assign to the declines of the navi key.   The camera settings are as follows:
      The other available settings include picture quality, review, memory type, shutter sound that can be off and reset counter.    In the video mode you are enabled to adjust clip length, white balance, colour effects and use useless night mode, self-timer, mike and choose the memory time.           It is up to you, how you assess the picture with the inappropriate white balance, but we’d like to say a couple of words about the video shooting. Since now the clips have the long-lusted QVGA resolution. To be the happiest user, you need to choose the 30f/s frame rate, but alas! This specification lays in store for the flagship model only, the other handsets have to be contented with 15f/s. Though it doesn’t affect the quality: there are noises, hangs up in some parts of the clip. In general, the clips can be comparable with those, recorded with smartphones Nokia 6120, 6110, 6290. For the device from the middle segment, the result is not bad, but even the old lady 6233 does much better. Video Sample, 3gp, 880 KB >>> Conclusion The phone provides good connection quality, it isn’t worse than in other handsets of the company, though it falls short of the model result of HTC Touch. The earpiece has 20% of loudness in the quiet room, but it isn’t enough for the noisy underground. The piping polyphonic loudspeaker can be heard only in quiet rooms. If you are interested it is similar to the one in the W880i. The vibration is mediocre and deserves 4 points with the 5 maximal points. The W910i is designed to be the flagship model in the series Sony Ericsson Walkman, and there are lots of improvements since its predecessor. From one hand the music specifications of the phone resemble the iTunes installed in the PC having the 6 channels soundcard. It is handy and nice, but though it doesn’t have the main thing. And even Sense Me shake control, glorious 2.4inches screen, slim casing don’t make up for it. The W910i lacks the thing that was implemented in Nokia and Samsung music focused phones produced in 2007 – good sound quality. You can retort, that the most of users are contended with players “Panajabic” with one-dollar headphones and few customers having a Walkman phone prefer to change the standard headphones for the more expensive ones. But the problem is, that Sony Ericsson W910i itself doesn’t stand among the 200-dollar phones. Considering the handset as the image device, we can name it the analogue of the S500i, as it has no squeaks and creaks and button cracks. The W910i also lacks side diodes, but instead it may boast about more comfortable slider mechanism and the camera is able to work without opening the phone. The new software platform A200 goes without saying. Thus the W910i doesn’t turn out to be the substitution for the W850i, but otherwise it may perfectly match those, who like the S500i and the W580i but for the low built quality. We can recommend the phone to those, who are eager to try the A200 and get the slim slider phone with huge screen. As you see, we don’t mention music at all. And the reason is that, the W850i has two very good successors. They are both have the price comparable with the W910i, but they only offer the smaller display and thicker casing. The first rival is Nokia 5610 EM featuring good sound quality plus the 2.5 headphone jack and quality 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus. Of course, the W910i provides more comfortable work with player, but sound falls behind. The second rival is Samsung i450 running S60. This device has the sound quality comparable with Nokia N91, 2.3 inches screen and similar 2 megapixel camera without autofocus. The situation is very interesting: in 2005 the mother company Sony didn’t bet on the Walkman brand. But the things have changed and nowadays Sony Ericsson face the same dilemma as Samsung. As you remember, Samsung i450 ships with the simple player interface lake Nokia E51, which is far from the music phone. The Sony Ericsson phones have quality player interface, which can rival with player Sony A816, but if they add good the sound quality, it may be the fatal stroke at Sony players. And also they will have to cope with problems caused by the necessity to add chipsets to treat the sound, which inevitably declines stability and energy efficiency. The tested sample has R1AB056 firmware with camera software version 1.3. SAR value for Sony Ericsson W910i is 0.90 W/kg. © Written by Tikhonov Valeriy, Mobiset.ru Translated by Arina Urban. Published — 26 March 2008. |
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