Sony Ericsson W710i review – leading a fast lifeEveryone is impatiently waiting for this phone to appear on the market. According to the company promises and Sony Ericsson previews, it should inherit all the advantages of the youngest in the Walkman series W300i folding phone and, besides that, get a 2 mega pixel sensor instead of a VGA camera…Did it work? I am distinctly telling you – yes. It worked, all right. The phone is a wonder… It is lying before me on the desk. I look upon W710i with sadness. The thing is that I’ll have to part with him very soon and await his appearance on the market. And I will wait as it is the first phone that I don’t want to give back. Fine, solid, very comfortable and just beautiful. And I want you to notice that all of this comes with a price of $300. I.e. it’s a real budget phone with a quite an “adult” stuffing. The appearance is teenage and, in any case, sports… But I think that all of this is nonsense. A very nice appearance that does not belittle my dignity (fat gentleman of age). This phone is universal. It looks female in the hands of a youthful beauty and teenage in the hands of a lively guy on rollerblades. A middle-aged woman will like it more than a flowery and dumb folding phone (those phones are considered to be for women for some reason). And a middle-aged man (I’ll be careful – much over forty) will constantly and with big pleasure fiddle with it without worrying about the lack of polished metal or tiny (and because of that almost invisible) smart phone letters on the display. This phone is for everyone. Respectable people do wear jeans and sneakers. And W710i is a sneaker. Yes, a rejuvenating and invigorative attribute of a modern man that (I mean the attribute) is a well equipped cell phone. And the music it plays! And the sound of the radio? The camera! Good god… But let’s stop these pitiful cries. It’s to get closer to the phone. I’ll be brave enough just to add that you will fall in love with it. As you have never seen anything like it. I, in particular, haven’t. Never. Not even once. Little aesthete A rounded thick frame from glossy plastic… Where do they get the plastic of this quality? For a few years, I’ve been using an old Sony Ericsson T610 (I’ll have to say good-bye to it soon). And there is neither a single scratch nor a stain on its glassy panel and keyboard buttons as if the phone was bought yesterday. And it lives in my pocket near the keys. And it didn’t have a case for the most time of his life. And we are not talking about a case, more like a holster that does not save you from accidental scratches. But there are no scratches… W710i material is even better. Semi-transparent white plastic of the front panel. Gray rubber framing that leaves a very pleasant impression. Gray, to match the rubber, lower base plastic of the folding phone frame. And finally, mother-of-pearl white plastic of the frame base and removable battery cover. Altogether – a calm design (by the way, they also promise another design version, with a blue rubber inset) that carries the teenage constituent of the thin orange front panel framing – it separates the white transparent plastic (structural from the interior – you can see a thin gray grid through the thickness of plastic) from the rubber framing. And this gray rubber serves as a sports constituent. It’s a hint (not unreasonable) that the phone is solid and trustworthy…      So, the front panel. Camera lens is located on the top of the folding frame half. When the phone is opened, the lens is almost in the middle. The antenna lug on the back surface becomes a support point for the index finger (if you hold the phone with your right hand), so the finger does not slip onto the lens. The lens framing is metal. It reminds you of an eyepiece of the rangefinder “Leica” viewfinder. The front lens is covered by glass that is set into the framing. There is no mirror for a self-shot or flash. It is not very easy to wipe, but it also does not get as dirty as in other camera phones. The camera itself does not have an automatic focus. A powerful plastic loop that connects the phone halves is located above the lens. The exterior square screen is located below the lens inside of a figured white plastic panel framed by the orange strip and then by the rubber inset. This is a passive STN monochrome matrix. The resolution is 128õ128 pixels. Not much, right? But just turn on the phone. A converse backlight – orange symbols shine on the black background. And this is a very good resolution as you can see everything that you need to see on the exterior display. Even in the bright sunlight. The information of the incoming signal power and batter level is depicted on the display. The name of the cellular operator. Time and date. The reading of the built in pedometer. Full information summary – name of the profile in use, phone name, number, memory condition and battery level – appears on the screen if you press up on the volume control button (this button is located on the upper frame part of the left edge). The planned events message (recorded into the calendar) appears on screen if you press down on the two-sided volume button. The name of the track (Russian tracks are without any problems), track progress, play time and full track time (the time that the track will play) appears on the exterior screen when the player is on. The station frequency and RDS messages (if the station announces them – car owners know what I am talking about) are brought onto the screen in the radio mode. Four buttons covered with a rubber piece (continuous framing) are located on the sides of the exterior display. Left buttons, if you look at the front panel are for rewinding and forwarding tracks. Right ones – a play-pause player button and the button to enter the main information screen (i.e. while listening to the music, you can look at the clock or the pedometer reading).      A silver plastic inset with Walkman logo in the form of touching drops is located on the lower part of the front panel (when the phone is closed). This element is just a part of the phone decorum. Upper edge of the folded phone is taken by the rectangular antenna that is familiar by the Sony Ericsson 3rd generation folding phones. And the antenna itself serves as a comfortable support for the index finger, which adds comfort to using the phone. The already mentioned double-sided volume control key is located on the left edge of the lower part of the folding phone; an elongated camera shutter release button (it is not identified) is located lower. Even lower is the slot ledge for the memory card. It is not a shutter or a door, but a part of the battery cover. I.e. to change the card you need to remove the battery cover – the slot is located inside. I’ll add right away that the card is Ì2 (Memory Stick Micro) format. With the phone you get a 512 MB card – we are talking about a phone-player, so the company does not try to save money on the card. If there is no card (my case), you’ll have to do with a 10 MB of built in memory. Keyboard lock runner is located on the right edge – a very useful gadget. An IR port window is located below. You can say that it’s not the most comfortable place, but it is a folding phone after all. And the place chosen for the IR light receiver is quite optimal. The lower edge of the phone frame is given to the system adapter of a new standard (that is already usual for Sony Ericsson phones). The charger, data cable for connecting the PC USB port (cable is included), set adapter and other accessories offered in abundance by the company can be connected to the system adapter. I really liked the soft joint of the charger and phone. The pins are long and they clearly and comprehensibly lock inside of the phone. So that the connection does not come loose.      The back panel. Here everything is similarly fanciful to W300i. I.e. the thin plastic cover has a movable lock on the lower part of the panel. You have to move down the lock, but not very hard, so that the detail does not fall out of the cover. You have to pull the cover, but not with the lock. The cover is held by two lugs in the upper part. Don’t get scared – they are of different sizes. At first it seems that one of the lugs will break. But, no, the cover is quite solid; it’s hard to break it. If the lock will fall out of the cover, when you open it for the first time, do not be scared. It’s a usual thing – at first it’s hard to understand how all of it works. Just cautiously put the lock into cover slots – that’s all. You’ll understand later that the mechanism is, in fact, greatly made and very comfortable to use. You can see four holes covered by an orange metal grid in the upper part of the battery compartment – these are the “loud” speaker holes. Let’s remove the cover and take out the battery. Its volume is 900 mAh that should be enough for 10 hours in the conversation or player mode. And this data is not exaggerated. The phone is really very enduring. For four days I was playing with this device – I’ve listened to the music, photographed, called and read a book. And only on the morning of the fifth day the battery meter was completely down. All in all, it’s not less than 10 hours (if not more). SIM-card holder – simple metal frames. I had to take it out with a toothpick as the card is set into the frame. But then the card right away fits into place (you have to constantly reinstall the card in Nokia smarts with a folding SIM holder)… I rather like the memory card slot. The thing is that all types of exterior slot covers are usually made from rubber or plastic and fall off very fast. Only once I saw a meal cover on a really solid loop – I think it was Nokia 6233 (by the way, an excellent device). So it’s better that the memory card is in the battery compartment under the battery cover than in an open slot with the cover accidentally torn off… Let’s replace the battery, memory card (I didn’t have one as I had a sample, not a commercial version), close the cover, move back the lock latch. And open the phone. And what do we see? The halves open with a clear click – which became a custom from the ancient times of the great (i.e. symbolic, significant) Sony Ericsson Z600 folding phone. Tight loop with a spring, complete lack of a gap, the halves of the phone frame are solid and thick. And the open phone from a little baby becomes a cozy big device that you can hold to the ear with your shoulder – as a receiver of a common home phone.      The “phone” speaker slot covered with an orange metal grid is located in the upper part of the interior surface of the upper folding phone half in the overall integumentary glass. The screen itself built on the base of the TFT matrix. Image size is 31õ38 mm (i.e. the standard matrix of non QVGA screens for Sony Ericsson same size phones). The resolution is 176õ220 pixels. The screen can show 262 thousand of color shades. What can I say about the screen quality? At first, the picture seemed to be somewhat coarse – if you peer closely you can see the pixel structure of the matrix. But this is a feature of all Sony Ericsson phones, except the tops ones with high resolution screens. In fact, both the resolution and backlight brightness of the screen turned out to be quite on the level (I had to even turn down the brightness a bit – it was hard to read the book in the dark). The display somewhat fades in the sun, but not to the extent of impossibility to use it as a viewfinder. Yes, everything is fine with that. It’s not the mirror (reflective) Nokia screens, of course, but it’s quite good. The whole keyboard is located on the lower half of the opened frame. There are many buttons and all of them are well placed, so you don’t make a mistake when choosing. The upper soft keys are made in the form of a whole element. Two smaller buttons are located below – undo and “C”. Further on, two small round buttons – paired with the same buttons below that are located under the main keyboard. The left round button starts the Internet browser. It supports HTML (has the ability to show web pages) and WAP (second version). I separately note the start news reel RRS function (there are no problems with Russian). The phone uses GPRS and EDGE technologies. There is a powerful mail client. I.e. W710i has no problems using Internet resources... The second right upper button starts “My bookmarks” menu – a set of applications for fast access to them. You can set the menu. You can also set the joystick actions. And W710i is just great. A big metal puck with a big yes button in the center. The whole keyboard has orange backlighting, but the backlight of central joystick button framing catches your eye right away. The main phone keyboard – three separate vertical rows of prominent buttons with rounded bulging surfaces. I finally found a full set of symbols on the buttons – Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. The button backlight is well visible – the symbols themselves shine. The button surface is made of a rough plastic in tune with the rubber framing of the upper panel. Two small round buttons are located on the lower part of the keyboard – the left one is for starting the music player and the right one is the phone switch… I don’t know if I convincingly described Sony Ericsson W710i appearance. But it’s a very nice device. Yes, the phone size is 88õ48õ24.5 mm with 101 grams of weight. It lies in the hand so that it seems to be its continuation. As if you were born with the phone instead of seeing it some week ago. Sportsman and more I will not describe in detail the OS structure of this phone. Everything is pretty standard for Sony Ericsson 3rd generation. Address book for 1000 records (compared with the old T610) became much more comfortable – you can enter the complete information of a person, like the mail address (electronic and physical), birth date, home and business phone. You can choose an image for the addressee. All in all – great. The voice command system is utilized traditionally well for SE. The voice is excellently recognized, not one mistake. The dictaphone is good as well – there are/ almost, no limits to the recording length, if you have a half GB memory card. Java just flies. Mophun games are installed without any problems. A powerful file manager appeared (that was already on this generation phones). And you can install Java program into a chosen folder. Bluetooth works without any mistakes... Yes and also there are unique applications specifically for sports use. After all, W710i is considered to be a sports phone. So, the “Personal trainer” folder appeared in the system menu. “Performance” applet is a traveler, runner or cyclist journal. You enter the beginning and the end travel time. The built in pedometer will count the distance (by the number of steps) and calculate the average traveling speed. Further on – the “Walk” applet. It’s a pedometer that works from the built in travel sensor. Let’s turn on the sensor and put the phone into the pants pocket or hang it on the belt. And – go. The pedometer counts the steps and the distance (the phone counts the length of the average step by calibration of the “Parameters” menu in the “Personal trainer” folder) and counts the energy in calories. At midnight the sensor is nulled and everything starts from the beginning… The function is so useful that I got used to it momentarily. And very soon I found out that the way from my house to the metro station is 1.2 kilometers. And I drag for twenty minutes to the stations and that’s not good. And my statement that the distance decreases twice in the morning and quadruples in the evening – shameful whining. I just have to move more, that’s all. The third applet – the “Results” sports journal. And you can personify the phone in “Parameters” by entering your exact data – date of birth, gender, weight and etc… The phone has a belt clip and a couple of belts. One of them is for the shoulder. You insert the belt into the clip, tie it around your hand and lock the phone into the clip. You can do the same thing with the pants belt. The youth seems to like it, although I didn’t try this sport attribute. Maybe, in vain…                          Music, radio and camera Here it is – the second function of the new folding phone. Player… The sound is dreamy, unprecedented quality. I like it so much that I temporarily stopped using the old HDD player (quite good, by the way). An equalizer with installed presets (you can set your own sound). The player control buttons are located on the upper phone panel (the ones under the rubber skin). Excellent set… Yes, the set. You can connect any set with a 3.5 mm jack with this composite device. The microphone and answer button is located on the middle adapter frame. The clip is fastened to the wire – you can move it. The phone set comes with very interesting HPM-65 earphones. It is set with the fastening for the ear. The lips themselves are turned forward, i.e. they are set into the ear by their side… Unusual? But the sound. And the ears do not get tired. And the earphones do not fall out (they justly come with a sports phone). There is a radio in the phone. The sensitivity is good. There are 20 cells of memory that can hold the radio station frequency. The phone supports RDS technology – the information broadcasted by the radio stations is let out on the screen (for example, you can try the “Autoradio” or “Silver rain”). Radio works only when the set is connected and is used as an antenna, although you can transfer the sound to the “loud” speaker. Now about the camera… 2 mega pixels, max shot resolution is 1600õ1200 pixels, no automatic focus. The quality of the photographs… This is Sony Ericsson, friends. That’s why, there are no doubts. Sensor makes noise when there is a lack of lighting, but much less than the competitor cameras. You have to decide for yourself if you need the automatic focus in the camera phone. I liked the high speed of the shutter release (no delays). I didn’t care much for the lack of the macro mode. After all, it’s a phone, not a camera… No, it’s a phone with a very good camera. I.e. almost a camera. In any case, you can carry this pretty device with you anywhere without worrying about that lack of the camera. There you have it. Concerning the video quality… It’s still nothing serious. Sony Ericsson phones cannot shoot quality video. QCIF resolution, a lot of noise. But it’s video, with sound and no time limits – you can shoot as long as the memory lasts.        Video sample, 3GP, 223 KB >>> Conclusion I think everything is obvious without unnecessary words. I really liked the phone. I even fell in love with it and decided to buy it at the first chance I get… I am not a sportsman and not very young. But if that’s the only things that stop me from being Sony Ericsson W710i user, I am ready to start, say, running. Even jog. To the bakery – for a start… All great things start with little. I decided to start with a new phone. And that’s why I sincerely hope that the Olympic committee will hear about me. © Nikolay Nadezhdin, Mobiset.ru reviews Translated by Olga Mexina (info@mobiset.ru) Published — 06 march 2007 |
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