The Sony Ericsson W8 is the first walkman smartphone to run on the Android 2.1 mobile operating system. The Sony Ericsson W8 phone is especially made for people who love music. Users can not only enjoy great audio quality on this handset but will also be able to download content from YouTube and music stores. Add to it the Android OS opens door to thousand of apps including music players that users can try.
Sony Ericsson W8 Features
Sony Ericsson W8 is a bar type phone with a 3 inch TFT HVGA touch screen supporting a resolution of 320×480 pixels. The screen is scratch proof. When you open the box pack and switch on the phone the Timescape UI takes over (Walkman Theme and Widget) and on the home screen you will also see Twitter and Facebook which is integrated with the UI.
The W8 from Sony Ericsson comes with a decent camera with a resolution of 3.2 megapixels and does support geo tagging. However the camera comes with no flash and no zoom options. Videos can be recorded in 640×480 resolutions. As already mentioned before the W8 is a walkman phone and more emphasis has been given to music. The music player comes with infinite button that takes you to music stores or YouTube from where you can download more music. The music player also comes with the track ID recognition feature which gathers information such as artist, album and track about a particular song. Music player is good but comes without an equalizer which is in fact a must have feature. Thankfully, you can use the Android market to find music player that comes with an equalizer.
The Sony Ericsson W8 is powered by a 600 MHz processor and though it comes with an outdated Android OS, this phone can be upgraded to 2.3, but by doing so you may lose the warranty.
The W8 handset weighs 104 grams and is of dimension 99 x 54 x 15 mm. Other features are GPS with aGPS and Wisepilot™ turn-by-turn navigation, 3.5 mm audio Jack, GPRS/EDGE, 3G, Wi-Fi and USB. The W8 comes with 128 MB RAM and supports microSD/SDHC card up to 16 GB.
The battery used is 1200 mAh Li-ion which gives a talktime of approximately 4 hours and standby time of 476 hours on 3G network.
Pros: Amazing resolution, touch sensitivity really good and responsive and great sound quality even when using speaker.
Cons: Many have complained that the battery life is pathetic, however since this is an android phone you need to make sure that no applications are running in the background that is draining off the battery. To get the most out of the battery make sure Bluetooth, 3G, GPS are switched off when not required.
Sony Ericsson W8 Current Price: Rs. 10,950 | Bargain: Rs. 9,650
Box pack contains: W8 handset, battery with charger, Stereo headset, free 4GB microSD card, USB cable, warranty card and user guide.