Sony Ericsson W902 review

Sony Ericsson has earned a distinct reputation with its Walkman series mobile phones. And undoubtedly, the Walkman series phones have been a huge success in India among the younger generation. Few would argue that Sony Ericsson's Walkman series offers one of the best mobile music packages to be found on any phone – only the iPhone really comes close.

But where the company seems to have struggled is settling on a consistent look. From the early retina-searing orange and white models to today's much cooler, but rather drab, bronze and black, Walkmans (or is that Walkmen?) have often tended to sound much better than they look.

And so it is with the Sony Ericsson W902 mobile phone. It's restrained to the point of blandness, offering a straight-up candy bar design with its gloss black casing enlivened by a few touches of bronze on the D-pad surround and some side-mounted controls, plus a little bit of etched detailing on the back and one side.

This is nobody's idea of a bling handset, though it is attractively slim, but fortunately it makes up for its lack of style with some very capable sonics and a more than decent camera.

First though, the screen. With 262k colours it's as sharp as you like, and a decent enough size at 40x320 pixels (2.2-inches). The busy cluster of controls beneath it are actually easier to use than they look, since although they're tiny, they're spaced rather well with minutely calculated ridges to help your thumb differentiate them – you just know a lot of hours were spent in R&D with that one. Below it the keypad buttons are rubberised plastic and although the keys are also on the small side, we found no difficulties with them.

On the side are the dedicated music controls, though unexpectedly they're black and blend into the handset, with the bronze styling reserved for the volume rocker and camera shutter at each end.

And speaking of cameras, the W902 is the first Walkman to feature a 5 megapixel model, equivalent to those in Sony Ericsson's camera-centric Cyber-shot range (unofficially they're calling it the Cyberman – see what they're done there?). While the top-end Cyber-shot now boasts an eight-megapixel snapper, this one is more than adequate for decent pics.

It starts up nippily in about three seconds and includes a range of clever options, including panorama and Sony Ericsson's marvellous BestPic feature, which takes eight additional shots either side of you pressing the shutter, to help you get the best action pic. PhotoFix meanwhile optimises your contrast and brightness settings after you've taken your shot.

Picture quality was good too, with realistic representation of colours. The 16x digital zoom even works when you're at full five-megapixel resolution, though the quality diminishes pretty spectacularly. The LED flash is functional but can come in handy if you're very close to your subject.

There's also the automatic option to send pics straight to your blog via Blogger, though the latest Cyber-shot phones now also offer other blog clients. There's also a secondary VGA camera on the front for video calls.

Going online with Sony Ericsson's browser is good if not spectacular within the limits of the smallish (for web browsing) screen – though the onboard accelerometer will automatically switch it to landscape mode when you turn the handset sideways. You can zoom in and out of web pages, view your page history, bookmark favourites, copy pictures and set up RSS feeds – pretty much everything you need in other words.

The music player is of the high standard that we've come to expect from this series, easily connecting to PC and allowing you to drag and drop files. It comes with a USB converter for the supplied 8GB M2 memory card, which could come in handy for swapping files with other people's computers. You'll certainly need the card too, since there's only 25MB of memory on board.

It also comes with Sony Ericsson's top-notch HPM-77 headphones, which are a major plus. They're certainly a cut or three above the usual in-box headphones, with a wide dynamic range, including deeper than usual bass, which remained taught and distortion-free even when we jacked it up to full volume. But if you want to use your own 'phones, you can do so via the 3.5mm adaptor – not as elegant a solution as having a dedicated jack on the device itself, but no great hassle either.

Incidentally, the single rear-mounted loudspeaker offers a surprisingly well rounded sound – not too muscular in the bass of course, but offering a much fuller sound than most.

It's also got all the usual fun stuff like Sony Ericsson's SensMe, which allows you to choose your tracks according to mood, TrackID, which can identify mystery tracks played on the built-in RDS-packing FM radio (or any other sound source come to that). The not particularly reliable shake control option is back too, allowing you to change tracks by shaking the handset, rather than going to the hassle of, erm, pressing a button.

Connection-wise it's a 3G (though not HSDPA), quad band phone with Bluetooth but not Wi-Fi, which would have been useful for faster web browsing. Battery-wise it held up pretty well though, with plenty of juice still showing after a day's playing with it.

All in all it's another winner of a slimline Walkman, this time with a very good camera.