Sony Ericsson W705 review

Sony Ericsson devices can be split pretty easily into two categories: Music phones and camera phones.

the Sony Ericsson W705 fits into the music category, with backing of the Walkman brand too.

The W705 is a slider device and although it's not a smartphone, it includes a number of sexy features to make listening to your music much more fun.

The handset itself is brushed aluminium and our review sample featured a gold trim too. On the back, there's a soft touch battery casing that feels smooth under fingertip. It's pretty skinny for a slider, measuring 95x48x114.3mm.

The sliding front comprises a 2.4-inch QVGA screen with a navigation button (complete with central select button), while on the left and right, there are call answer and end keys.

Of course, you'll find quick access buttons to the music player - after all, this is all about easy access and control of your tunes. You can trigger the music player by tapping the Walkman button on the top of the device.

The Walkman player includes shake control, allowing you to skip tracks by shaking the W705.

The player itself is intuitive, as you'd expect from a Walkman-branded music player and there's the familiar selection of track categories, allowing you to view your music collection by artist, track and genre. There's also the SenseMe option that picks out a playlist based on your mood and tempo data.

The music player is really good quality too, boosted by a decent set of earphones in the box. You'll need to use these too, as Sony Ericsson has included its proprietary earphone connector rather than the regular 3.5mm jack. It's very inconvenient, especially on a device marketed towards music fans.

There's 120MB packed into the W705, but you can boost this with a memory card. A 4GB memory card comes in the box, but it does support more.

To get your tunes onto the W705, you'll have to use Sony Ericsson's Media Manager software. It's like iTunes, but less intuitive.

The loudspeaker is a little substandard in comparison to other devices, and pumping tunes sound tinny - another disappointment from a music phone.

In terms of connectivity, the Sony Ericsson W705 is well formulated. With Wi-Fi and 3G onboard, you can benefit from high speed downloads.

Other multimedia features include a 3.2-megapixel camera that comes secondary to the Walkman media player and connectivity with image upload services including Picasa and MySpace.

The camera itself features a much simpler interface in comparison to those developed for the CyberShot devices. With a fixed focus lens, it's hard to get them all crisp in all situations and although there's an LED flash, it's not as powerful as dual LED or Xenon.

YouTube is preloaded too, so you can instantly upload your videos to the web.

Although the Sony Ericsson W705 doesn't feature GPS, it does feature Google Maps preinstalled. Using the network, the navigation isn't as accurate as on those devices with GPS, but it's fine if you need to know where you are roughly.

The browser on the W705 is pretty basic. It's a NetFront-powered application and although speedy, don't expect a PC-like experience.

Other preinstalled application include Walk Mate, a pedometer, Accuweather and Music Quiz, a game that uses your music collection to provide a little entertainment.

Battery performance is pretty good, but you wouldn't expect anything else from a Java-based non-smartphone. The W705 will provide more than two days of action for regular phone users and although Sony Ericsson quotes 4 hours of talktime using 3G, this is for full on use.

The Sony Ericsson W705 may not be the most advanced mobile phone on the market, but it really is a top music phone from a star player. it doesn't include the advanced features of a smartphone, but for something basic with excellent music quality, it comes highly recommended.