Sony Ericsson W880i review

The Sony Ericsson W880i really shows realise just how incredibly quickly phone technology and design has come along in recent years.

Somehow, this handset crams in a 3G phone, 1GB of memory, two built-in cameras – one front-facing for video calls and a standard 2-megapixel one for general photography, into a shell that is 103mm by 47mm by 9.4, an impressive feat, making it narrower than a standard CD case.

Upon first impressions, you get the sense the Sony designers had the Apple iPod in mind. It has a brushed steel fascia and rubberised rear casing and sides which makes the handset feel sturdy and dependable. By doing this, although as slim and pocketable as similarly priced Samsung offerings, the W880i avoids feeling plasticy completely like the comparison.

The 262,144 colour TFT screen is on the small size - emphasized by its rather redundant 5mm wide black frame - but its 240 x 320 pixel resolution and bright backlight make it very easy on the eye. It seems that Sony's designers also kept an eye on the iPod when it came to the interface design and typeface, as the overall visual impression is one of elegance and legibility. The operating system is also pleasingly responsive.

The phone's W prefix indicates this is a designated Walkman phone and the handset comes bundled with a 1GB Memory Stick Micro card and the Walkman 2.0 player software. There is also support for stereo Bluetooth headphones for those who really want to impress their mates.

However the phone still uses Sony's rather flatfooted Disc2Phone software so transferring music to the phone is much less slick than Apple's iTunes automatic synchronisation. The transfer itself was also rather slow despite the USB 2.0 connnection, taking about 5 minutes an album. (Of course if you have a PC that can write to the memory card the process is much zippier).

More worryingly we couldn't get the Walkman software to view the files we transferred to the phone's memory card. You could still play them by either using the File manager or creating a playlist and adding the tracks - but the standard Artist/Album browse mode in the Walkman software stubbornly refused to find them. Sony insists that this is a bug with our phone and will supply us with a replacement - we'll update you on this when that happens.

(Update: Sony Ericsson did supply us with a replacement and it worked perfectly in this respect. So if your W880i has problems detecting music files demand a new handset).

When you could get to play the songs, the sound quality through the supplied headphones was fine. In particular the maximum volume of the W880i didn't seem to be capped like current iPods (as a means to prevent ear damage, apparently). Inevitably music played through the built-in speaker was sibilant and lacked bass - but as this mode is only ever used by dribbling Chavs on the bus we can forgive Sony this minor sonic lapse.

One music feature worth noting is the W880i's bundled TrackID music recognition software. This has now been promoted to a perch on the main menu and deservedly so - it works like a dream. If you hear a song you don't recognise just boot up TrackID and sample 10 seconds of the tune. In moments the W880i will have checked the sample against an database of over 2 million songs and provided you with the artist, album and track details.

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