Sony Ericsson Zylo review

Sony Ericsson has been a pioneer in launching some successful Walkman-branded music phones which have been received well by the youngsters in India. After a gap of a certain duration, Sony is back with a new Walkman series phone - The Zylo.

The Zylo is the new Sony Ericsson's Walkman phone along with the Spiro launched recently in India. The Zylo boasts of 3G and HSDPA, a 3.2 megapixel camera with VGA video recording, plus a decent TFT display with a 240x320 pixel resolution. It also has a number of Java based applications to let you keep up to speed with popular services like Facebook and Twitter.

A few years ago, this would be a mid to high-end model. Now, it's difficult to get as excited, although its small size, which is just 16mm thick even with the slide-out keypad, does make it a phone that can be easily slipped into a pocket, or bag.

You can't fail to notice that the phone has been built to a price, with cheap plastics and small, fiddly buttons on the upper section of the phone. By contrast, the call and end keys are large and sufficiently far away from the rest to avoid accidental presses. The number keys are also fine, which does make it easier to use when texting.

The key features of Sony Ericsson Zylo music phone include a 3.5 megapixel camera with geo-tagging and voice call, a 2.6 inch wide screen and up to 16GB of storage via a MicroSD card. The Zylo device comes integrated with Facebook and Twitter. You can also share your photos to Flickr and Picasa, or upload videos to YouTube directly from the phone. The Zylo phone is available in Jazz Black, Chacha Silver and Swing Pink colours.

As a Walkman branded phone, the camera isn't given a lot of attention here. Although you can record video at 640x480 pixels, and up to 24 frames per second, there's no autofocus, no flash and no special camera features. As long as there's good light, you'll probably get photos good enough to share but don't expect anything more than that.

The Walkman player, on the other hand, is decent and what you're probably buying this phone for. The latest Walkman player software has a number of skins, which includes an old-school cassette, a vinyl record, amplifier meter and a traditional plain-text view with optional album-art. You can also choose music by creating playlists, or searching by genre and other criteria.

The player also includes shake controls to shuffle tracks and a number of equaliser options to improve the sound quality. There's an FM radio, plus support for a range of audio codecs, including the lossless FLAC codec (Free Lossless Audio Codec) that will eat up memory card space but give you the best possible audio quality. Of course, you'll need a better set of headphones than the bundled versions to truly benefit. The phone still uses an adapter to connect 3.5mm headphones, unlike the Spiro that has an integrated socket at the top.

For music recognition, you get the ever-reliable TrackID app that samples a snippet of audio and identifies the track (and then invites you to buy the track or get more information), while SensMe can be used to play music that matches your mood – based on the tempo of the music.

Although the 2.6-inch screen isn't that big, you can play video on the Zylo too. There's also a web browser and apps for Facebook and Twitter that can run on the standby screen. Another widget includes Walk Mate, which acts like a pedometer, using the integrated accelerometer that rotates the screen from portrait and landscape when you turn the phone while surfing the net or looking at media.

The apps are basic, and not particularly quick, but that is reflective of the fact that the hardware is now getting quite old. Sony Ericsson's menu system does not have the finesse of its new Xperia range of smartphones, based on Android, and you won't find loads of extra apps to install on the Zylo, but you do get a tried-and-tested UI that has been around for years and still gives a good overall user
experience. You just need a little patience at times.

It's still more than capable at managing threaded text conversations, accessing push-email services like GMail, and can browse the web in normal, or reduced for mobile, screen views.

Battery life is reasonable too, as long as you're not using it for watching movies. If you simply use it to play music, it will last for ages between charges. Given that this is sold as a Walkman phone, it is ideal for someone who values music above other features. For anyone that wants apps, games or a decent camera, you'll have to look elsewhere.