Sony Ericsson W810 Cell Phone Reviews

Audio playback: Playback of MP3s, FM radio, and streaming music is loud enough through the Walkman phone’s speaker. With some songs, we felt the tunes sounded a bit tinny. However, this was easily remedied by adjusting treble in the music app. We also appreciated Sony Ericsson including stereo headphones and found listening to music through them to be more than satisfactory. We should note, however, that the phone doesn’t have a standard headset jack, so you’ll need to use the ones included with the W810.

Camera/video: The Sony Ericsson W810 has a 2-megapixel camera lens on its back, so when you’re snapping pictures it looks like a highly pocketable digital camera. It also has a built-in flash that actually works. There are some interesting camera features on this cell phone, such as a Macro Mode (represented by the symbol that looks like a flower in the camera settings), which allows you to shoot small objects close up. You’ll end up with nice, clean photos – even in mixed lighting. There’s also a Solarize special effect that you can use to distort colors. Pictures are automatically stored on the included 128MB Memory Stick Pro Duo, so feel free to snap away.

We were impressed with the camera quality in the W810. We found colors believable and bright, and images maintained quality when transferred from the phone to a computer. This is a huge plus, as many images captured on cell phones and then transferred to a computer typically suffer from degradation. We did find, however, that images did have some noise, but as long as you don’t use the zoom feature, you probably won’t encounter too much noise. Additionally, shadows hold detail well, and even highlights are impressive. Unfortunately, you won’t see a lot contrast in the images.

Music: As mentioned earlier, MP3 playback quality is decent, and adjusting the treble and bass for an optimum listening experience just improves it. We were able to easily store 20 music files (the phone supports AAC, MP3, AMR, and MIDI formats, to name a few – sorry, no Microsoft WMA files) on the Sony Ericsson W810’s included 128MB memory card. You can easily create playlists, shuffle music, and even send music to other devices that support it. In addition to playing back MP3s, you can listen to the radio and even stream music from the wireless Web. Streaming music sounds good but a little tinny. It’s a nifty feature – but it takes up a lot of data, so you need an unlimited data plan if you intend to use it a lot. Additionally, there’s a Music ID feature; if a song is playing, select the Music ID feature, and the phone will send a snippet of the music to the Internet. In return, you’ll get artist, song title information, and of course, an option to purchase the song. Very convenient.

Connectivity/Bluetooth: Like other Sony Ericsson cell phones, the Sony Ericsson W810 is a connectivity dreamboat. It has it all: Bluetooth, infrared (IR), and USB. We were able to pair the phone with the Sony Ericsson HBH-65 Bluetooth headset and an Apple iBook. We didn’t experience any audio degradation when we used the Bluetooth headset for calls. We also had no problem sending pictures to an Apple computer via Bluetooth. But we particularly liked the cell phone’s IR capability because we could use it to exchange contact info with people who own Palms and send (albeit slowly) contacts from our IR-enabled PC to the cell phone.

Keypad: The Sony Ericsson W810 Walkman phone’s orange-backlit keys are tactile and easy to dial in the dark. Although they are fairly small and look cramped, the keypad is highly usable, and we rarely suffered misdials. The Sony Ericsson W810 has a ton of buttons in what seems like awkward places, but they all have a purpose. Once you figure out the keys' destination, they aren’t so overwhelming. However, we kept accidentally hitting the dedicated music button and inadvertently started playing music.