Sony Ericsson W810 review: Walkman on the EDGE

Sharp, colorful, high-flown

The photos you see in this review are taken with one of the best mobile phone cameras in the history of mobile devices. To activate the camera apply a long press on the release button or select the camera application inside the main menu. Hold the phone horizontally, just like you would do it with a common digital camera. When you half-press the camera release button, it takes the phone 2-3 seconds to focus automatically. According to our comparing method, Sony Ericsson W810 is somewhat slower than its competitors. On the other hand, its photographic skills make efforts worth. The phone takes excellent pictures. What's more, its macro mode gives brilliant results too.

Pictures are taken in three different resolutions: 160 x 120, 640 x 480 and 1632 x 1224 pixels, and saved in JPEG format. Sony Ericsson W810 also captures videos in 3GP format with a resolution of 176 x 144 pixels. Recording length is only limited by the available free space on the memory card. A 4x, 30-step digital zoom is available, as well.

Camera interface

The W810 camera offers plenty of setup options. Beside standard pictures you can capture panorama landscapes or a fast sequence of four shots in burst mode. Lens shutter works seamlessly. The focus signal and the release sound cannot be deactivated directly from the camera menu. To mute them you will have to activate the phone's silent mode (might not work with all firmwares). Anyways, Sony Ericsson has implemented four different lens shutter sounds.

 
Viewing pictures inside the camera menu

New File Manager and multimedia tabs

Further on, the menu allows you to set the size of the pictures; it also offers two quality grades, a flash option, a macro mode, a night mode, a self-release function, several graphic effects, white colour balance, date and time. In addition, there's an option to choose whether you want the pictures to be saved on the Memory Stick, or in the phone's memory. A bit annoying is the fact that the camera options menu closes every time a setting has been applied. Exposure is compensated by the use of the horizontal ways of the main navigation button. To zoom in or zoom out use the swing volume button.

 
Extensive compensation options for the exposition

The W800 camera is identical to the cameras used in SE K750 and W800 but I took several new photos, including a few ones in macro mode. They are all 300 to 600 KB in size.

Sample photos in full resolution:


 
 

 
Without applying macro mode • with active macro mode

Capturing text

Standard mode • night mode • with active LEDs

Radio and RDS

If you get tired of your own music, turn on the radio. To start it, just plug in the earphones. Then you can play it through the loud speaker as well. The radio is stereophonic; the received signal is very clear and stable, there are no interferences in the broadcast. Of course, it depends on the position of the supplying wire that serves as an antenna and leads to the earphones. But generally, stations are very easy to find.

The radio supports RDS. It displays the name of the radio station or even additional information, if it is being broadcasted - like artists' names or songs' titles. The radio offers 20 saving positions for stations in the frequency scale of 87.5 up to 108.0 MHz. You can either search yourself, or leave the automatic mode to do so. The latter works perfectly. It finds the station with the strongest broadcast almost immediately and saves it into the memory at your will. Within the memory, however, you need to manually enter the names of the saved stations. The phone does not record them automatically.

Radio • station names need to be added manually

In the K750 model we were complaining about strange cracking sounds coming out every other second during radio broadcast. In W810 they have been eliminated. Its radio tunes automatically when you travel and you pass different broadcasting frequencies. Sound is more or less satisfactory, thanks to the quality of the earphones.

Phoning - cornerstone of all mobiles

Sony Ericsson W810 offers a traditionally high call sound quality, even though a little bit wider volume scale could have come in handy too. The sound becomes even better if you plug in the earphones - something I'm sure you will be doing almost all the time, anyway. After all, the W810 is a real Walkman. The connector situated in the middle part of the cable serves as a base for the microphone of the handsfree set. The button situated on the connector is for accepting or rejecting an incoming call. Sound is brilliant.

The phone offers ringing sounds in MID, AMR or MP3 format. Surprisingly, files sound much better when they are played through the player than when they are used as ringtones for incoming calls. In the latter case they sound much too loud and thus quite unpleasant. Sony Ericsson W810 rings very loudly. You cannot miss an incoming call, no matter in which pocket you have tucked away the phone.

Ringing is easy to hear while the phone is playing music as well. The mobile handsfree profile gets activated automatically once the earphones have been connected. Incoming calls stop the music player. In the earphones you will hear the ringing sound that has been set. To accept a call, press the button mounted in the middle of the cable. The message system works alike. You will easily recognize new messages by their specific melody or tone. Once the ringing has stopped or the message tone has been muted, the player continues its function from the moment where it stopped.