Sony Ericsson W850 review: A Walkman with a slide

Mixing fun and work

This phone offers many time organizing features. There is an Organizer icon in the main menu and it contains several applications: Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Alarms, Calculator, Synchronization, Timer, Stopwatch, Applications and Code memo. The Calendar offers monthly and weekly view. As we have mentioned above, when you add a birth date in the phonebook, the phone asks you if you wish to add it in the calendar too.

Organizer menu • Calendar monthly view • Calendar weekly view

Tasks can be two types: simple Tasks and Phone calls. Reminders can be put as Subjects. Notes are written as messages; there even is the T9 to assist writing. There are five alarms available. Each one offers a lot of options - you can choose to repeat it on chosen days of the week or everyday. Furthermore, you can add text and a picture to the alarm as well as set its behavior in case the time that the alarm is due to go off comes while the phone is in silent mode.

Alarms menu

The Voice recorder doesn't have any limit in the duration of the recordings since all the free memory is available for the purposes of the application. The Calculator is the regular Sony Ericsson one, which you have probably already seen. It offers the basic functions with no bells and whistles.

Voice recorder • Calculator

An interesting option is to use the flash LED for more practical purposes - for example, as a flashlight in the dark. You can even set it to flash repeatedly the SOS signal.

The "Light" controls

As far as the additional applications are concerned, an interesting and funny one is the FaceWarp application, which is used for manipulating portrait shots by adding funny faces and grimaces.

Our friend Dexter in FaceWarp: boring, bigface, professor

Some other applications include the MusicDJ, VideoDJ and the Music Mate. VideoDJ is for making video clips from scratch or for editing existing recording using special transition effects and by adding background music. It can be a very amusing application. MusicDJ is a very simple application for creating custom polyphonic melodies.

VideoDJ application: adding text and music • MusicDJ application

The Music Mate application is designed for those aspiring to become musicians. It offers a guitar chords database, a piano pitch and a metronome. You can use the database to check the finger composition for any guitar chord, as well as listen to how it sounds.

Music Mate application

Gaming frenzy

There are several preinstalled games on the phone. The first one is Juiced, the famous racing car game. The second one is QuadraPop, which is a Tetris-like game, which can be rather amusing if you are in the right mood. Then comes a river rafting game, in which you should take your boat through the river obstacles. And finally, the Treasure towers game, which is a classic jump'n'run title with nice graphics.

Juiced • QuadraPop • Rafting • Treasure towers

Final words

We are really pleased with the first attempt of Sony Ericsson at sliders. W850 is a nice handset offering loud and clear music reproduction and a rich retail package. When it comes to music you would hardly be disappointed since the Walkman 2.0 music player, the stereo Bluetooth support, and the 3.5 mm audio jack make this baby among the best of non-OS music phones. In the same time, it offers rich functionality, which won't disappoint the tech buffs. If you are willing to get over the bad ergonomics of the navigation pad, the Sony Ericsson W850 might just be your next Walkman phone.