Sony Ericsson W890 review: Thin Walkman refined

We really dig the image gallery

The Photo gallery is accessible through the Media center, it's the third application in the list and has the following submenu items: Latest Photo, Camera Album, Photo Tags, and Pictures.

Latest Photo provides quick access to most recent pics. Camera Album is a thumb list for each month of the year. When a month is open, it reveals a 4 x 3 grid of thumbs of photos. Scrolling down shows all the photos taken in the respective month. The highlighted photo is a bit larger for better viewing.

The Pictures section opens again as a 4 x 3 grid of thumbs with non-camera images, like the preinstalled wallpapers. When exiting the full screen view of a picture, it smoothly zooms out to thumb view.

Photo viewer in Media center

Generally, the Photo gallery is a convenient tool for managing a vast collection of camera photos with great customization capabilities. Photo Tags is a feature for displaying previously marked favorite photos. Pressing Up on the navigation key offers quick access to sending options like: send as Picture Msg, send as email, send to blog, and send via Bluetooth.

Other than that, you can set a photo as wallpaper, screen saver, startup image, and contact picture straight from the gallery. Here is the Pan and Zoom option and the slideshow function, revealed when you further scroll down the submenu. Slideshows in W890 are just fine - before they start you are asked to pick a mood and the handset plays the animated slide shows with background music to suit the chosen mood. The transition style of the slideshow also varies according to the mood.

Viewing the photos is smooth, with the next image quickly popping up upon sliding from left or right. This is a minor but pleasant novelty in the Media Center application.

Some of the options of Photo gallery in Media center

Accordingly, picture browsing via the classic file manager is still possible, only missing timeline view.

Picture browsing through file manager misses only timeline view

Editing a photo in PhotoDJ is just the same nice experience with plenty of available options.

PhotoDJ: pictures get improved with correcting levels and contrast • the first photo is the original one

PhotoDJ: high contrast images look more glossy on the phone display • sepia and negative effects

You can zoom in to the actual size of a picture or even beyond. Extreme zooming in won't really reveal more details. All you'd get are smudged spots as a result of the extrapolation.

We were pleased to find that viewing images one by one didn't involve any lags at all and browsing is fully comparable to the one in the high-end W910.

Zooming in on a photo

The camera has got a 3.2 megapixel upgrade

The Sony Ericsson W890 has a 3.2 megapixel camera with no autofocus, nor flash. The user interface is Cyber-shot SE v2.0, as seen in W910. The major benefits are the pop-up sub-menus enhanced with icons and the Multi Menu packing all the available settings.

Some camera menu options

The camera has a toolbar with options, including shooting mode, picture size, night mode, self-timer, white balance, effects, and the all-encompassing Multi Menu. The Settings Multi Menu looks pretty much the same as in standard digicam menus. All the camera settings are displayed in two menu columns: the left displays the features and the right shows which setting is in use. Pressing OK on the navigation key lists all options of a certain feature. The settings on the menu are: Picture Quality, Review, Save to, Shutter sound and Reset counter. Stabilizer, ISO settings and BestPic are not present here.

White balance options and Multi menu with some of its options

The camera is not worth admirations, especially if compared to a Cyber-Shot handset. It will do the job for basic imaging and showing places you have visited but nothing more. Its fixed focus does OK at distances no closer than a meter.

Lack of detail is an underlying drawback; still colors come out relatively well. The produced images are tangibly noisy, regardless of the shooting conditions. Purple fringes are also clearly visible, especially in high contrast scenes.

Sony Ericsson W890 sample photos

"...The camera is not worth admirations, especially if compared to a Cyber-Shot handset. It will do the job for basic imaging and showing places you have visited but nothing more. Its fixed focus does OK at distances no closer than a meter..."

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The Sony Ericsson W890 comes with a Photo Fix application that provides a quick remedy for some of the picture defects. It is integrated into the camera interface, so a picture can be fixed right after it was taken. The videos taken with W890 have a maximum QVGA resolution and are recorded at 15fps in MPEG-4 format. This level of video quality just passes acceptable by our standards. In contrast, the video interface is nice and comfortable.

Video interface

Settings menu

The functionality of the secondary video-call camera is adequate. The other party's video feed is viewed in a large frame in the middle of the screen, while you view your own image in a small frame in the lower left corner. You can also have your image in mirror-like view, which is much more natural. 2x digital zoom on your image is also available, as well as the option to replace your live video feed with a picture of your preference. You can also do that during an actual video call and it's handy when, for example, you want to show the person at the other end an interesting picture you've taken. The options don't end here. You can further control the exposure compensation of the camera or even switch it into night mode. There are 3 different video quality modes: picture quality, standard, and motion.

Video-call camera