Sony Ericsson W910 review: Walkman in style

Image Gallery outscores the camera

The Photo browsing functionality in Sony Ericsson W910 is far better than the integrated camera, which produces passable pictures with a maximum resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels resolution and lacks autofocus. So, first things first.

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 photos. 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 browsing experience. 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 W910 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.

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 the rich available options.

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

Sepia and negative are some of the available effects in the PhotoDJ.

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

You can zoom in to the actual size of the 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 even faster than in K850. We firstly thought this was due to the smaller 2 megapixel images, but after uploading original 5 megapixel images from K850 speed and smoothness were still at the same level. Pictures loaded immediately and continuous browsing didn't cause any lags.

Zooming in on a photo

We were pleased to find that viewing images one by one didn't involve any lags at all and browsing is even faster than in K850. We firstly thought this was due to the smaller 2 megapixel images, but after uploading original 5 megapixel images from K850 speed and smoothness were still at the same level.

<#AdRectangle#>

Camera of passable performance

The Sony Ericsson W910 has a 2 megapixel camera with no autofocus, nor flash. It's quite inconsistent with the high-end status of the phone and its overvalued price. The user interface is Cyber-shot SE v2.0, which slightly tilts the scales in favor of the otherwise middling camera. 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 settings 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, Auto rotate, 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 for sure. It will do the job for basic imaging and showing where you have been and nothing more. Its fixed focus does OK at about a meter, but still photos lack details. Loss of detail is an underlying drawback, still colors come out well.

Sony Ericsson W910 sample photos

Low light shooting forces the camera to boost the ISO level and achieve a minimum shutter speed to prevent motion blur. This normally leads to noisy images, but with W910, like with most of the non Cyber-shot Sony Ericsson phones, it goes the other way – heavy noise suppression routine kicks in and masks the noise together with most of the fine detail. You can see the resulting watercolor look on some of our sample images.

The Sony Ericsson W910 comes with a Photo Fix application that provides quick remedy for some defects in the pictures. It is integrated into the camera interface, so a picture can be fixed right after it was taken.

The videos taken with W910 are in QVGA resolution at 15fps. The miserly resolution is not worth much discussion and is definitely out of place in a high end device. As a contrast, the video interface is nice and comfortable.

Video interface

Settings menu

The functionality of the secondary videocall 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 other party 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 quality.

Video-call camera