Review: Sony W980 Walkman Phone
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Sony W980 – Walkman Phone Review The Sony W980 Walkman phone is an awesome MP3 phone for those of you who do not want to be in the Apple iTunes camp. With 8gb of internal memory, fast download speeds with HSDPA 3G, FM transmitter, a 3.2 mega pixel camera and it even has a step counter for the fitness freaks! |
One of the many things Sony does well and is synonymous for is sound quality and this is true of Sony’s new Walkman phone the W980. If you are after a phone with a great camera, then this is not the phone for you and you should really look at the LG Renoir, Samsung Pixon or the Sony C905 which are 8 mega pixel camera phones. This phone is all about the the sound quality and the music player.
To start with the W980 phone has been awarded the best-in-class for music reproduction quality, through tests conducted by TESTfactory’s renowned lab experts. (TESTfactory results, July 2008)
The music player that comes with the phone is Walkman 3.0 with Sony Ericsson Shake control, which allows you to shake the handset to shuffle and skip between tracks using the phones Accelerometer.
Another cool feature of the music player is SensMe™ which lets you create playlists based on tempo and mood (requires the use of PC). There is also TrackID™ which uses Gracenote to find the song name, artist and album artwork and downloads it to your phone for a given track. As you would expect the music player supports many file formats including MP3 and AAC.
The sound quality is provided by Sony’s Clear Audio Experience which comprises of Clear Stereo and Clear Base. Clear Stereo reduces leakage through the left and right audio channels. Clear Base provides bass playback free of distortion. It sounds like Sony marketing blurb but it does help to provide a decent sound quality.
The phone is also provided with a good quality headset so the excellent quality being outputted from the phone is not lost.
Memory wise the W980 has 8 gigabytes which can store up to 8000 songs (eAAC+ format) which is more than adequate for most comprehensive music collections. The phone comes equipped with an RDS FM radio which can only be used with the headphones plugged.
An FM transmitter allows you to broadcast music which can be picked up by a radio a useful feature for playing tracks in your car without any need for cables.
As well as an audio player and radio, the W980 has a video player which offers full screen and supports the following formats MPEG4, 3GPP, RealVideo 8, WMV, H.263, H.264.
The screen is 2.2 inches, 262 144 colours and 176 x 176 pixels. Navigation is done through the keypad and as usual the interface is intuitive and easy to use as you would expect from Sony.
Camera wise the W980 is equipped with a 3 mega pixel camera without autofocus or flash. Photos are tagged through the accelerometer to autorotate photos in image software. The camera is not the strong point of this phone as said before. But then it is not really a camera phone, its an audio player phone, so having a 3 mega pixel camera is a bonus even without a flash or autofocus. The camera can shoot video at 15fps QVGA. There is also an additional discreet camera for video calling using the phones 3G HDSPA capability.
To surf the web the phone is equipped with Sony’s NetFront web browser. Browsing can be done in portrait or landscape mode, switching automatically through the phones accelerometer along with a virtual mouse pointer for simple screen selection. The Sony W980 can be tethered to a computer using bluetooth and then used as a 3G modem saving the need to use a USB 3G modem for mobile internet access. The phones Bluetooth also supports A2DP for using bluetooth stereo headphones.
Games provided with the phone include:
- The Need for Speed: Pro Street A car racing game that can be controlled through tilting the phone or by using the D-Pad
- Lumines block challenge – Is a Tetris style game grouping same coloured blocks.
- Sudoku – The classic Japanese brain teasing game.
Additional Java based applications that come with the phone:
- AccuWeather – gives you an up to date weather information which it downloads data real time.
- Converter for converting distance, volume, weight, temperature, speed, and area.
- Tip calculator, which allows splitting a bill, topped with a predefined rate, equally.
- Music Mate 5 – allows you to play a selection of interesting musical instruments by shaking the phone.
- Step counter that can run in the back ground.
- World Clock 3D allows you to spin the globe searching for a time zone. You can zoom in and out as you please. Of course you can also search by city name.
To conclude the Sony W980 has excellent sound quality, great storage with 8GB, fast internet with 3G HDSPA and it even has a 3.2 mega pixel camera. Although not the best camera the Sony W980 Walkman makes up for it in its sound quality!
Features of the Sony W980 include:
- Quadband (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) Edge, 3G HSDPA
- User Memory: 8 Gb
- 3.2 Megapixel camera
- FM radio with RDS
- Walkman® player
- TrackID™, PlayNow™
- Music tones - MP3, AAC
- Shake control
- Bluetooth™ stereo (A2DP)
- Access NetFront™ Web Browser
- RSS Feeds
- Bluetooth™ technology
- USB support
- MMS/SMS/email
- Video streaming
- Video call
- 3D games
- Polyphonic ringtones
- Screen 240×320 pixel 262,144-colour TFT
- 92.0 x 46.0 x 17.0 mm / 100.0 g
- Up to 370 hours standby
- Up to 3 hours 30 minutes video calling
- Up to 9 hours (2g) 4 hours 30 minutes (3g) talk time
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