Sony Ericsson W880 review: No catch, plain thin

Sony Ericsson W880 is the newest addition to the Sony Ericsson Walkman line. Nothing uncommon here, we've seen lots of those. The most unusual thing about it though is its form factor - an ultra slim bar-shaped handset with plenty of cool features to offer. Take 3G network support, add a 2 megapixel camera, spice it up with a M2 memory card slot and Bluetooth and finally put it all in the slimmest shell possible and you will get a great result - the Sony Ericsson W880.

Main features

* Ultra slim design (9.4 mm thin)
* 2 megapixel camera
* Memory card slot with hot swap functionality
* 3G support with video calls
* Walkman 2.0 music player
* Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP stereo audio profile
* Multi-tasking support
* TrackID music service
* 1GB Memory Stick Micro M2 included in the package
* Included headset has a standard 3.5 mm audio adapter

Main disadvantages

* No FM radio
* No Infrared port
* Camera has no autofocus
* No EDGE
* Records video in ancient QCIF (176 x 144 pixels) resolution only

The recent trend in mobile devices design is clear - make it as slim as it gets. Sony Ericsson long stood aside from the race for the slimmest mobile phone. Instead they preferred giving priority to their Walkman-branded music phones, cameraphones or both. But that was up until now. Now we are witnessing the incorporation of the famous portable music brand Walkman into one of the slimmest mobile handsets on the market. It comes as no surprise as rumors and leaked photos and info on the new handset have been flooding the Internet for quite some time now. And finally we got it - the Sony Ericsson W880 itself. And it's up to us to see how this slim baby performs on the treadmill.

Sony Ericsson W880 Sony Ericsson W880 Sony Ericsson W880
Size comparison with Nokia E70

The announcement of the Sony Ericsson W880 was just today and we are more than proud to present you with an exclusive GSMArena review for your reading pleasure. Bear in mind that the test handset we got was a stable beta version and it is possible that there might be some minor differences in the final retail version.

The retail package of the Sony Ericsson W880 will include 1GB Memory Stick Micro M2 card, a USB cable, and a stereo headset.

The Sony Ericsson W880 will be available in two color variations - black and silver. The one we got to test was the black version. In fact black is the color of the front panel only - the entire back panel is styled in dark orange - the proprietary Walkman color.

Besides the regular Sony Ericsson W880 there will also be a version designated as Sony Ericsson W888. It will be manufactured for the Chinese market and will not include 3G connectivity and video telephony.
Back to basics

The Sony Ericsson W880 has a trendy design which manages to please the eye at the very first sight. The front panel is made of brushed aluminum which adds to fashionable looks and provides for a rather solid construction while at the same time the W880 is still lightweight and really slim. It measures 103 x 47 x 9.4 mm and weighs only 71 g. Unlike other slim mobile phones on the market it doesn't compensate for it's ultra slim body with larger body width or body length. The Motorola RAZR for example is rather wide; the Motorola KRZR is rather long, while the mobiles in the Samsung Ultra line are both too long and wide. The only other mobiles with a similar ultra slim form factor are Samsung P310, the LG KG320 and the LG KE820.

The central place of the front panel of the Sony Ericsson W880 is taken by the 1.8" 262K colors TFT display with a QVGA resolution. Above it you can see the VGA camera for making video calls and the in-call speaker grill.

Below it are the navigation keys which are grouped in three circular patterns. The central circle is the navigation D-pad itself. The left circle is composed of the left soft key, the web browser shortcut key and the Back key, while the right circle features the right soft key, the Activity menu key and the correction C key.

The alphanumeric part of the keypad features great protruding orange keys which are really nice and comfortable to touch. The styling of the keypad is superb and it is rather comfortable to work with, but more on navigation and keypad is to come later on in the review.

The left side of the W880 incorporates the shortcut key for starting the Walkman music player, the regular Fast port used for charging and for connecting the headset and the USB cable. Just below it still on the same left side one can see the cap of the Memory Stick Micro M2 memory card slot which offers true hot-swap functionality. The Fast port seems a little bit out of place here, and we would have liked it better if it had a cap on.

The right side on the other hand features the camera shortcut/shutter key and the tiniest slider control we have seen in a mobile phone. It serves as volume control and as zoom control while taking pictures and shooting video.

The top part of the W880 body doesn't feature any keys at all. The On/Off key that usually is placed here and can be used for changing the active ringing profile doesn't exist here. Instead, you should use the correction C key to turn on or of the mobile phone. The situation with the bottom part of the device is pretty much the same - it doesn't feature any controls or special design elements.

Flipping the phone over reveals its orange back panel. The back panel is made of plastic although it has a metallic paint finish which conceals the plastic base rather successfully. It's nice to touch but its color is too flashy for our tastes. There are two rubber anti-slip studs in the top corners which share the top part of the panel with the camera lens and the loudspeaker. The lower part of the W880 back panel features a strap hole for a neck strip. Unlike the ultra slim Samsung X820 the camera lens here doesn't protrude from the phone's body.

The central part of the back panel is taken by the battery cover which is easily removed. When removed, it reveals the standard Sony Ericsson BST-33 Li-Polymer battery with a capacity of 950 mAh. The same battery is used by Sony Ericsson W850 for example. According to the manufacturer, the battery should last up to 425 hours of standby mode and up to 6.5 hours of talk time when used in GSM-only network. The most exciting promise of the manufacturer though is that the battery would allow W880 to play music continuously for 18 hours straight.

We did spend a few days using the phone in the way a moderate user would, spending about 5 minutes in talking a day and using almost no other battery consuming feature and the fully charged battery kept the W880 running for good 3-4 days in 3G network which is a nice achievement for a slim phone like that.

The SIM card bed is not the usual Sony Ericsson one. The slot is positioned in the bottom part of the battery housing and the SIM card is rather easy to get in or out - just the opposite of the situation with the rest of the Sony Ericsson mobiles.

We are very pleased with the construction of the Sony Ericsson W880 - it's been a while since we saw a mobile handset with such a fresh design.

NOKIA N95 REVIEW

Key features

* Two-way sliding construction
* Dedicated music keys
* Landscape screen mode
* Stereo speakers
* microSD memory card slot
* UMTS, Wi-Fi, USB, stereo Bluetooth and Infrared support
* miniUSB port
* FM radio
* 5 megapixel camera with auto focus
* Records video in VGA resolution
* GPS receiver with free basic navigation
* Symbian 9.1 OS with S60 3rd edition UI plus Feature Pack 1
* Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
* TV-out port

Main disadvantages

* Poor battery life
* Charging through USB is not possible
* No FM RDS
* Voice assisted GPS navigation is charged
* GPS chip doesn’t work with third party applications
* Cannot edit office documents

At this moment Nokia N95 represents the crown of the entire Nokia portfolio. It is the best equipped phone on the world market. It was brought to public attention in September 2006 at an imposing Nokia show in New York. Due to the high customer demand the price is yet rather higher than the initially announced expected retail price of 550 EUR.

Nokia N95 is among first mobiles to have a built-in camera with a 5 megapixel resolution. Among its lures are also an integrated GPS module, HSDPA support, two-way sliding construction, and a very handy 3.5 mm jack connector for earphones. The phone runs on Symbian 9.1 OS with the S60 3rd edition UI plus Feature Pack 1. Some of the innovations gathered under the label Feature Pack 1 are, for example, a new user function menu and a repeated alarm clock.

Nokia E61i review: Lens-wear for the messenger

You all know Nokia E61 – it’s been among the most popular Nokia smartphones ever since it was presented. Its fans have always been divided over it not having a camera. Taking that into account Nokia decided to release an updated version of the handset marked with “i”. Besides a camera, the new model features a number of small modifications, or otherwise upgrades, which would again reinstate it as a top-notch smartphone messenger.

Key features:

* Rich connectivity options - UMTS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB, Infrared
* Outstanding battery life
* 2 megapixel camera
* Messenger form factor with a full QWERTY keyboard
* Really large 2.8” TFT display
* Solid, metallic body
* Symbian OS 9.1 S60 3rd Edition UI
* microSD memory card slot

Main disadvantages:

* Hefty weight
* No HSDPA support
* No secondary camera for video calls
* S60 UI doesn’t come with Feature Pack 1

Right from the start the Nokia E61 was a successful model that made itself a nice group of dedicated fans. Not having a camera was obviously not a big deal for those guys. Even now in workplaces where information confidentiality is strictly guarded, cameraphones are simply not allowed.

The business messenger market though realized that office workers and businessmen need an all-in-one tool that would allow them to work efficiently during the day and to have fun or just relax in the evenings and weekend. So essentially it has come to this that purely business handsets are gradually being equipped with more and more extra features such as a music player, a video player, a camera, etc. The market niche for such devices is fiercely competitive and it seems that our new Nokia has plunged into the deep with some other serious swimmers such as Palm Treo, Blackberry Pearl, Motorola Q, HTC S620, Sony Ericsson M600, Samsung i320, iMate JAQ plus several HP IPAQ products. And if you look at the details, the Nokia E61i is even functionally identical to Nokia E70.

When we started to review the new Nokia E61i we came up with a couple of key questions that had to be answered in order for this review to be complete and those are:

* Is the camera positioning the E61i into another device category?
* Is it worth exchanging your vanilla Nokia E61 for it?

In the same time the review had to cover all the aspects that we cover in all other reviews – meaning that we should go over all the features of the smartphone in detail. So for those of you that are into smartphones for a long time now and wouldn’t want to go through all of this, here is our low down on exactly how the Nokia E61i differs from the vanilla E61.

The E61i is thinner than the E61 by a small margin but is 11 cc smaller. The E61i has a better build quality over the E61 and possesses a rather stable and solid body. The keyboard has definitely got a few updates – first, the navigation joystick is replaced with a D-pad, which is a great choice by the way. Then there are two new shortcut keys – the Phonebook and My Own key. The My Own key is a customizable shortcut key that you can use for starting an application of your choice. The keys of the QWERTY keyboard have gotten just a notch smaller, but the space between them has increased. Furthermore their tactile feedback is far better on E61i than on the E61. As a result the ergonomics of the QWERTY keyboard have greatly increased.

Software-wise the E61i didn’t stay long enough in development so that it can get the Feature Pack 1, that’s now available for the S60 user interface. So obviously we would be waiting for other devices to try it on. Nevertheless, the E61i comes with several preinstalled applications that were not available in E61 – the WLAN Wizard, the Search application and the Team Suite. The WLAN wizard is a Wi-Fi network scanner, Search is a global search engine for your handset contents and finally, the Team suite is a more specific application that allows for creating so-called “teams” in order to make mass communication with your colleagues easier. Having those applications is not a big deal, though, as they can be downloaded to your E61, too. The E61i also has newer and more user-friendly Internet calling settings and finally, let’s not forget – the new messenger comes with a 2 megapixel camera that can always come in handy for making snapshots of people and places.

So what are the answers to the two questions we had, you might ask. Well, for that, our friends, you’ll have to bear with us to this review’s very end.

As far as retail package is concerned, the box contents you should expect are the Nokia HS-5 headset and a data cable. Nothing more to please the eye – but hey, the E-series handsets are all about business.

Being an updated version of the Nokia E61, the Nokia E61i has pretty much the same design as its predecessor. The dimensions are identical too - the Nokia E61i measures 117 x 70 x 13.9 mm and weighs 150 g.

We are more than pleased with the construction quality of the E61i. The handset didn’t produce any creaks during our test, and furthermore it didn’t look like those are likely to show up even after months of use. As we already said the body construction and the way parts fit together is something that has improved over E61.

Well going over the phone you couldn’t help but notice the LED in the upper left corner of the front panel. It is in fact an ambient light detector which is used for power optimization. It detects the available ambient light and thus controls whether backlighting or display brightness should be adjusted. It also serves the double purpose of an event light alerting you of different event – a feature that is totally customizable. Next to the LED/sensor, right in the dead center, is the in-call speaker grill. Due to the really wide form factor, it takes some time to get used to position your ear right on the speaker. Unaccustomed to it, during our tests we often tended to go left or right. Next to it is the On/Off key – it’s made of white rubber that somehow doesn’t follow the metallic design of the handset.

The QWERTY keypad is probably the most exciting thing about a handset with that form factor. It is the single thing that can make or break the pleasure of using the device to its full potential. As you would see later on in the review, the Nokia E61i keyboard manages to impress with a great usability. One can easily notice that there are several design updates over the E61 – all for the better, we might add. You might have noticed that the keyboard of our test unit is in fact not a QWERTY one, but instead a QWERTZ one. The simple reason for that is that it is the German version of E61i – fully localized with the added special characters.

The left side of the device features a dual volume key and the voice key. A single press allows you to start an immediate recording of a voice note for example. A longer press takes you to the voice dial/voice command interface. The voice key is pretty well recessed so it isn’t probable that you would press it accidentally in your pocket – a flaw that Nokia E61 had. Beside those keys is the loudspeaker grill – the sound it produces is nice – clear and loud. The loudspeaker position is well-thought of, as the sound doesn’t get muffled when you put down the handset on its back, as is the case with most current mobile phones.

The bottom part of the device features the charger port, the Pop port for connecting the data cable and the headset, as well as the Infrared port. The charger port of the E61i can fit only the latest types of Nokia chargers – the ones with a thinner jack. Unlike N-series handsets the E61i doesn’t come with a charger adaptor included which would allow for using the older types of chargers with it. Strangely enough, although we had that type of adapter we couldn’t charge the E61i with an older charger. It seems that with this model Nokia has left behind the backwards compatibility we were used to see. The right and top sides of the handset don’t accommodate any control elements.

When you turn the phone over, you would see that its back is pretty bare. The only element that really catches your eye is the 2 megapixel camera lens. The lens is protected by a silver circular ring.

The most of the back is taken by the fully metallic battery cover. Removing it is done with a slide – much like inserting it back on. Note that we say “inserting” – the cover has to be inserted into tracks which allow it to slide all the way to the top. Now it isn’t the most comfortable solution we’ve seen but it surely is among the most secure ones. When you remove the back cover the large Nokia BP-4L Li-Polymer battery is revealed. It has a capacity of the impressive 1500 mAh and is manufacturer-rated to be able to sustain the handset with power for up to 400 h in standby, and for up to 9 h of talk time in GSM-only networks. Our test showed that when used moderately in a UMTS network the E61i was able to offer the impressive six full days with a single charging – and that being the first one for the battery. When we say moderately we mean that the E61i almost never left our office and for those six days we did a total of around 35 minutes of talking, 1 hour of Bluetoothing, 30 minutes of WLAN web browsing, 2 hours of listening to music, 40 minutes of playing video, taking several dozens of pictures, and a lot of fiddling with the phone. So just to sum up for you – it is a nice mark for Nokia’s latest messenger smartphone.

Although being rather wide, the Nokia E61i feels pretty much comfortable when held in hand. If you try to work with it single-handedly and if you are dexterous enough to hold it in your right hand and to navigate with your thumb, you mind find that the left soft keys are a bit too far for you to press accurately. If you have bigger hands, that surely wouldn’t pose any problem. The smartphone leaves an impression of a thin, stable and user-friendly handset – although a side jog dial would have come in handy.