Sony Ericsson W810i Unlocked Cell Phone with 2 MP Camera, MP3/Video Player, Memory Stick Duo–International Version with No Warranty (Black)
Sony Ericsson W810i Unlocked Cell Phone with 2 MP Camera, MP3/Video Player, Memory Stick Duo–International Version with No Warranty (Black)
- This unlocked cell phone is compatible with GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile. Not all carrier features may be supported. It will not work with CDMA carriers like Verizon Wireless, Alltel and Sprint.
- Quad-band GSM cell phone compatible with 850/900/1800/1900 frequencies and EDGE/GPRS data capabilities
- Walkman music player and styling–supports MP3 and AAC digital audio files and includes FM radio
- 2-megapixel camera with video capture; Bluetooth for handsfree devices; Memory Stick Duo expansion; USB connectivity
- Up to 8 hours of talk time, up to 350 hours of standby time
W810 Walkman® is a stylish music player with everything you need for a mobile music lifestyle. An easy-to-use Walkman® digital music player with folders for artists and customized playlists. A 512 MB Memory Stick PRO™ Duo with enough memory, for up to 20 full length audio CDs. And a stereo headset for quality listening. Enjoy hours of your favorite music wherever you go. And when you want quality entertainment around the clock, W810 has an FM radio with RDS.The Sony Ericsson W800 was a big hit. Now, here comes the sequel, the W810. All the same great Walkman features are here, along with robust phone functions, but now you get quad-band GSM, a larger and brighter display, and perhaps most importantly, support for EDGE high speed data. In addition to a powerful and easy-to-use Walkman music player, the W810 boasts a 2-megapixel auto-focus camera with flash, a Memory Stick Duo card slot, Bluetooth, and a speakerphone. Simply put, this baby’s loaded.
Big screen, big features, big fun. View an interactive demonstration of the W810. You can also check out the W810 video. |
 Dedicated music control buttons make for easy listening. |
Transfer songs to your W810 with the included Disc2Phone software. |
 Two megapixels of camera goodness. |
Design
The W810 follows a long tradition of beautifully designed and crafted phones from Sony Ericsson. The same candy-bar style that graced the W800 is here, as is the horizontally-oriented camera unit on the back of the phone, allowing you to hold the phone just as you would a camera when you’re taking pictures. The W810′s screen sports 176 x 220 pixel resolution with support for 262,000 colors. Quick access buttons below the screen make it easy to control the phone’s Walkman music features, while a five-way center button controls most of the phone’s menus and features.
The W810 contains 20 MB of embedded memory, but as mentioned, a Memory Stick Duo slot is provided, and it also supports Pro Duo cards, giving you storage capacities of 2 GB and beyond. Of course, there’s also a port for the phone’s included stereo headset. USB and infrared data ports are provided, as well, and the phone supports USB mass storage so you can simply plug the phone into your computer and drag and drop files into the phone’s memory using the included Disc2Phone PC application. To top it all off, the W810′s camera flash can double as a flashlight.
Calling Features
The W810′s phone book can hold up to 1000 contacts with multiple entries per contact. A call list remembers your most recent missed, received and dialed calls. The phone’s voice activated dialing makes calling your contacts as easy as saying their names, while the built-in speakerphone makes it easy to talk without having the phone to your ear. Polyphonic ringtones are included and you can also use MP3 and AAC music files as ringtones. A cool application called Music DJ even lets you mix your own ringtones. Meanwhile, picture caller ID lets you assign a photo to specific callers. Similarly, a ringer ID lets you assign ringtones to callers. For those times you want to keep things discreet, there’s a vibrate ringer mode. And because the W810 is Bluetooth-enabled, you can use a variety of headsets and handsfree kits for total wireless freedom when you’re on the go.
Messaging, Internet, and Tools
If you’re looking for a mobile productivity partner, the W810 has you covered. Support is built in for sending and receiving pictures, text, graphics, and sound via MMS messages. When used in combination with the phone’s built-in still and video camera, MMS opens up a whole new world of messaging possibilities. The phone also ships with a built-in email client with support for POP3, IMAP4 and SMTP protocols, while the included Access NetFront Web Browser allows you to surf full HTML web sites. T9 text entry, a technology that makes it easier for people to enter words and text on handsets, is built into the unit– a plus for mobile email and text messaging users.
Getting on the Internet is easy with the W810, as it supports the GPRS protocol, as well as the high speed EDGE data protocol. When used with your carrier data plan and the phone’s Bluetooth or USB data capability, the phone can be used as a wireless modem for laptops and PDAs.
A number of handy software tools are bundled with the W810, including a voice memo recorder, a to-do list, a calculator, a calendar and an alarm clock. The phone also supports the SyncML PC synchronization standard, which lets you synchronize your PC-based calendar, contacts, notes and tasks with your W810.
Imaging and Entertainment
The W810 is a Walkman phone, and that means it offers a great mobile music experience. Load up your favorite songs in MP3 or AAC format on a memory card and listen to your heart’s content. The user-friendly music player application also includes a “Music Mode” that shuts down the phone functions so you can listen on an airplane or anytime you don’t want to accept calls. Meanwhile, Digital Mega Bass and stereo widening combine to enhance your listening experience. There’s even an FM radio for catching the big game or your favorite stations. The radio also supports reception of digital song information from radio stations.
And don’t forget about that powerful 2-megapixel camera, which features something most camera phones lack — autofocus. Finally, you can get consistently great shots from any distance, shots that rival the quality of a dedicated digital camera. The camera also features an LED flash and a 4x digital zoom, and it can capture video, as well. Dedicated controls on the side of the unit will make you forget you’re holding a phone in your hand.
And what about gaming? This phone is definitely geared for the mobile fun fanatic, as it supports widescreen and 3D games. The W810 comes preloaded with several games and more are downloadable from Sony Ericsson.
Vital Statistics
The Sony Ericsson W810 weighs 3.49 ounces and measures 3.94 x 1.81 x .77 inches. Its lithium-ion battery is rated at up to 8 hours of digital talk time, and up to 350 hours of digital standby time. It runs on the GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 frequencies. The phone comes with a one year limited warranty.
List Price: $ 299.99
Price: $ 87.99
My First Sony Ericsson, A review from a Nokia Fanboy,
My previous phone was a Nokia 6600. It had a slow interface for 2006 and come on, I wanted to try somethingn new.Initially, I had planned on exploring my chances of buying a Treo but due to the rates, I gave up my plan. Without much pondering, I went and purchased a Sony Ericsson W810i. Now, it’s been four weeks. Let me just give you a brief run thru of features, pros and cons.
Features
1. This phone is an mp3 player. This phone is a torch/semi flash light(with an SOS signal that can be configured). This phone has flash capability and further doubles up into a digital camera. Overall, it saves a lot of space to use this phone instead of just going out with a standalone mp3 player or/and a digital camera
2. The interface is fast. It takes around 8 seconds to get an auto focus and click a picture using the camera. I’ll try and explain – to come out of the screensaver you need half a second, to activate camera using the shortcut it takes 3 seconds, a further 2 seconds for auto focus and an additional 1 second to click you picture. Overall,8 seconds to click one image.You can browse thru pictures very quickly. It’s around 7 times faster than my Nokia. Images can be clicked in sepia, black and white, solarise(kinda yellowey), negative and normal modes. Brightness can be reduced within the click of a button. I noticed grains on images of larger size. I don’t recommend using the flash camera unless you really must. Plus while clicking a video, the light goes on and off, if the flash light is turned on.
3. The build quality on the phone is both good and bad. I love the keypad and it is a major improvement from the 800i and sundry walkman phones. It took me three days to get used to the keypad. The dictionary like function on the phone keeps a track of all the words you spell. So they’re definitely there the next time around. The front of the phone seems to appear too plastic. Especially the silver scroll keys and sometimes can make your phone look like a dummy piece. The sound speakers are situated on the backside of the phone and can be used conveniently even when the phone is upside down. You can insert your memory stick pro cards even when the phone is switched on. There is NO CAMERA SHUTTER like the previous installment of this phone (800i) The power button is placed most effectively just like the volume buttons on the right side of the phone which can be used for a host number of features.
4. The internal memory of this phone is 22mb and the accompanied card contains 512mb worth of memory. The usable memory,however, is only 431mb. Upon connecting to the pc, both are instantly recognized and act as removable drives on the “my computer” icon. The accompanied software is almost brilliant. I loved “Disc2phone” and there is so much more I keep discovering about the other programs. Despite lacking an English Manual, I found I didnt need one because I don’t know too many people who would buy a sony ericsson phone and not be techies in their own rights who like to configure things on their own.
5. The bundled earphones are sublime. I cannot beleive the sound on these. They cancel all the noises in a room and it’s a pleasure listening to beethoven playing away or Enya’s mesmerising voice or even Tool’s prog metal for that matter. The speakers are satisfactory and could have been louder. If used as a stand alone mp3 player with earphones, the phone would stand for around 6-7 hours.Playing the music without using earphones can eat up battery depending on the volumes of course. It supports m4a, mp3 and aac formats(and a few other formats)
6. The messages memory of the phone is limited to around 150+ messages and that is a big blunder. Despite having a 512mb of external storage the phone cannot accommodate a mere 200 messages. The size of notes is limited and you need to make a second note to carry on. Bluetooth transfers to Samsung,Nokia phones runs at 20kbps while it’s a consistent 40kbps for Sony Ericsson phones. Very good for transferring media.
Pros
- It can be called an ipod replacement. I don’t use mine quarter as much as I used to. This is owing to the absolutely brilliant earphones that sit within your ear and help you celebrate your time.
- I love how the phone slides into a digital camera. Good build quality for the particular feature.
- Good standby, saves battery, easy to work with 50% brightness. Even when I reduce brightness from 100% to 50% (lowest possible) there is hardly any noticeable difference on the screen. The keypad is much lighter but that’s hardly noticeable.
- Fast processor, super graphics and wallpaper options, includes a good browser, calendar, good default themes
- The accompanied torch can be used to change a flat tire and can be switched on for 25mins even when the remaining battery is only 15%. (tried and tested)
- Good keypad(KEY FEATURE), good…
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|The iPhone Alternative,
Going from an old Nokia 6200 (which had great call quality and was ahead of its times) to a Moto Razr I suffered the torments of usability hell. No memory, no headphone jacks, terrible address book, substandard camera, terrible alarm clock, etc etc.
The day I got my digits on the W810i (i for international, unlocked quad band) was a happy day for me. Now, one year into using it I can expertly outline the pros and cons, and authoritatively issue bouquets and brickbats.
——————————————————————————–
Hot –
* Great battery life. I don’t measure this in terms of hours and minutes but the reality of how often I had to charge. I use the phone quite a lot for listening to music especially and have never run out of charge when on the road. On days of low usage I have gone 3 days without a recharge, but topping up for 1 hour everyday is all you need. With the Razr I was constantly being stranded with a dead phone.
* Superior voice quality – as distinct from CALL quality, which thanks to Cingular sucks like a vaccuum cleaner!
* Walkman quality music – I use iPod earbuds for a good reason, sometimes a Sony MDR 7506- More later.
* An expandable Sony ProDuo memory slot of upto 2GB.
I bought the phone with 512 MB and have not needed to upgrade yet.
* A feature rich 2 MP camera with flash, white balance controls, macro mode, night mode, zoom, resolution settings, and effects settings. This is quite adequate for point and click oppotunities – but also great for video, I bring out my Rebel XT 8MP only for more “artistic” photography.
* A great FM radio. Works really well, although it does require the customary earphone-jack extension that also works as an antenna. I say “customary” because I don’t think there is any phone that can play the radio without having to attach the headset cord.
* The proprietary audio jack (Sony Ericsson only) actually ends in a generic RCA type stero headphone plug! This saved the phone and allowed me to jettison their earbud in favour of the iBud, or my Hi-Fi studio monitor when I feel like it. You can easily switch from whatever you’re listening to — the radio, the MP3 player or the video player and take a phone call by clicking a button. The song is paused, and will continue where you left off after ending the phone call. The iPhone is trumpeting this feature, but its been a part of the W810i for over a year.
* Has an MIDP 2.0 mobile java O/S, which means you can download any and every java app. I use the Opera Mobile browser instead of the packaged Sony browser and google maps which are are also a free j2ME download – *no more paper printouts for me*. I also use a mobile app from cricinfo.tv for streaming cricket scores, and the pre-loaded Music Mate which playes basic guitar chords and also has a pitch pipe for tuning musical instruments.
I am a non-starter in video games so i won’t comment, except to say i tried the “JC does Texas” preloaded game – it was fun, but did not convert me into a gamer
* The Address book is really excellent. It has a full featured contact list system like a vCard that includes full address and multiple phone numbers for the same contact. In theory the calendar and address books can be synched with Outlook if you download the Sony Ericsson PC Suite and connect use Outlook to synch calendar and contacts. I have no reason to believe this won’t work, except my work place will not allow personal devices to be installed or synched up on the work machine. At home I don’t use Outlook, so I’m missing out on all the calendar and reminder functionality
* A nice alarm clock that lets you select days of the week you find” alarming”.
So my alarm does not go off on weekends, then comes back on every day of the week.
This is a big improvement over the old way where you had to manually set the alarm for each day.
You snooze, you lose.
* I found this out very recently – but the phone plays videos appreciably. There is a minor geek factor to this, but well worth it. You can take pretty much any video file you have – from P2P, DVDs, flash, etc and convert it to the 3gp format. I use a free universal encoder that’s quite a wonder. Its called SUPER and you will find it at e-rightsoft – For example I watched the final episode of Heroes on my phone in a flight. Downloaded from bittorrent, encoded to 3gp to a 176*144 format that took all of 90MB. You can watch full length movies doing this, but the movie player functions like bookmarking are sorely missing for long files. If you don’t watch the full movie at a stretch, you’ll spend minutes simply forwarding to the correct spot the next time.
THIS IS HUGE — you can take any YouTube video with you on this phone. Yeah, yeah its a two step process but…
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|Sony claws back the portable media market,
I won’t lie, I’m a Sony fan. Have been for years. When I was at school, I would take the Sony catalogue with me and look at each of the hundreds of products and admire the constantly evolving designs and technologies this company offers. Sad, I know.
There are two things that made Sony what it is today; televisions and Walkmans. Their TVs were and still are today the standard by which all TVs are measured by. And Walkmans, well, they revolutionised the way people listened to music. And of course they are now good, if not the best, at many other things, from video gaming to professional video cameras used by James Cameron and Michael Mann!
The company however has always annoyed a number of people by unnecessarily introducing proprietary formats. Some good, some bad, but ONE company alone will always find it hard to win public support with a format if it is not supported by other manufacturers. This was highlighted by the company’s biggest EVER mistake, encapsulated in one word: ATRAC.
Sony were slow to the MP3 market. In the beginning they shunned it, developing the MD and Discman lines whilst Napster was taking on the world. It took computer companies like Creative and Apple to introduce MP3 players whilst the likes of Panasonic, Sony and Philips failed to embrace such a simple concept. Sony were so complacent that they built their own audio compression format, ATRAC, which could only be made by Sony’s own Sonic Stage software, and played by Sony’s hardware. The software was absolutely appalling, and did not really improve on MP3′s already strong compression rate. It was cumbersome to use, and next to the hip image of an emerging iTunes, and the ever improving iPod, Apple did not just overtake Sony, they pretty much obliterated them out of a market they dominated. Heck, they invented the portable audio market.
Come 2005 and Sony execs are looking at themselves wondering what happened to their once-guranteed hundreds of millions a year. They quietly admitted to themselves that they blew it. But their other markets were thriving. Look at the PSPs, the PS2 and upcoming PS3. Look at their Bravia HD displays. Look at their groundbreaking HDV cameras. Sony are kicking butt, but Discmans and MD players are no longer a top 5 option for ANYONE. It is either an iPod video, an iPod shuffle, an iPod nano (get my point) or maybe, for those somewhat bored, a Creative whatchamacallit!
But they have found a way to use the Walkman brand, by using cutting edge technology and simple, ingenious design, and incorporating a music player in their line of phones.
The W810i is one of the more recent additions to an ever-expanding line of sublime phones and I’ve got to say “it is amazing!”
This phone, unusually so from Sony, allows a great deal of flexbility in terms of how the user can import and export data. The phone boasts a memory stick port, which is such a massive feature, because this means you can replace the standard 512MB stick with a 2GB stick (4GB is now available, but let prices fall before you buy one). 2GB!!! We may no longer be impressed by such a figure, but may I remind you that with an average 4 minute, 4 MB MP3 we are talking a ridiculous 500 song/45 albums capacity. That’s an iPod nano my friend! Hook up your phone via USB and two drives pop up on your computer, the memory stick and the phone’s internal drive, and just like your own HDs, you simply drag and drop data from folder to folder. It’s brilliant, and obviously lends itself well as a USB stick for students. This means you can use it with PC and Macs, unlike an iPod, and it is not restricted to working with ONE program, unlike an iPod, although iTunes does rock!
So just how good is the Walkman feature? Well, it is very similar to the iPod interface, and whilst it may not boast the brilliant iPod navigation wheel it still has some effectively positioned buttons that allow volume change, starting and pausing music and skipping back and forth tracks. They are in the perfect place, and I commend the designers, because this is where the phone truly excels; ergonimics. With such a vast array of features, it must take a pretty smart bunch of people to make it anything but a hassle to use. The devoted Walkman button transports you to Artists/Albums/Playlists etc etc. You can change the equalizer, you can send your tracks via Bluetooth/Infrared to other people, you can basically have fun.
Sound wise? It sounds damn good. Is it hi-fidelity? No, not by a long shot (but then, neither are iPods!). It comes with good earphones, but I like good sound, so will use my best phones, and encode at a slightly lower compression to cull the best performance from this hardware. It does not sound as good as an iPod, but this is a very personal opinion. The differences are marginal, but this, unlike an iPod, does so much MORE!
A test of whether this…
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