Sony Ericsson W995 Mobile Phone

[Trog]

Easily the best equipped with the functionality of the house phone, the Sony Ericsson W995, still more popular than Hikaru, packaging everything there is to find at the top of the holding company.The set of connectivity options, the largest screen on a Sony Ericsson phone to date function, GPS, Wi-Fi and great user interface to make a pretty sweet package of their own.

But in the case of W995 they are simply perfect for the background unprecedented blend of music and imagery. The Cyber-shot triumph is graciously lending its 8 megapixels, while the dot of music includes the latest Walkman player 4.0, with all Walkman bare necessities such as control and SensMe Shake. And there is more to make it even sweeter. We asked for a marriage and Sony Ericsson have taken care of the wedding. We do not know what to call the stand and the edge of 3.5 mm audio jack.

Thus, Sony Ericsson W995 has it all, Now let's see if it gives you everything.

Key features:

• Parts of the body in brushed metal
• Quad-band GSM dual-band HSDPA
• 2.6 "256K color TFT QVGA
• 8.1 megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash, geo-tagging, face detection
• WQVGA video recording at 30fps
• Built-in GPS with A-GPS function
• Wi-Fi with DLNA support
• Bluetooth (with A2DP) and USB 2.0
• Accelerometer sensor
• 118MB of internal memory and M2 memory expansion (8 GB card included)
• Stereo speakers
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• Kickstand
• Walkman Music Player 4.0 with Shake Control and SensMe
• FM Radio with RDS
• Multi-tasking support
• Smart dialing
• Keyboard comfortable, nice sliding mechanism

[Trog]

Super-charged Walkman
Of course, the W995 is predominantly a music phone, and two big improvements in this area make it an even more viable MP3 player replacement. Firstly, there’s finally a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top, letting you plug in headphones without an adaptor.
It also comes with some new software called Media Go, which is effectively Sony Ericsson’s answer to iTunes. By transcoding any audio, photos and videos into a suitable format for the phone, it’s promising to save you from being pelted with ‘incompatible file’ messages.


Design and Display

The dimensions of the phone are quite small considering the huge display that is has. The weight is just about fine at 113 g. Although the phone comes in three colors, black suits the phone the most and is surely going off the shelves sooner than others! When you slide the phone open, you are reminded on the Nokia N95 that had the same slick slider but a fat body, although it does not have the dual-slider mechanism.

The D-pad and other buttons beneath the display have been borrowed from older Sony Ericsson phones. The semi-circular buttons at the edges are not user friendly at all and Sony Ericsson should avoid them. The display itself is a beauty and the 2.6 incher has crisp graphics. The display runs at QVGA resolution and produces vivid images. The sunlight legibility is fine under direct sunlight.

Above the display is located the earpiece and adjoining it are the ambient light sensor and the video call camera. The phone has inbuilt accelerometer for auto-rotation of the display and works smoothly. The keypad revealed by sliding the display up has nicely laid out keys with large spaces between them. However, the keys are too subdued that reduces the tactile feedback. Overall, typing on the keypad is fun and after you have got used to it, there is no looking back.

The Walkman key is located on the left and is large and easy to access and along with it is the Fast Port connector. The card slot although is located underneath the back cover, but it is hot swappable. The right side is jam packed with buttons starting with the volume rocker key, camera key and the dedicated music control keys.

[Trog]

Music Player and Camera

The device has the latest Walkman 4.0 music player with all the extras included. The player has skin support for those who want it. Sony Ericsson phones see the light of 3.5 mm jack which had eluded them till now. A large number of file formats are supported along with various preset equalizers. Filtering of tracks by artists, genre, album etc or using the SensMe feature to select a particular bunch of tracks depending on the tempo. The accelerometer is put to good use by the Shake Control feature. D-pad is made in-charge of the controls and does an effective job. Then there are dedicated music keys too at the right hand side too that offer flexibility to control music when the music player is running in the background. The Now Playing screen shows the detailed information about the track currently being played. The audio quality of the player is exceptional and matches the Apple iPod Touch 2G audio quality.

The line between Cybershot and Walkman phones is blurring day by day. The 8 megapixel camera on the device does point towards that direction but the image quality certainly isn’t at par with the Cybershot phones. The camera has various settings such as face detection, geotagging, image stabilizer, BestPic etc, exposure metering, auto-rotation etc. ISO setting is notably missing from the menu. The lens has bee left without any protection. The flash used in PowerLED flash which is just another name for LED flash. Face detection works fr up to 3 faces at a time but there is no smile detection feature. Geotagging works great as it uses the internal GPS receiver. The BestPic mode has slow and fast modes and they take 7 pictures in a row at 0.8 sec and 1.7 sec interval with no option to use flash in this mode. The picrure sadly isn’t as good as we have seen in CyberShot C905 which is a 8 MP phone. The detail is lesser, pics are oversharpened and purple fringing is also present. Video recording is also disappointing as 30 fps @ QVGA with no VGA mode present.

MediaGo

Sony Ericsson W995 is a first mobile phone with MediaGo software. The function of application is that of synchronizing files of various formats and transferring them to the mobile device and back from your PC via the USB interface. The main advantage of MediaGo is that format of files transferred to the phone is automatically changed for a one supported by it. The application will be available in 15 language versions and work not only on W995 but other Sony Ericsson mobile phones as well – W995 just happened to be the first one with MediaGo.

There is no doubt that the manufacturer counts on MediaGo because this application will untie users’ hands and they won’t have to change format of files manually before transferring them to the phone. Well, it’ll be very interesting to learn users’ opinion about MegiaGo because this kind of software doesn’t always work that smoothly as it is supposed to.

[Trog]

Web Browser and Organiser

NetFront v3.4 is the bundled browser on the phone which is quite capable. Rendering is accurate even for complex web pages. Full screen landscape mode is turned on by tilting the display and accelerometer does the rest. Zooming and panning pages is fast without any lags. Virtual mouse pointer is enabled making browsing so much easier. Overall the browser does a good job.

The Sony Ericsson W995 offers a wide variety of time management features that would suffice for your day-to-day needs. Some of the applications include Tasks, Notes, Alarms, Calendar, Stopwatch, Light, Calculator, Syncronisation, File Manager etc. There is no office suite bundled which is disappointing. Calendar can be viewed in both monthly and weekly views and tasks can be scheduled as either Tasks or Phone Calls. Overall the organiser offers a good set of applications.

Pros :

• Great display
• Small dimensions
• Walkman 4.0 player
• 8 MP camera
• Excellent browser
• Good organiser

Cons :

• Average image quality
• No office document viewer

Conclusion

The Sony Ericsson W995 delivers on the promise of a great music with decent imaging capabilities.Balance is what we like in Sony Ericsson W995 very much: a relatively large 2,6-inch display, HSDPA, Wi-Fi and GPS, 3,5 mm jack for headphones, and an 8-megapixel autofocus camera.

[Pratim]

For the fanatics of media there is Media Go which facilitates transfer, play and organization of music, photo and videos. This Media Go is a high-end solution for format, resolution and frame per second modes. The transfer of video from the PC to the mobile does not emanate any loss of picture quality on the other hand, it retains better resolution.

[Soumen]

This promises to be a fantastic addition to Sony Ericsson’s portfolio. An 8 megapixel camera, Clear Audio experience, 2.6-inch screen and Wi-Fi in one package makes this phone truly awesome. The phone will ship during Q2 this year in the colours Cosmic Silver, Energetic Red, and Progressive Black.