Sony Ericsson W890i … – mocha brown / Thin as a CD case and dressed up for grand openings. And this beauty has brains too – on the W890i inside, you find a Walkman player, turbo 3G and a 3.2 megapixel camera.

Sony Ericsson W890i Walkman Phone

After years of being on Pay as you go (due to huge phone bills!) I decided in March of this year to give contract another go, especially as O2 had some great offers on the online tariffs. So off I went to the O2 website, browsed through the phones with a tendency towards Nokia as they have always been good for me, but also with an open mind to Sony Ericsson due to my last 2 phones being Sony Ericsson. Eventually I decided on the W890i Walkman phone. My initial reasons being as simple as the phone was free, lightweight, slim and had a large memory.
Two long days later my new phone arrived…

Within seconds of arriving home from work I had my new phone out of the box, sim and battery safely in and the first switch on.
The phone loaded up all its info as normal when you first turn a phone on, I gave it a couple of minutes before eagerly working my way through the various menus, which are as follows.The Menu.
The Menu is split into 12 sections, each with its own sub sections, they are as follows:

* Messaging
* Media
* Radio
* Contacts
* Walkman
* Calls
* Organizer
* Settings
* O2 Active
* Internet
* Entertainment
* Camera

Messaging

Upon pressing the menu button the first section you are offered is Messaging, represented by a yellow envelope.
The messaging section is pretty much standard, it is where you send texts, multimedia messages and emails if you are set up for it.
Typing a text is also pretty simple, you have the option of non-predictive or predictive texting, I have used both and would recommend either. Obviously non-predictive is simpler to just press the buttons of the letter you want and not have to go down a little list for your word, but I found predictive to be quite handy for speed texting as it will sometimes try to predict what word you want to type after the one you are typing based on previous messages you’ve sent… which I think is actually quite clever! It can take a while to get used to though.
So messaging overall… Pretty Simple.

Media
Next to messaging we have Media, represented by a musical note, a film roll and a picture.
In the Media section you will find the shortcut menu to viewing your photos, videos and listening to your music.
There is also a settings area of media where you have the option to view the above in portrait or landscape mode.

Radio
Recognised by a little picture of a Radio this area is as simple as it sounds, if you have a set of Sony Ericsson headphones you can plug them in and listen to the radio. I have tried this option and found it easy to tune in and store the stations I like, the sound quality is quite good for what you can expect from a phone, only problem I found is I don’t like the headphones! So I tend not to use this option!

Contacts.
Contacts section is labelled by a pink phone book and this is where you will find all your phone numbers. Contacts has its own settings area where you can choose how your contacts and numbers are displayed and also edit their details.

Walkman
Being as the Walkman is a big part of this phone, you would think I would be using it a lot, however even with this phones massive 2GB memory and god knows how many songs I have on it, I haven’t figured out the Walkman on it! The Walkman on my old phone was simple, you select the songs out of your music folder that you want to play, it copies them to the Walkman, you press play and away you go! This phone… Not so simple, I have tried copying them as I thought it would be and as the instruction book tells me to, but no luck, I have tried using Bluetooth to send them from my old phone to this one but still no luck, I’ve tried linking it to my computer and putting them on directly off it… nothing! So I’ve now given up and if I want to play a song I wait until I’m in the car and put the CD on instead!

Calls
A phone with 2 arrows represents calls section. In this area you will simply find a list of all your Dialled, Received and Missed calls.

Organizer
A picture of a calendar with a bell welcomes you into the Organizer. The Organizer contains all the little ‘extras’ including your file manager, alarms, applications, video calling, calendar, tasks, notes, synchronisation, timer, stopwatch, calculator and code memo.
I don’t feel that I need to go into too much detail about each little area, but in a summary of it I will say the alarms are great, I use them as my sole alarm clock for work each morning, they wake me up and have a snooze option which I frequently use! File manager is as it sounds and gives you access to pictures, videos, ringtones etc. calendar, tasks, notes, synchronisation, timer, stopwatch and calculator are all as basic as they sound and fairly simple to use. Code Memo I have mixed feeling on and personally don’t use as this is an area where you can use your phones memory to store all your important personal numbers, credit card info, bank pin’s and stuff like that, all protected by a security code of your choice. I can see the useful side of it, however what happens if your phone is lost or stolen? I’m sure with the mastermind criminals out there a 4 digit code wouldn’t stop them being able to access your info!

The only other area I haven’t covered that is in that section is video calling. I have tried video calling to my mum and a couple of mates and to be perfectly honest I didn’t like it at all. When I first used it on my mum it took ages to get through and then she held the phone to her ear anyway! Upon that failure I tried to call a couple of mates, but after not even one minute on the phone we both felt really stupid and gave up! The quality of the pictures during the call was ok, but defiantly not as good as I would expect!

Settings

Represented by a spanner and a screwdriver the settings section is the area for changing ringtones and message tones, volume settings, call settings, times and dates, Bluetooth, display settings, pretty much every setting for your phone can be found here.

O2 Active

Simply displayed by the O2 symbol this is the area for logging into all things O2 (or whatever network you are on!) to access this area you are required to connect to the internet and depending on your price plan it may cost you! I have never used this section as any queries I have I have gone straight to an O2 shop or their website.

Internet

A little picture of the world this time, again a service that you will be charged for depending on your plan, but a service that has killed many a boring moment sitting at work! The Internet on this phone is great… providing the signal in the area you are in is great… this doesn’t happen too often but I will detail that in a moment! The phone is able to display images off the net and depending on the site quite a lot of info. I mainly only use it to kill time at work with facebook!

Entertainment

With a picture of what looks very similar to a playstation controller, this is also a good area for killing time at work! (I do work for real sometimes!) The entertainment section contains games such as a block challenge – Very addictive, Midnight Pool – ok but only a demo, Sims 2 – also addictive but gets very repetitive and Multiplayer Tennis – bit naff really! Also in entertainment is Video DJ, Photo DJ and Music DJ, these areas all allow you to pick your item (photo, video, music) and edit it to your own liking, this can be amusing to play with but nothing to shout about really!

Camera

Finally we have the camera! Probably the most used area of my phone! The camera on this phone is a 3.2 mega pixels and its ace! The images are sharp and the video quality is amazing! In some cases this has proved to be a higher quality than my digital camera.
The camera is very simple to use, it has the options of self-timers, black & white, frames, multi shot and a settings section for things such as shutter sounds and quality settings. If I can find some pictures that I’ve uploaded to the computer I will add them to this review to show the quality.
Due to the large memory of the phone you are able to store over 300 photos on here! (or 174 songs!)

Ok that’s the menu out of the way, so I’ll give you a quick bit of info about things such as Bluetooth and USB cables then I’ll tell you about my personal experience and opinion of this phone.

Firstly Bluetooth, the phone comes with Bluetooth installed on it as most phones do now. The Bluetooth is an easy way to swap pictures, ringtones and various other media without the expense of sending it as a message. Of course the other more important Bluetooth use is hands free driving, I used to use a Bluetooth headset with this phone, but found that it was rather temperamental and cut off a lot, thinking this might be to do with the headset as I had had it a while I swapped with a friend, but the same thing kept happening, so now I simply have gone to the don’t use my phone in the car at all because it was proving too hazardous messing with the headset and I’d rather miss a call and stay alive! So Bluetooth on this phone isn’t as good as it could be.

Computer USB Cable

Obviously after taking all your wonderful pictures you don’t want to keep them on your phone forever, so with the help of a USB cable that comes with the phone you can take them off and onto a computer. My first experience of this was a bad one as it was so different to my old phone which you simple plugged in and away you go, this one however gives you an option of what you want to do, being lazy with the instructions packed away by this point I spent literally hours trying to figure it out, eventually I did and now since I know what I’m doing it really is as simple as my old phone with its plug in and go method!

Battery Life

This phone has a bad battery life! I have had the phone since March 2008 and at first the battery would last me approx 2 days with average use, within the first month I noticed the battery life deteriorate from 2 days down to just one! I found I was having to put the phone on charge every evening when I came home from work and have now ended up buying a car charger to keep me going if I’m going out straight from work. I think this is quite bad as during an average day I will spend about 10 min on the phone, send approx 10 – 15 messages, have 10 mins on the game and take just a few photos if there is anything worth capturing.

Problems

As I said I got the phone in March 2008 and it was fine until as mentioned above the battery life went down, that is the only technical problem I have really had. The software doesn’t crash, the screen doesn’t freeze and the phone is generally easy to use.
However, the one major problem I do have with this phone is signal, I can NEVER get a full signal. Most people would say ‘oh its your network provider’ nope, I was on O2 pay as you go and 90% of the time I would have an acceptable level of signal, enough to make a decent call without breaking up or send a message without numerous re-tries. Just to check this theory of mine I took my pay & go phone out for the day and when I had low signal or no signal I would check my pay as you go which was sitting in my pocket with a quite happy 3 to 5 bars compared to the 0 to 3 I was getting on this phone. My theory was again put to the test when on a recent family holiday to Greece my Nan also on O2 was receiving a full signal on the Greek networks and there was my with a measly 1 or 2 bars if I was willing to do a walk down to the beach, anywhere else I was getting ‘no network coverage’ or ‘no access to network’ luckily being on holidays I wasn’t too bothered about calling anyone and Nan was quite happy to lend me her phone to call my mum and check on my puppy!

Overall
All in all I think this phone looks great, it is very slim and lightweight, has fantastic features and an excellent camera. However due to such a bad battery life and the ridiculous signal problems I am finding it hard to say yes I would recommend this phone as in all honesty I wouldn’t. In this last week I have swapped back to my pay as you go phone and just replaced the sim with my contract one and it is so less frustrating I love it! I have consulted O2 about my signal problems and I am currently awaiting an answer.

Thanks for reading