Sony Ericsson W800i Review

Overall Rating

Standby time excellent, talk time very good, very reliable, very user friendly, led light, comes with excellent earphones, included 512Mb MS Pro Duo Memory card, Robust, Quality Feel, Good Bluetooth,

Loudspeaker is not good sounding, only 177 x 144pixel Video recording, Software sometimes freezes, joystick gets a little 'sticky' in movement, PC link software more often than not won't detect connected phone, when using an aftermarket theme the phone needs switching off/on for another picture to be displayed as wallpaper-software glitch

I'll start by saying this is probably the best phone I have owned ( owned Nokia N73, 6100, 8310, 8210, 3330, Sharp gx10, gx20,770sh, Samsung e710 and others I just can't remember!)
The software does have a couple of glitches but you get used to them and they don't cause any problems, like mentioned above, if you select different themes to the default orange one (backgrounds if you like) and then decide to replace the main picture with another it will not show that picture until you turn the phone off then on, strange but it happens. Also every so often the phone simply locks up and needs battery removing. That's about it for the gripes, the phone is so user friendly that everything becomes second nature after a short while of using it. The 2 led camera light which can be turned on manually is very useful and a great for an instant torch, this can be set as a short cut by pushing a certain direction on the joystick, mine is set so left is to the led light (on, off, SOS flash) , right to the file manager (pictures, videos, sounds, themes etc), up to the main menu and down to the contacts list. Bluetooth works fine to transfer files, tunes, and connecting to a headset/hands free. As long as the bluetooth is set to on, it'll detect the hands free automatically and connect up (can be changed to ask first), but it does noticeably use a little more battery power, but bare in mind that on standby the phone lasts for something like 9 days! So it may 'only' last 7 with bluetooth on-still amazing in my books. I probably charge mine every 4 or 5 days but that is always changing wallpapers, bits of music, couple of calls a day etc just general use.
Another great thing is the Walkman branding, and the included 512Mb memory can hold so many tunes (probably at least 150 songs, i have 57 songs(133Mb), 194 pictures(52MB), 17Videos (25Mb), 24 Themes (3.5Mb), 3 games (395Kb) and there is 275Mb memory on the card and 9.9Mb on the phone so I still have a total of 285Mb memory left!!! The sound quality through the supplied earphones is brilliant and being in ear they supply different size rubber 'bungs' to fit in the ear so getting a great fit.
The phone has been problem free apart from the odd locking up (perhaps once every month or two), and I would definitely recommend it to anyone, its such a versatile phone, pics are good but fair play they're not as good as a dedicated digital camera albeit on 3 Mega pixel setting but I would happily use this for most situations like car shows, fishing trips, general use etc.
Phone signal is always good, and a great little touch that a lot of other phones I owned (even the Nokia N73) don't have a recurring alarm, that you can choose to set for any days of the week, the Nokia you had to manually reset every day for the next morning. Video recording is OK for a phone but not great, the only phone I found better was the N73 but it was nowhere near as user friendly as the Sony Erickson and the buttons were tiny, also it had a much larger screen! I have had a few other phones while owning the W800i but I always feel the W800i shines through and Ive yet to find one that can beat its all round usefulness.
You can zoom and edit pictures, and use them for screensavers, wallpapers etc, and removing the memory card and putting it straight in a laptop with a 4 in 1 memory card reader you can view your photos and tunes and videos easily. And also transfer any music tunes to the memory card to play in the phone as ringtones,msg alerts or just Walkman tunes. Size of phone is comparable to a Nokia 8210, or 6100 and fits in the pocket nicely. Being over a year old now it still looks fresh, comes very well presented in the plastic case when purchased and should make any future owner proud to own one!!!