Lots of features for a budget phone, MP3 player is great ! Excellent battery life
Disadvantages:
No bluetooth
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Well, after reading all these great reviews of the fancy Sony Ericsson cell phones, I thought it was only fair to write a review about the baby brother of the Sony Ericsson walkman range: The Sony Ericsson W200i, because, er, that's the one I own.
Why did I buy it?
So, what was the reasoning for my purchase? Well, basically I needed a new cell phone as my previous one was becoming quite a pain and it was time to upgrade really, it was the type of phone where people stare at you when you use it, it was just short of one of those 80s cell phones with the huge aerials and the power box you had to carry around with you.
I chose this particular phone because at the time I wasn't flush with cash m(still not now either haha!), and it was at a nice price and at the same time it was providing me with one of the other things I was looking for: an MP3 player. I will be looking at the MP3 player itself a little later on but for now lets look at the phone itself, and what you can expect to come with it.
What you get
Opening the box you will find the phone, your sim card, battery, a pair of high quality stereo headphones, a 128mb Micro M2 memory card, a USB cable and the accompanying software, plus all your usual manuals that no-one ever bothers to read :)
Basic Specifications
Color Screen Resolution: 128 x 160 pixels
Memory: Internal Phone Memory: 27MB Memory Stick Micro (M2) support (up to 2 GB) Included Memory Card: 128MB
Networks: GSM 900: Talk time 7 Hours, Standby time 360 Hours GSM 1800: Talk time 7 Hours, Standby time 360 Hours GSM 1900: Talk time 7 Hours, Standby time 360 Hours
Connectivity: Infrared port Modem Synchronization PC USB mass storage USB support No Bluetooth Support, booo!
Features
OK, so now I will take your through the main features from this phone which you are probably interested in! I'll start with the MP3 player functions, as these are the ones that are the most well known from this Sony Ericsoon "W" range.
MP3 Player I am more than happy with the MP3 player on this phone! The whole phone has been designed so that should you want, it does not even have to be used as a phone, as the MP3 player from the phone can be controlled by the small up/down button on the side of the phone. Should you want to use your MP3 player, at any time you can press the walkman button on the left side of the phone, and voila, you are presented with a list of your music. The MP3 player allows you to create playlists, or you can play the individual tracks, or you can browse by artist. The whole thing is very easy to use, with the Joystick allowing you to fast forward tracks, or skip on to the next one etc.
When I first tried out the MP3 player on the phone, I was shocked by the quality of the sound! The earphones that accompany the phone are really good and they use a "Bass Reflex" system so you can really hear the meatiness of the bass. If its not meaty enough, you can choose various Equalizer settings including the "Mega Bass" option, which will up the level of bass. Even without the earphones this little phone produces a kick, but I, for one, always use the earphones as I'm not one of these people you will find in the Subway listening to their music oblivious to the fact that everyone else might not like it!
The only downside I would say is that sometimes the earphones can come out of the connection and when it does, everyone in the bus, train, library, funeral parlor,wherever can hear your "I like Big Butts" track playing. Bit of a pain that. Also, and I know this happens to any cable, the earphones have the nasty ability to get tangled up. Now I'm no stranger to tangledupliness, but these earphones are something else! I think its probably because the hearphone's wire is thinner than the wire connecting them to the phone, and as such, they tangled up with it. It can take me an age some mornings attempting unraveling them! This is a minor point though.
It's everything you need from an MP3 player really though, so full marks here!
Camera I have to say that honestly, I had not really used the camera on this phone, but I know that it is a 0.3 Megapixel Camera, can take video up to 176x144 and stills up to 640x480, has an option for picture quality (normal, fine) and it offers various effects and modes such as "night mode" for night photos as well as a self timer and shooting mode (panorama,frames,burst,normal) options, as well as some digital zoom functions (up to 4x). So if you did use it, there's lots you can do with it! I just haven't really a need for it, but someone will appreciate it I'm sure.
Entertainment This phone offers a fair amount of entertainment options too and I was surprised to see that the phone came preloaded with a demo of Tetris and The Sims, as well as two full games: Quadrapop, which is a fairly fun little puzzle game, in the same vein as Tetris, and Treasure Tower, which is a surprisingly good looking and fun 3D game. I didn't expect this phone to be able to handle 3D graphics, but commendably, it does a great job! The aim of the game is to make it to the top of a tower, as you control a character who is on springs and can jump quite high. I've spent more time on it than I would have thought being now a child of High Definition, super detailed graphics. Gameplay shines through, it seems!
You also have some other little applications that are fun for a while, but I can't see myself using them much, and they are PhotoDJ, and MusicDJ. PhotoDj allows you to take a photo that you have taken from your camera, and apply some funny effects, giving your friends big heads, for example. MusicDJ is a simple little application that allows you to build a tune from different sound effects. You can then save said tune and subject the world to it as your ring tone!
Under Entertainment you can also activate the record sound application, which, does exactly what you think, and can also be saved as your ring tone, so I'm sure more imaginative people can come up with some fun, and rude ideas here.
Internet The Sony Ericsson W200i uses the NetFront web browser for the internet and it works quite well, it is going to load anything not too fast of course, since its a cell phone after all, but you don't usually wait too long for a page to open. The browser converts tables in a web page to display vertically, so it takes away the need to scroll horizontally, and the pages I tried on it worked well and weren't all over the place like I've seen on some phones. Remarkably the phone also works with RSS feeds, so you can keep up to date on whatever it is that your are interested in! Keeping up to date with another ciao member's product lists, for example! :)
Messaging Messaging on the phone consists of the now standard Email, Multimedia Messaging and of course SMS, with which you can send concatenated text messaging up to 9600 characters. The editor has the usual predictive text option which I always immediately turn off (oh yea, I'm Old Skool, baby) as well as various other functions such as a drafts folder, for when you want to send your message later. The messages are also stored on your phones internal 27MB memory, so it can hold a great deal of them. Deleting multiple messages is a pain though as each has to be done individually. Still, no other complaints here.
Organizer The phone also has the usual "Organizer" style tools that most phones have and includes:
So nothing new there really, but nice to have all the same!
Connection to PC/Software Connecting the phone to your PC is as simple as plugging in the USB cable and telling your phone to go into USB mode, so you can put stuff in the folders on your memory card such as music, files etc, and there's no restrictions on what you can put on it in terms o file types, it simply works as a normal memory card once plugged in, which is handy when you have to bring something to the office from home.
You can also choose to use the software itself, which is really very good! It even comes with a "Disc2Phone" tool which will rip your CDs to whatever quality you want, and put the files onto your phone. Handy indeed! It will also allow you to update your phone's firmware and has some other image editors and file managers. Most software for this type of stuff I don't bother with, but this one really was useful.
Calling I've left to calling to last as it seems to be the least important thing on phones these days! All joking aside, the call quality is also good here. Its very clear and you have a loudspeaker option of course too. The reception on the phone has always been very good too, I've never had any problems finding reception except in areas where no phone has reception, of course! :)
No complaints on the call quality here, but to be honest, I don't use it as much as the other functions on the phone, funny how that happens!
Style
The phone itself looks stylish enough. It's more functional than anything though, but the keypad does light up in a nice orange color, so its pretty cool, just not as attractive as some of these really expensive phones you will find now! But for the price, they've done a good job, and it looks just as good as the other, more expensive phones in the Sony Ericsson "W" range, despite its budget price.
Durability
I've had this phone for about a year now and have put it through its paces as you might imagine. It's had a year worth of drops and it has resided most of the time in my pocket with, rather stupidly I know, my keys, but strangely there are no scrapes on the screen. The only thing I have noticed thus far is that the paint on some of the keys has become a little worn off in places, which is only noticeable because of the orange light coming from beneath them, but still, its not so bad. So after one year, it looks better than you would expect. If you are more careful with your phone than me, it should still look flawless!
Good Points
So to recap on the good points we have the great MP3 player, it comes with 128mb memory card, which is enough to get you started (I've upgraded my card to a 1GB one and fit enough songs on it as I change my media out fairly regularly), the phone is very durable and is very easy to use. The other features such as the internet and the camera work as well as expected and the call quality is also good. A common problem with Sony Ericsson phones is the joystick, but I have as yet not noticed any problems with this one, it is still as responsive as it was when I first got the phone, which is good, since the joystick is essential for navigating the menus! A special note must also go to the battery life of this phone, which I found to be tremendously good! The phone battery can last well over a week without charging if you aren't using the MP3 player all the time, and even then, using it every day, the battery still lasts really long. Even when the battery indicator is indicating its at its lowest level, I can still listen to MP3s for about an hour on full volume!It basically does everything that I require of it and it is hard to believe that all these features and the handset itself are aimed towards to budget market. It makes other phones in the same price range look rather foolish!
Bad Points
Bad points are, to be honest, very few and far between on this phone, and even these can be overlooked due to the budget price. In saying that, I would have liked the maximum memory to be a bit more than 2GB, it would come in handy should I want to include more songs in the future. I would hope that the joystick on the phone does not degrade in responsiveness, because as I mentioned earlier, the phone is pretty much reliant on it, which could be a problem should the joystick decide it didn't want to work anymore. This phone is essentially a no frills version of the others in the same range, and does not feature Bluetooth connectivity, which I think would be the main drawback to this phone. It would have been nice to have Bluetooth connectivity here and it seems its omission is only to highlight that the others in the range have this function and to keep this phone as a "budget model", but who's to say, it may have just kept the costs down.
Conclusion
So then, a very good little phone for those on a budget! It offers owners a chance to sample some nice features that more expensive phones have, without breaking the bank! Its almost worth it for the MP3 player alone!
Thanks for reading another of my reviews, take it easy friends!
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