Sony Ericsson W880i review – Thin Walkman

Sony Ericsson W880i was announced about a year ago and back then it was the first slim handset from Sony Ericsson. It's designed for people, who are looking for a good music phone with great build quality and slim design. Even thought the phone was announced about a year ago, it still offers a great packed of features. Sony Ericsson W880i has 3G-support, a 2 megapixel camera and second camera for video calls, Bluetooth and M2 card slot. The great thing also is that it's still the slimmest Sony Ericsson available!

Sony Ericsson W880i official images

Key features:

- Slim design (9.4 mm thin)
- 3G-support
- 2 megapixel camera
- Secondary camera for video calls
- Walkman 2.0 player
- Bluetooth
- Memory card slot (M2)

If you must try to find some disadvantages this phones has, you probably would say that the lack of radio is a big disadvantage. Some people probably would rather buy some other Walkman phone with radio, but hey! iPod doesn't have radio, so for me the lack of radio isn't a problem. Sony Ericsson has also dropped out the infrared port, which might be a problem if you want to transfer files with phone that doesn't have Bluetooth.
W880i has a quite nice camera but the video recording quality sucks! You can only record in the QCIF (176 x 144) resolution, which is enough if you look those videos on your phone but don't dream about watching them on your computer.

Design and build quality

I can easily admit that I bought this phone because of its design. Before the W880i, I had (and still have) the M600i, which was nice but this time, I wanted something different and cooler. It was the right time for a slim and stylish handset!

Sony Ericsson W880i live photos

Originally, Sony Ericsson W880i was available in two colors: Steel Silver and Flame Black. Since then, Sony Ericsson has introduced some new colors: Pitch Black and Classic Gold. Mine is the Steel Silver. In my opinion, it's cooler than the Flame Black.

Sony Ericsson W880i is only 9.4 mm thick and the casing is made of stainless steel. The backside is made of rubber and it makes the phone feel soft on your hand. Very nice, I like it!

Which one is the thinnest?

Apple iPod Nano Video: 6.5 mm
Sony Ericsson W880i: 9.4 mm
Sony Ericsson W890i: 10 mm
Apple iPod Classic: 10.5 mm
Sony Ericsson K850i: 17 mm

From the list above, you can see that W880i really is a very thin device. Of course, it can't compete with iPod Nano Video but it beats its successor, the W890i.

W880i vs iPod Nano / W880i vs M600i / W880i and coin

In my opinion the build quality of this device is great! The W880i feels great on your hand and the cover made of stainless steel adds a great look for the phone and at the same time the W880i is a very lightweight. It weights only 71 grams! One great thing also is that even that Sony Ericsson W880i is slim, it isn't extra tall or wide. The W880i is like any other ordinary mobile phone but it's just much slimmer. On the front side of the W880i, it has 1.8 inches big 262K colors TFT screen and above the screen there’s a VGA camera for video calls and a speaker. Many other Walkman handsets such as the W580i, W890i and W660i has 2.0 inches screen, so W880i has a bit smaller screen than most of the Walkman handsets. For some people it might be a problem… but not for me. Before the W880i I did use the M600i, which has 2.6” screen and I still think W880i screen is big enough. Of course, 2.0” would be better but the W880i’s screen handles its job well.

W880i from back / W880i vs K850i

The back cover is made of soft rubber and it feels nice. On the back, there’s a camera, of course, Sony Ericsson logo and Walkman logo. The backside is quite simple, there’s nothing extra stuff. Plain and simple, I like it!

Camera

Sony Ericsson W880i isn’t a high-end camera phone. It has ”only” 2 megapixel camera and that’s it. There’s no autofocus or flash. I think the camera quite same that for example the W810i has…

Anyways there’s a lot of stuff you can adjust, like photo size, effects, night mode and so on. Photo size can be choose from three different options: VGA, 1 MP and 2MP. You can also add some effects, such as black and white and negative. White balance can also be adjusted manually or if you want, you can use ready-made setups: Automatic, daylight, cloudy, fluorescent and incandescent. Photo quality can be chosen from two options: normal and fine.

Because the camera isn’t the best one, you must pay attention to the shooting conditions. If you are shooting inside remember to use a lot of light or your photos will look blurry. Always use the 2MP photo size and fine photo quality and keep your hand still while shooting. If you remember these rules you can take quite nice photos with your W880i. Still, this isn’t a Cyber Shot handset. Keep that in your mind!

Sample photo 1
Sample photo 2
Sample photo 3

Walkman player

Sony Ericsson W880i has the second version of the Walkman player designed for mobile phones. Walkman player 2.0 offers some nice features that you are probably familiar if you have used some MP3 player, such as iPod. You can easily create and delete playlists, browser your music by artist, album, or tracks.

Walkman player 2.0

On the left side Sony Ericsson W880i has a small Walkman button, pressing it opens the player. Nice feature!

I have figured out few nice tricks; I would like to share with you. These tricks will make your life a bit easier. When you are listening music and keylock is on, you can adjust volume by using the camera zooming button on the right size. Use the same button to change track, just press it few second up or down.

From the settings menu you can choose play mode, adjust equalizer, turn stereo widening on or off, change visualizations and skins. Equalizer menu offers five different options: normal, bass, Mega Bass, voice and treble boost. I use the Mega Bass. My W880i has three skins: white skin, orange skin and off, which means the player will use the original skin.

W880i supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, E-AAC+, WAV, WMA, M4A and MIDI file formats.

I think these are the key features that Walkman 2.0 player offers. If you want to know more just leave a comment!

The user interface

You have seen it all before especially if you have ever used non-smartphone Sony Ericsson. The users interface is the same that most Sony Ericsson handset has.

The main menu has 12 animated icons: PlayNow, Internet, Entertainment, Camera, Messaging, Walkman, File manager, Contacts, TrackID, Calls, Organizer and Settings.

Desktop / Main menu / Writing SMS

Pressing the navigation pad from center takes you to the main menu. The great feature is that you can add four shortcuts to the navigation key. For example, when I press up calendar opens or if I press right I can change profile. This is a great feature! You can have all the most used application behind one single click.

W880i come with four preinstalled themes: Citybeat, gSharp, Musaic and Walkman. Three of them (Citybeat, gSharp, Musaic) are flash themes. These themes changes the whole look of the phone, such as icons.

Citybeat theme / Musaic theme / gSharp theme

One great thing I got across while using the phone is the activity menu. Activity menu shows you new events and running apps. Activity menu also includes my shortcuts tab. You can add your favorite and most used apps to that list.

The user interface is very stable and fast to use! For me it feels great to be back with “Sony Ericsson OS” after using the M600i, which has Symbian UIQ 3. Don’t get me wrong, UIQ 3 is a nice system but in M600i it’s way too buggy and slow to use.

Organizer

Sony Ericsson W880i offers a nice package of organizing features. The organizer menu contains nine applications: alarms, calendar, tasks, notes, synchronization, timer, stopwatch, calculator and code memo. Let’s start with the calendar!

Calendar

These days calendar is one of the most important feature of mobile phone, at least for some users. I think that’s why it’s important to take a bit closer look to this feature.

Month view / Week view / Advance menu

W880i’s calendar offers monthly and weekly view. Of course, you can also add new appointments. Appointments can contain several things of information. You can, of course, add subject, start time, duration and start day. If these aren’t enough, you can add location and description.

One nice thing is that you can search appointments. Very good feature!

Mac OS X 10.5 iSync

How about the synchronizing? I’m using Mac and I’m quite sure that syncing your W880i’s calendar with Windows PC won’t be problem but when you have Mac things can be a bit complicated. Luckily, Sony Ericsson has started to support Mac users too. They have released an official iSync plugin for P1i and other UIQ 3 devices, excluding the M600i. Leopard’s iSync doesn’t support the W880i but there’s a working plugin available. It can be downloaded here and it should work with Tiger and Leopard. After installing the W880i iSync plugin, I have been able to sync my W880i with my Mac without any problems!

Other organizer applications

I don’t think there’s much to say. Calculator can do all the simplest stuff. Don’t dream about calculating squared root or anything more complicated than division.

Code memo is a nice application. I remember that my S700i also had it. When you use it first time, it asks you to enter four-digit passcode and a checkword. Then you are ready to go. Just add name to your code and then write code and you are able to check your codes and the best thing is that all you important codes are safe from other people

Alarms is also a very useful application. You can have up to five alarms and all of them can be modified well. The best thing is that you can make alarms that are recurrent in certain day. Let take an example. School starts at 9 a clock every Monday, so I just great alarm and set the time 09:00 and from the recurrence rule menu I will check Monday.

Contacts

Contacts are something that all mobile phones have. In my opinion, users don’t pay enough attention to this feature when they are buying a new phone. It’s very important to have enough space for contacts and it’s nice if you can add more information than a name and a phone number.

Adding a new contact

Sony Ericsson W880i can hold up to 1000 contacts but you can save 2500 phone numbers. Contacts can be ordered by first or last name.

When adding a new contact there are five different kind of phone numbers you can add: mobile, home, work, fax, other. One contact can have much more information that just a name and a phone number. You can add email, web address, picture, title, company, street, city, state, zip code, country, info and birthday. When you add the birthday, the phone asks if you would like add it to the calendar. Nice feature!

More features – RSS reader, email and file manager

RSS feeds are great thing and luckily W880i has a build-in RSS reader. You can add your favorite feeds and update them manually or if you want, you can make the phone update all your feeds automatically every hour, twice a day or once a day.

RSS reader / Sample email / File manager

Like all modern mobile phones, W880i can handle emails too. You can have multiple email accounts. The client supports POP3 and IMAP4 protocols.

These days all Sony Ericsson phones have file manager and a good one. With file manager you can browse all you files or just those file that are in memory card or phone memory. File manager allows you to move, copy and rename files and the best thing is that you can mark several files and move or copy them.

I’m not going to write much about the file manager but there’s one interesting feature called Timeline view. When Timeline view is on you can see all your photos taken in certain month or day. All photos can also be viewed in landscape mode.

Battery life

W880i has the BST-33 battery and according to Sony Ericsson the standby time is 425 hours and the talk time 6 hours 30 minutes (GSM) or 2 hours 50 minutes if you have 3G on.

In my opinion, it’s always hard to say how good the batter life really is. It depends on so many different things. My experience is that the battery can easily last at least three days with quite heavy usage. You can probably make the battery last 5 days quite easily… I have been testing the phone every day quite a lot, so I can’t yet say how the batter performs in “normal” usage and usually the battery gets better after you have charged it few times. Overall I have the feeling that the batter life won’t be a disappointment.

Conclusion

I can easily recommend this phone to all users who don’t need the latest and highest camera phone. W880i is for people looking for a great music phone with stylish design.

The great thing is also that the W890i is coming and you can find the W880i quite cheap. Keep your eyes open!

21.01.2008. 23:40

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