W850i review

Having switched over from a Panasonic EB X800 'smart phone, it was no surprise that I was exhilarated by the speed that the SE W850i walkman phone offered me.

This is SE's first sliding walkman phone and the slider works pretty well, compared to the Nokia 6288, whose slider just had this feel of inferior quality. The screen is bright and the colours vivid, the buttons all feel great except for the directional buttons. It would have been better to implement a joystick instead of the pressure points, it feels like the plastic casing will give way in due time. If you have small and nimble fingers it should be acceptable for you.

While importing contacts from my SIM card, I found a minor niggle about this phone that bugged me to no end. the W850i simply cannot erase contacts on the SIM at one go! Despite referring to the instruction manual, I was still unable to resolve this minor hiccup and ended up deleting about 80 odd contacts manually.

The camera function is great and so far the pictures have turned out to be acceptable for a 2.0MP camera phone. 1 note though, the W850i does not come with autofocus, so people who value taking quality pictures should just stick with the K800i. Another weird limitation is with regards to the camera zoom function, you cannot zoom while in the normal mode. Zoom is available in all other modes - Paranormal, burst and frames so what's so normal about the normal mode anyway?

The phone came with a 1GB Memory Stick Pro Duo and it has proved to be just about sufficient. Uploading songs from my PC was a breeze with the supporting software. The volume from the phone's speakers are above average. Just try not to annoy the hell out of everyone on the train now!

With the Mega Bass equaliser setting, I enjoyed the thumping bass on my Cresyn earphones. Listening to the radio was equally enjoyable, there are 20 channels for you to store radio stations at last count, that's even more than the head unit on the Mazda6!

All 3G functions not tested as of yet.

Final verdict, 7/10.
Everything except the camera and directional keys are great. Photo taking connoiseurs , avoid this phone. Walkman lovers, take a queue number.