Sony Ericsson W995 Review – The Walkman Moves on
Sony Ericsson Walkman series phones are famous for their outstanding acoustic quality, but the strict market boundary effectively limits their market share.
Having been influenced by new challenge, the Sony Ericsson W995 is a new Sony Ericsson phone which breaks that boundary for the first time, and an 8 MP camera and 3.5mm audio jack are packed in this latest flagship handset of Walkman Series.
Its appearance has some rigid elements as the Sony Ericsson W705 does, but the edge is rather soft and mellow. It features a metallic shell with wiredrawing surface and is 15mm thick, which gives a high quality impression that belongs to flagship phones.
With an 8 Mega Pixel camera in this Walkman phone, there is no need to say this phone has amazing function. It inherits Sony Ericsson phones’ characteristic - light weight. Compared with Nokia N86 which weighs 149g, Sony Ericsson W995, with a dimension of 97x49x15mm and weight of 113g plus colors of progressive black, cosmic silver, energetic red, can get more marks especially from women users.
Sony Ericsson phones usually change their button design to gain an appearance breakthrough. But there is an exception in this handset, as the navigation and music buttons are from another slim Sony Ericsson phone – Sony Ericsson W880. The function keys also seem very familiar.
The music-control key on the left and M2 expansion slot tell this is a typical music phone; the camera key on the right and digital zoom bar draw this Walkman phone into Cyber-short range. These shortcut buttons are not only a perfect combination of music and camera, but also they bring convenient operation.
What’s more, as expected by all, the Sony Ericsson W995 finally packs a 3.5mm headphone jack. This solves the Walkman cord problem and lessens FastPort’s use frequency. Of course you can utilize stereo earphones if you have a higher standard for audio quality.
Usually in-ear HPM-77 is offered, but sometimes in some markets it is HPM-88 with sound noise reduction effect offered. Considering Nokia N82 which has 3.5mm audio jack doesn’t have ideal audio quality, it takes time to say if these accessories have outstanding music effect on Sony Ericsson W995.
It seems that dual speakers are becoming Walkman Series’ standard equipment. Since both flanks of the phone are taken up by buttons and slots, and the speakers are designed on the top of the handset, this provides a better effect.
Another special feature is the metal desk stand on the rear of the set. With the companion of dual stereo speakers, it will provide an ideal effect for viewing movies. Different from that of Nokia N96, its widest angle could be as much as 180 degree. So with a string circling through it you can hang the phone around your neck.
Sony Ericsson W995 also improved its hardware configuration – a 2.6” QVGA display, 260k colors. But had it utilized popular AMOLED display it would have been more attractive.
Though Walkman 4.0 has not been announced yet, you will not be disappointed at this high-end Walkman phone. It features all Sony Ericsson’s music functions. Apart from a variety of music files and FM radio, it has Clear Audio Experience, SensMe, Shake Control, TrackID, and other equalizers.
Besides, Media Go, brand new multimedia management software, is attached to this device.
Devised by Sony, it enables an easy transmission of music and videos between PC and phones. Meanwhile applications such as synchronization, SenME, Podcast, document transformation, etc, are available.
The most impressive thing about this phone lies in the shooting function. It continues Sony Ericsson C905’s most brilliant feature - a built-in 8.1 MP camera, with autofocus, face detection, digital zoom, stabilizer, continuous shooting, BestPic, PhotoFix, etc. However, it is not a Cyber-shot phone anyway. It doesn’t offer a smile shutter or Xenon light. Only an ordinary LED light is equipped for shooing at night or in inadequate light.
As for other functions, they don’t bear much difference from Sony Ericsson C905’s. It supports GDM/GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA/HSDPA and WLAN, as well as A-GPS, Google Map, Tracker, Wayfinder Navigator. It is absolutely competent for daily use.
Though not equipped with 8GB memory as rumors said, it embraces 118MB memory and a M2 card for expansion. Sony Ericsson is very generous to offer an 8GB card for storage of multimedia files and pictures of high resolution.
In a word, Sony Ericsson has reached the top for a music phone. Large display, 8.1 MP camera, WLAN, HSDPA, 3.5mm audio jack, dual speaker and desk stand... all of them are packed in Sony Ericsson W995 - a flagship music phone.
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