Sony Ericsson W980i Review

Release Date: Q3 2008
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Sony Ericsson W980i – 8GB of storage!

The Sony Ericsson W980i is a new addition to the Walkman® range which is due out in Q3 of 2008. The W980i is a tremendous looking mobile phone weighing in at 100 grams (3.5oz) and available in a stunning piano black colour. At 17mm thick it is not the thinness mobile phone on the market but packing in 8GB of storage we can forgive it for this. Other mobile phones in the Sony Ericsson Walkman® range are the SE W810i, SE W850i and the SE W880i.

Music Player

As this phone is in the Walkman® range the main focus of the W980i is the built in digital music player. The Walkman® digital music player allows you to easily manage your music and has a one click start function. The W890i music player allows you to play, fast forward and rewind your tracks. There is also equalizer and shuffle functions. The Walkman® player supports the majority of the file formats available today including ACC and MP3 formats. If you like to create your own playlists then you will love the SensMe™ feature. This function lets you create playlists depending on your mood and the results are displayed on a 2 axed map as dots. To use this feature you will be required to upload songs to your phone using the Media Manager PC software. The SE W980i comes complete with a fully functional FM radio with RDS, allowing you to see on the screen which radio station you are listening too, and sometimes, if the station supports it, what song you are listening too. With TrackID™ installed on the SE W980i you can find out the name of any song within a few seconds. Simply record a few seconds of the song and TrackID™ will send the clip to Gracenote Mobile MusicID database which will return the artist and album name direct to your mobile phone. Shake control is another feature on the Sony Ericsson W980i. Shake control when activated lets you simple flick your wrist to change the song. If successful, a vibration alert lets you know the song is changing. If you are a frequent flying then you will enjoy the flight mode function available on the SE W980i. This lets you use your mobile phone but turns of the radio (to avoid interference) and does not allow you to make or receive calls.

Camera

The Sony Ericsson W980i has a 3.2 megapixel camera with digital zoom up to 3.2x zoom. A photo fix function is installed which lets you optimize the image quality by automatically adjusting the contrast and colour balance once you have taken the photo. The camera on the SE W980i will also allow you to film short video clips and upload them to the internet to share with all your friends using the picture blogging feature. The W980i has a very smart auto rotate feature first seen on the Apple iPhone which adjusts the screen between landscape and portrait depending on which way you are holding the mobile phone.

The W980i has 3D java games pre installed and allows you to download further games if you wish. Access to the web is provided by Access NetFront™ web browser which comes installed ready to use on the SE W980i. RSS and web feeds are fully supported by the W980i allowing you to retrieve the latest news and weather direct to your mobile phone as it happens. The W980i is quad band enabled meaning it supports all the GSM networks, 850, 900, 1800 and 1900. 3G HSDPA high-speed internet is available on the SE W980i, allowing for data transfer up to 3.6 Mbits per second. This is very useful for video calls and video streaming. The battery with the W980i will give you 9 hours of talk time and up to 370 hours (just over 15 days) on standby from a full charged battery. All the standard messaging services are supported by the SE W980i including SMS, MMS (multimedia messaging), email and instant chat.