Introduction

Walkman. The brand created by Sony has become a stand-alone concept, as an armada of Sony Ericsson phones is hitting stores nowadays. W800i was the first of the kind, this has become a real legend, and was followed by phones with all kinds of design and features, but most importantly: they are all musical.

W800i has been so good at its time (considering at least its musical features), that there wasn’t much to improve on it, as the first Walkman has already reached high, both in terms of software and accessories, so this could have only been decreased by leaving out autofocus from many models and some cheaper models don’t have the earpiece headset characteristic of the series. Altogether this family of phones is still a success story in the life of Sony Ericsson and they, naturally, don’t want to end it yet.

They don’t want to end it so much, that I already have W760i, announced at CES, in my hands, which tries to introduce a new line in the Walkman series, namely navigation. They have already had similar tries, as in the case of the already tested W890i, Google Maps was included in the list of functions, but this is the first model to have a GPS receiver. Furthermore, W760i is a really fine handset from other points of view too, it is well though-out and nicely designed.

Exterior

I cannot say anything about the box, as the phone arrived “naked” (as it happens many times in case of very new delicacy phones), that is we have only managed to get the device itself, we had to supply the accessories ourselves. There was a charger, a headset and an M2 card lying around in our office just as usual, so we weren’t in trouble. The phone, available in many colors, was shining only in red in our hands. Many have told that it’s quite “girly”, but it can absolutely be used in silver and black by men too.

The slider body of W760i has many features beneath it; one might start thinking how the engineers crammed so many things in such a small place. The QVGA display on the front has a diagonal of 2.2 inches, which is absolutely fine for the average user. The panel under the screen looks exciting and has a lot of buttons. The side ones of the three circle shapes are used for handling calls; the central is the main control. There are four function buttons in total, sitting under and over the small circles. The upper ones do the functions displayed in the bottom of the screen, while the lower symbolize the quick menu and clear commands. This is on one hand logical and easy to use on the other. Above all, it also looks good, especially when there is light, as there is an arched grating near the side circles, which lets a bit of blue-grey light come through, thus providing a fascinating look.

This is still not the end of the list of small design treats. The small bump under the display is no big deal, but the spotted metal surface on the bottom of the phone is very unique with the Walkman logo in its center. The keyboard of the phone is no visual orgasm, but the backlight that lights up separately on every row is a really pleasant look. Another nice thing is the logo in the middle of the back that is also lit up, although this is not seen too much. W760i is a pretty little gadget, the only strange thing that it has no secondary camera on the front, as there are two hotkeys over the display, on the two sides of the speaker.

On top we can find the socket of the M2 card, protected by a rubber “door”; on the left there is the data connector and the Walkman hotkey, while the volume control keys are on the right side of the phone. The back has to be “torn off” in a strange way, a kind of Sagem-feeling takes over the user, but still, the quality of assembly is altogether exemplary.

Menu

Sony Ericsson’s platform has reached a new version, which is of course just like the others, besides a few changes. These minor modifications have affected the design, as the main menu, which had a grid layout until now, can now be set to a roundabout-view and to a list view, made up of large drawings and of course the possibility is given to completely change these designs with more complicated themes.

The different views are visible on the photos, but we have also made a 5 minute movie, on which we can take a look at navigation possibilities:

Otherwise things are pretty much the same. Some things are now animated, which is really pleasant, like the key-screen popping up when locking the keypad, or the change between large and small characters when writing messages. These are of course small things, just like one of my web developer friends have told me: it has no functional use, but it increases user experience and as we already know, this is the current flagship of Sony Ericsson and this was the basic concept used when creating Xperia.

We can assign any function we would like to the left and right directions of the navigation ring; pressing it downwards makes the phonebook pop up, while the upper direction takes us to the submenu of navigational functions. This latter one has a small icon on top of the ring, it cannot be missed. The quick menu still contains missed events, favorite websites, running applications and a user-editable list in a tabbed window.

The speed of the software is completely ok, the device functions without problems, everything works as it has to; the use of W760i is logical, simple and fast.

Basic functions

I think these are the functions (phone book, messaging, calendar) that are completely the same in all recently presented Sony Ericsson phones. This is no different now: the phonebook can store 1000 names and 7000 additional information. Although W760i also prefers the internal memory, we can set it to save new names to the SIM card too, this being a kind of backup. It is also pleasant that we can copy the whole address book to the memory card, so it can be easily moved to another Sony Ericsson device.

Message handling is usually exceptional in case of Japanese-Swedish models. Text entry is again comfortable; I have found one interesting feature (which is a real nice bonus), that when typing a message and we reach the second one, the aggressive “SMS 2” window doesn’t pop up, temporarily disabling text entry, but we can only hear a silent beep, the display darkens and the warning is only visible for a very short time, does enabling us to comfortably continue typing. Under the message handling menu all SMS, MMS and email messages can be moved at once to the memory card, deleted or sorted by date, size, sender or category. It’s a nice little feature if someone’s an SMS guru, as on one hand only the size of the memory card limits the number of messages that can be stored and on the other hand we can almost sort them like in Outlook.

The built-in email client can also be customized in many ways, there is a wizard to help us in configuring it – this tries to guess POP3 and SMTP settings. I couldn’t really find any size limits and I could send a nearly 1 MB large picture as an attachment through HSDPA. The RSS reader, however, is now not in the messaging menu (and it is quite logical), but it is placed in the multimedia segment and functions perfectly at its new place too.

Office applications, entertainment

The calendar didn’t change at all. It handles four types of entries (meeting, vacation, birthday, other), these can be repetitive and in case of conflicting events it warns us. The month view is not very informative, while week view shows much better what we have to do – it’s a pity that different type of events don’t have different colors.

The alarm clock can remember of five time points, these can repeat and we can also set on which days should these be in effect. At last snooze duration can also be set; it can now be as long as 30 minutes, although this is still behind of some Nokia phones that give us the possibility of oversleeping with as much an hour. The stopwatch, the countdown timer, the calculator and the notepad don’t give anything extra, while code memory is an old friend. Unfortunately W760i cannot open Office documents, but the file manager doesn’t completely ignore them: we can forward, move or delete any kind of file.

There have been, however, a lot of pre-installed applications on the sample phone. A couple of these can be really handy, but let’s take them in order. AccuWeather does what it name tells – forecasts weather; it downloads information from the internet, so a net connection is required. Of course it tells something completely different than the local official weather forecast, but this is specific of its genre. Converter can convert all kinds of measurement units; there are two kinds of 3D world watches: one of them lets us rotate the globe, while the other pops in clocks of different important cities one after the other. Rock Bubblehead is also worth to mention, which is in fact a completely useless app: after starting it a quite idiot-looking guy appears on-screen and bends in the direction we tilt the phone. This of course means that W760i has motion sensors.

This feature is also present in games: the mobile version of Need for Speed ProStreet can also be controlled by tilting the phone. Besides this there is Rollercoaster Rush and Guitar Legend, which helps us taking high our soloist skills and aspirations with a press of a few buttons.

Multimedia

Before entering into details and run down the camera without autofocus (uh oh, we already ran it down), it’s worth taking a look at the multimedia menu, which now has much more functions than before. Organizing pictures, videos and music is easy and logical, just like it used to be, not even podcasts are a new thing. The television icon provides streaming video; of course this will be linked to network operator provided WAP access in branded phone versions. It is new, that besides the RSS reader, games can also be accessed from here.

The camera is a 3.2 megapixel one, and has two major deficiencies. On one hand it has fixed focus (and don’t tell me there wasn’t enough room, as others have already done it, for example C902 is no chubby phone and it still has it) and it has no flash on the other. Anyway it is a simple camera, with few features; after along time Sony Ericsson W760i is another high-end phone where we don’t take pictures in landscape mode, thus making unambiguous that although the number of megapixels has been increased compared to W910i, still this is a Walkman phone, not a Cyber-Shot.

Well, thanks. There is a low number of settings, there is not much extra besides the basic ones (white balance, picture quality, size, delayed self-timer). There are a few pictures below; the possibility of taking close-ups is missing, while other pictures made the fantastic achievement of being noisy and extremely blurred at the same time: it is worth taking a look at the jeans on the guy sitting on the tram – it has a real embossed effect. Videos are recorded in MP4 format, highest available resolution is 240 x 320 pixels.

The musical part, however, is all right. This handset also uses the Walkman 3.0 interface; it’s easy to get to the playlist (press up or down key), tracks can e changed with the left-right keys, while seeking is done with the 1 and 3 keys. Visualization is not that emphasized this time, there are only some effects running in a small window, but the software can also display the album image. There is an equalizer and Megabass, the player runs in the background too – these are specific of all Walkman phones.

Sound quality is quite fine through a headset, but it has a lot of boominess through the speakers, there is no bass, but this is nothing surprising from a plastic case phone. The built-in RDS radio functions all right as usual and there is the TrackID for getting information about music tracks in case we have an Internet connection. Humming can also be used, potential American Idols have an advantage.

Navigation

The big hit of W760i is the built-in GPS, thus there is a rich menu behind the navigation icon, which has two protagonists: Google Maps and Wayfinder. The first one doesn’t need any satellite connection; it locates our estimated position based on cell information, which is of course not that exact, it displays a circle in which we are possibly located. Satellite and standard map views are downloaded from the internet, it locates us fast and gives information quickly – but this is only basic. It can still be useful in case we would like to take look of the area, because it gives photo-quality picture, based on which we can figure out where exactly are we, and it’s easy to move on the map in case we want to look around.

This is not the most important (since Google Maps is included on many other new Sony Ericsson phones), but the built-in GPS and the Wayfinder software connected to it. Unfortunately the receiver’s sensitivity is not very good, it took 10 minutes to find the necessary number of satellites, fortunately it didn’t loose connection afterwards, but we have experienced what numerous other have: when amongst tall buildings it won’t find its way many times, because it loses GPS connection.

If the signal part is all right, however, then we can only praise Wayfinder. I was disappointed to see the word TeleAtlas written in large on the startup screen, as this company doesn’t have a very large database for our country, but then I have searched my address and it turned out that the small street, built last year, is also on the map, with driveways, which is a praiseworthy performance. My surprise has further increased when upon searching on random small settlements I have found complete street maps: this hasn’t been a characteristic of TeleAtlas-based navigation software until now.

Then the truth was revealed. I pressed the additional information button on a POI and Wayfinder mentioned Topmap as source. This company is known to be the maker of one of the best national maps and it is now owned by Nav N Go, but it looks like they managed to agree with Wyfinder anyhow.

There are no maps included with Wayfinder, but no matter where we may go or plan a route, the software downloads the necessary database immediately. I’d like to mention that this is the umpteenth application of this kind on the phone, so if someone would like to utilize W760i’s features to their maximum potential, than he or she should consider subscribing to mobile internet. Route planning is reasonably fast; only basic parameters can be altered at display and fine-tune settings: 2D/3D view, night mode, enable toll-roads… things like this. If we find the display too small to keep looking at a complete map on it, then there is a “Guide” mode, which only shows the icon of the next maneuver in large. As a sweet little bonus we have voice navigation for free (which I mention separately because there are counter-examples too...).

To put it short, Wayfinder looks like a really pleasant software in this form. Of course it doesn’t have the features of a PNA, but hey, this is a simple mobile phone, which tries to navigate us with a small Java software – and still it does this surprisingly good. If we’d be worrying about the internal GPS, than we can buy and external one, which uses Bluetooth, since Wayfinder supports these too.

Data transfer, battery

Enumeration follows: GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA. Who wants more? These are the mobile networks supported by W760i, which is a really impressive list. The built-in browser can be familiar from K850i or K660i, it’s a bit unkemptly, but it can be used quite well in landscape view. It’s interesting that there is no camera on the front, so video calls are only one-way.

At local level we have version 2.0 stereo Bluetooth and 2.0 USB; there were no problems with the first one, but – and now a confession follows – I couldn’t try the latter one, as I had no cable, but no other Sony Ericsson model has caused any headache before. There is no WLAN, as W760i is no smartphone.

Having an objective opinion about the battery under the cover is hard, but not because I didn’t have enough time to take a look at it; usually a week is enough. But the poor phone has almost always been on HSDPA, I had Google Maps and Wayfinder turned on wherever I went, so I had a traffic of 35 MB, I listened to music and of course talked on the phone (6 hours in total), consequently I don’t consider the two day charging cycle as a bad result.

Conclusion? It convinced me. It has everything Sony Ericsson is capable of in this segment and has GPS as a bonus, it looks good and it’s assembled in a professional way. We don’t know any price yet, but this is not the reason for not getting the Highly Recommended award, but because of the deficiencies of the camera and the somewhat weak internal GPS receiver.

Sony Ericsson W760i

Bog

Translated by Szaszati

Specifications

Sony Ericsson W760i
	General
	Technology	GSM, UMTS, HSDPA
	Size	103 x 48 x 15 mm
	Weight	103 grams
	Colors	silver, red, black
	Display
	Display diagonal	2.2”
	Display resolution	240 x 320 pixel
	Display type	TFT
	Number of colors	256K
	Memory
	Phonebook capacity	1000
	SMS memory / max. MMS size	dynamic / 300KB
	Internal memory	40 MB
	Memory expandability	M2
	Data transfer
	Frequency bands	850/900/1800/1900 MHz
	GPRS / EDGE	Class 10 (4+1/3+2) / Class 10 (236.8 kbps)
	UMTS / HSDPA	present (384 kbps) / present(3,6 Mbps)
	IrDA / Bluetooth	none / 2.0 (A2DP too)
	WiFi	none
	USB	2.0
	Push-to-talk / RSS	none / present
	GPS receiver	present
	Basic functions
	Profiles	present
	Vibra function	present
	Built-in handsfree	present
	Voice calling / voice commands	present / present
	Sound recorder	present
	Alarm clock	present, also when turned off
	Predictive text entry	T9
	Software
	Platform	SE
	WAP / HTML browser	present / present
	E-mail client	present (POP3, IMAP4, authenticated)
	Java	present, MIDP 2.0
	Games	3
	Currency converter	present
	Extra software	Google Maps, VideoDJ, PhotoDJ, MusicDJ, TrackID, Wayfinder, AccuWeather
	Multimedia
	Main camera	3.2 megapixel, fixed focus
	Secondary camera	none
	Video recording	present, QVGA
	Music player	present, runs in background too
	Equalizer	present
	FM radio	present - RDS
	Battery
	Main battery	930 mAh Li-Pol
	Standby time	400 hours
	Talk time	540 minutes
	Other
	Wayfinder navigation, motion sensor