Sony Ericsson W995 Review

Sony Ericsson W995 is the top of the line offering to be unleashed from Sony Ericsson’s labs. It has the biggest display to be found on a Sony Ericsson phone along with plethora of features that will put other phones to shame. Sporting a 8 megapixel camera along with latest Walkman 4.0 music player, this surely has all the makings of being the next big thing from Sony Ericsson. Read on to find out how it actually fares.

Sony Ericsson W995 specifications :

• Dimensions : 97 x 49 x 15 mm
• Weight : 113 g
• Display : 2.6″ TFT with 240 x 320 resolution
• Camera : 8.1 MP with autofocus and LED Flash
• Card slot : Memory Stick Micro M2
• Connectivity: GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSPDA, HSCSD
• Bluetooth : v2.0 with A2DP
• WLAN : WiFi 802.11 b/g
• Other features : Accelerometer, Stereo speakers, FM Radio with RDS,
  3.5 mm audio jack, Video call camera

Design and Display

The dimensions of the phone are quite small considering the huge display that is has. The weight is just about fine at 113 g. Although the phone comes in three colors, black suits the phone the most and is surely going off the shelves sooner than others! When you slide the phone open, you are reminded on the Nokia N95 that had the same slick slider but a fat body, although it does not have the dual-slider mechanism.

The D-pad and other buttons beneath the display have been borrowed from older Sony Ericsson phones. The semi-circular buttons at the edges are not user friendly at all and Sony Ericsson should avoid them. The display itself is a beauty and the 2.6 incher has crisp graphics. The display runs at QVGA resolution and produces vivid images. The sunlight legibility is fine under direct sunlight.

Above the display is located the earpiece and adjoining it are the ambient light sensor and the video call camera. The phone has inbuilt accelerometer for auto-rotation of the display and works smoothly. The keypad revealed by sliding the display up has nicely laid out keys with large spaces between them. However, the keys are too subdued that reduces the tactile feedback. Overall, typing on the keypad is fun and after you have got used to it, there is no looking back.

The Walkman key is located on the left and is large and easy to access and along with it is the Fast Port connector. The card slot although is located underneath the back cover, but it is hot swappable. The right side is jam packed with buttons starting with the volume rocker key, camera key and the dedicated music control keys.

Music Player and Camera

The device has the latest Walkman 4.0 music player with all the extras included. The player has skin support for those who want it. Sony Ericsson phones see the light of 3.5 mm jack which had eluded them till now. A large number of file formats are supported along with various preset equalizers. Filtering of tracks by artists, genre, album etc or using the SensMe feature to select a particular bunch of tracks depending on the tempo. The accelerometer is put to good use by the Shake Control feature. D-pad is made in-charge of the controls and does an effective job. Then there are dedicated music keys too at the right hand side too that offer flexibility to control music when the music player is running in the background. The Now Playing screen shows the detailed information about the track currently being played. The audio quality of the player is exceptional and matches the Apple iPod Touch 2G audio quality.

The line between Cybershot and Walkman phones is blurring day by day. The 8 megapixel camera on the device does point towards that direction but the image quality certainly isn’t at par with the Cybershot phones. The camera has various settings such as face detection, geotagging, image stabilizer, BestPic etc, exposure metering, auto-rotation etc. ISO setting is notably missing from the menu. The lens has bee left without any protection. The flash used in PowerLED flash which is just another name for LED flash. Face detection works fr up to 3 faces at a time but there is no smile detection feature. Geotagging works great as it uses the internal GPS receiver. The BestPic mode has slow and fast modes and they take 7 pictures in a row at 0.8 sec and 1.7 sec interval with no option to use flash in this mode. The picrure sadly isn’t as good as we have seen in CyberShot C905 which is a 8 MP phone. The detail is lesser, pics are oversharpened and purple fringing is also present. Video recording is also disappointing as 30 fps @ QVGA with no VGA mode present.

Web Browser and Organiser

NetFront v3.4 is the bundled browser on the phone which is quite capable. Rendering is accurate even for complex web pages. Full screen landscape mode is turned on by tilting the display and accelerometer does the rest. Zooming and panning pages is fast without any lags. Virtual mouse pointer is enabled making browsing so much easier. Overall the browser does a good job.

The Sony Ericsson W995 offers a wide variety of time management features that would suffice for your day-to-day needs. Some of the applications include Tasks, Notes, Alarms, Calendar, Stopwatch, Light, Calculator, Syncronisation, File Manager etc. There is no office suite bundled which is disappointing. Calendar can be viewed in both monthly and weekly views and tasks can be scheduled as either Tasks or Phone Calls. Overall the organiser offers a good set of applications.

Pros :

• Great display
• Small dimensions
• Walkman 4.0 player
• 8 MP camera
• Excellent browser
• Good organiser

Cons :

• Average image quality
• No office document viewer

Final Thoughts

The Sony Ericsson W995 delivers on the promise of a great music with decent imaging capabilities. The Walkman 4.0 music player does not disappoint and has all the features that one would desire from a high-end Walkman phone. The 8MP camer is a bit of downer as the image quality isn’t as good as expected. Web browsing is excellent with the NetFront browser installed on the device. Organizer does it job well but lacks the office document viewer. Overall the phone is definitely a winner!

Rating : 4/5