Walkman, phone and still/video camera in one

Stan Beer
Thursday, 22 September 2005 10:00

Your IT - Entertainment

Sony's other iPod killer?

Sony Ericsson W800i, $999, www.sonyericsson.com.au

Remember when the Sony Walkman was the only way to listen to music? These were clearly in the days when the audio cassette was King, and the iPod was a digital music nightmare that Sony was a couple of decades away from experiencing.

In that time, all manner of digital devices have appeared, and convergence has, on many occasions, tried jamming them all into one device, usually with very poor results.

But with persistence and the never-ending advance of technology, Sony Ericsson have taken the best of today's digital devices and successfully converged them into a mobile phone.

What we have is a Walkman that takes play music, takes photos, plays videos, plays games and makes calls. It combines a 2 megapixel camera that produces fantastic photos unlike any you've seen from a cameraphone, and a premium smartphone with Internet, organiser, gaming and loads of other features. There's an optional $45 external flash that plugs into the bottom of the phone. While it does come with a mini-LED flash, if you want to take photos at night, this external flash, which is the same as those found on normal cameras, is an accessory that you simply must purchase. Indeed it's a pity it's not in the box as it is.

Onto the mp3 playback features, you'll notice a 'W' button on the keypad. Press this and up pops the Walkman interface very similar to that seen on iPods, letting you scroll through tracks, artists, playlists and even videos, something no iPod can do. This iPod style interface is what defines a digital music player, as previous mp3 playback capabilities in phones simply presented you with a boring list of tracks stored on the phone. So, the Walkman interface makes a very big difference and is why it qualifies to have the Walkman name.

As with other mp3 dedicated phones on the market, a dedicated 'play/pause' lets you easily control the music or on screen videos. The headset plugs into the bottom of the phone and comes with a microphone and answer/hang up button. At the end of this is a  standard 3.5mm plug. Into this you connect the stereo headphones supplied in the pack, or you can connect any headphones that you choose - a very nifty option that you'd expect with any music player.

On the storage side of things, it comes with a 512mb Memory Stick, enough to store 125 songs, with cards of up to 2Gb now available, although these larger size cards are still quite expensive.

It performs all of its functions quite stylishly with no obvious weaknesses, making it a very serious challenger to the concept of owning a separate phone, separate mp3 player and even a separate camera. Why carry three devices when one does the job so well?

ALEX ZAHAROV-REUTT