Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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50 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Quality and Stylish design, 27 Mar 2007
Having owned a Sony Ericsson W800i for over 2 years and forever on the lookout for a suitable replacement, I finally found the W880i.
My main demands from a phone are not great. They are as follows:
First and foremost, it must work well as a phone.
Second, it must be stylish. An attractive design.
Thirdly, it must be a good music player.
Fourth, it must be intuitive to operate.
Fifth, it must interact with my Computer adequately.
Sixth, useful other functions.
The W800i ticked all but the last box for me (the Sony Ericsson PC Suite software is truly terrible).
The W880i however, makes leaps and bounds.
First as a phone, it works admirably. The signal strength is consistently good, the quality of the vocal reception is excellent, the volume of calls is great. I cannot fault it. Battery life is excellent - this is something that can be said for practically all Sony Ericsson phones these days.
Second as a style icon, it is a master of form triumphing slightly over function. The only downside to it's design is the size of the buttons, which take some getting used to. If you have have chubby fingers, steer clear of this device. But if you have "normal fingers" (hehehe) once you've adapted to the spacing, you'll get on fine. The size of the phone is just right, and it is an awful lot thinner than it's predecessors. Saying that, it's just the right side of thin for it to not feel "too thin", but it is not so thick as to look like an ungainly bulge in one's pocket. The construction is solid as a rock, with no squeeks or loose bits. The front is metallised while the rear is a rubberised plastic - which makes for a grippy non-slip surface - very handy, and quite unique.
Note that this phone comes in two colour formats. Silver front with a black back, and Black front with orange numerical keys and an orange back. I chose the Black-Orange variety as I wanted something a bit different. It certainly turns heads of people who have never seen one before.
As a Music Player it trumps the W800i with ease. Coming with a capacious 1Gb M2 Memory stick it can store plenty of tracks. The Walkman music software is up to version 2.0 now and works faster and more reliably than before. There is a small dedicated Walkman button on the side of the phone to shortcut launch the Music player although this only works if the phone's keypad is unlocked. Once playing you can lock the keypad and use the adjuster toggle on the other side of the phone to adjust volume up and down, or if you hold it in "up" or "down" then it will skip tracks forward and back. I much prefer this to the old W800i's rocker button arrangement, as it means you can just flick it up a couple of times in your pocket without having to get a grip on the button. The sound quality is superb through the admirably good quality supplied canal earbuds - which come with 3 sizes of fitment to suit different ears.
To operate, I have been an increasing fan of Sony Ericsson user interface. Having been lumbered with the use of many phones from all different manufacturers, and I can easily state that Sony Ericsson have by far the best and easiest user interface for their main line of phones. The simple icon layout and intuitive menus require little brain power to decipher. Everything is where you would expect it. The screen is clear, bright and easy to read. The supplied Themes and graphics are of a good standard. The supplied ring-tones are acceptable, although I find it preferable to use a Music Track that I have stored on the Memory Card as my allocated ring tone. Texting works well (once you've gotten used to the keys), and in Predictive mode it seems to have gained a degree of extra helpfulness, by remembering sentences you have used recently to help save you time on re-entering. Also, when you send a Text message, it frees up the phone and continues to send the message in the background, instead of hogging the screen while it sends.
And here's the biggie. PC-interoperability. I am happy to say that Sony have made some advances in this sector, and whilst still not up to what I would consider to be the standard (Nokia PC Suite), the new version of Sony Ericsson's PC Suite works. It actually works. That's an improvement right there over the old one, which I consistently had to re-install every time i connected my phone. The layout of the new program is more user-friendly, and things appear to be laid out in a logical manner. Depending on what task you want to conduct will instruct the phone to either stay in it's current state, or restart in "Mass Storage mode" which de-activates the phone temporarily whilst the phone deals with certain tasks. This I found a little unusual, but as it worked, I'm not complaining. Music transfers still take an inordinately long amount of time, just as previous. But then if you choose your music wisely, you can save yourself the hassle of going through that routine too often.
As for other functions, it has 3G capabilities, so it has a camera on the front as well as the back. The main camera is 2Megapixels, although it has lost the Auto-focus and illuminating light facilities of the previous generation. While some may consider this a major loss, if you're like me and only use the camera for very very casual snapping, it is of no concern. The remaining fixed-focus unit still takes perfectly good shots, but you need to be in good light.
The W880i has also had to sacrifice the FM Radio. Again, some may consider this a loss, but as I'd had the W800i for 2 years and not once listened to the Radio, I knew this would not concern me.
There are a couple of basic games, but these are of no interest.
On the whole, it's a very impressive phone and I am delighted with it, and to sum up, if your main priorities in a phone are Style and Music, this has to be the phone for you. If you demand more from your phone, like a more feature-packed camera or the ability to use other applications, I suggest you look elsewhere.
Criticisms are as follows:
* Keys may be too small for some hands
* No FM Radio
* No light for camera
* Fixed-focus camera
* Sim card is REALLY hard to get out once you've got it in. Invest in a pair of tweezers to increase your chances of getting hold of it again.
Pros are as follows:
* Great design, slim and sturdy
* Functional and easy to use
* Excellent music player
* Impressive battery life
* Generous 1Gb supplied Memory Stick (M2)
* Decent provided stereo earbuds.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Stylish yet functional, 25 April 2007
The main selling point of the W880i is its super-slim design - it is under a centimetre thick and weighs just 71 grams. My previous phone, the K800i, was twice the thickness and weighed 115 grams. You can put the W880i in your pocket and forget it's there, which is great. Also, it is absolutely stunning to look at, and in my opinion is the best looking phone on the market by a mile. If style is important to you, there's none better.
It comes with Walkman 2.0, which is a lot easier to navigate, and with MegaBass included it produces an amazing sound quality. It comes with ear-canal headphones, which go right inside your ear and produce an excellent sound with superb bass response. N.B. - make sure you get the headphones all the way in, or it will sound tinny. Crucially, it also comes included with a 1GB memory stick, which saves you a cool £40.
Some people have criticised the buttons for being too small. I heard them described as "smaller than a grain of rice", which is pretty true, but not necessarily a bad thing. I found that, because the buttons are spaced quite far apart, texting is easy (but do bear in mind I have small fingers).
It has a 2.0 megapixel camera which unfortunately lacks flash and autofocus. The quality of the pictures in day time I found to be very good, but the quality of night time pictures (no doubt due to the lack of flash) I must admit are poor. Then again, if you want to take high quality pictures, get a camera!
Overall, I'm very pleased with the phone and will be keeping it for some time. The walkman is the best on a Sony Ericsson phone so far, the camera's not great but does a decent job, and the thin, lightweight design makes it a real winner.
8.5 / 10
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
WOW! Amazing phone!, 9 May 2007
I love this phone! Its slim and portable, i can barely feel it when its in my pocket, i keep thinking im gonna break it but it just doesn't! Its stylish, in silver its not too obvious, subtle in colour, a little sony ericsson branding here and there but nothing too obvious and i like that, class and style.
Ok, so on the down side its lost the flash and auto focus from the camera - but seriously, who needs that anyway! I have a digital camera, and any one else seriously interested in technology will have too - who needs to be fiddling around with a 2 megapixel phone camera? pointless! Introduction of a second camera - great, love the 3G calling.
Got rid of the radio - about time too, pointless and i never used it on the w800. 1GB of memory, ace - room for all my albums to go on there!
Has been criticised for the small buttons but they actually work really well! Because they are raised higher than on other walkman phones and are spaced a little further apart they are really easy to use, much easier than on the W800.
Trully an outstanding phone, in a class of its own. Pretty and practical. You will not be dissapointed!
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