Sony Ericsson W880i Silver SIM Free

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.

I have had many other phones in the past year like the Samusung U600, Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson W810i, Compact 3, Samsung X630 but at last I believe I've found the best phone yet!

I needed a phone for personal and business use. Originally, when the W880i came out I didn't even think about buying it because I didn't believe it had what I need but I was wrong.

The W880i is the slimmest handset I've ever had, it looks quite stylish and fits into any pocket. Unlike the N95 which was quite big, I enjoy the compact W880i.

The W880i can hold upto a 4GB memory card so plenty of storage for music, files, etc...

Im sure you all know that Sony Ericsson's are great for their battery life, the W880i is very good. On average, I charge my phone up ever 7 days and talktime of around 8 hours!!! Compared to the N95 where I had to charge it up every 2 days if not less!!!

Great email function, receive and send email within seconds!!! The W880i retreives the newest emails only where as some phones would retrieve every email in your account - even ones in the trash!!!

Overall, great phone. Meets my business needs during the day, and a stylish and elegant handset in the evenings.

I bought this phone from a friend after my LG kept freezing and the screen on my Samsung went blank.

It looks like a stylish phone, which is what a lot of people are after.

Another positive is that the sound quality, with a decent set of earphones, is very good from the walkman. Could even be used as an alternative to other ubiquitous MP3 players that are on the market.

Sound quality from the ring / message tone is clear and quite loud (though maybe not loud enough for an industrial environment, more than suited to home / office / pub).

I cannot go on further without mentioning the bugbears though, the reasons why I gave this phone a low score.

Firstly, the buttons. If, like me, you do a lot of texting (partner, friends, family), then you had better have tiny fingers as the buttons on this are not designed for a large gentleman's fingers. Not that I am huge, I would say I am an average size for a 6 foot 2 male, but to press the buttons I have to use the edge of my fingernails. This, in turn, has caused paint from a couple of the buttons to start coming off.

The text message system itself is quite annoying, although in all fairness nothing compares to my old Motorola V220's text system.
If you are trying to type an acronym / unrecognised word using the T9 system, it will often have all letter combinations *except* the one you wish to use!
It will throw up an error message at this, which wastes time in your text input.
It also often knows what word you are trying to type, but refuses point blank to autocomplete the whole word, again a feature missing from many other phones too.

The buttons at the top left tend to get used a lot, as the very top one is used for selecting an option, and the 3rd down is the option to go "back" a menu.
Annoyingly, however, in between these buttons is the internet button. Many a time I have tried to select these buttons and hit the internet button by mistake, resulting in unwanted phone charges.

Battery life is quite poor, 2 days at most from a full charge on average use.
You can charge with a USB cable, handy for the PC or USB-compatible car CD player, though I find that it sometimes takes a bit of jigging the cable, plugging it in and out, and restarting the phone to get it to actually charge.
Annoyingly, when you charge the phone from battery dead, you cannot enter "phone" mode immediately. You must charge a bit, *disconnect*, start the phone, then reconnect.

A pointless question I found, on startup, was "Normal mode" vs "Flight mode", seeing as how I will be on ground for 99% of my time, I think that "Flight mode" should be a user selectable option similar to "silent".

During a phone call, I can't work out how to increase the volume as the person at the other end seems quite quiet. This may be user error though, but the phone is unintuitive in this respect.

The camera is 2 MP, not the best but reasonably good for taking quick shots out and about.

The only time the phone failed on me, it would not send or receive calls or messages, claiming that my phone network could not be found (despite the fact it had full 5 bars and the operator name on the screen). Rectified with a reboot without hassle.

Not to sound overly negative, the phone is a stylish phone and MP3 player with adaquate functionality.
Just the annoyances have made me start looking at a phone without a pokey keypad, my next phone will have a keyboard or a touchscreen and wont be Sony Ericsson.