Review: Sony Ericsson W995 Walkman mobile

A phone with a walkman, this is what Sony Ericsson is famous for. But this time it is the first ever Walkman series phone that sports a standard 3.5mm headset jack. The phone looks stylish, presentable and buttoned down. Both the sides of the cover (the front side and the battery cover) are made of metal and sport adequately brushed pattern; it is hardly noticeable on the black handset. The W995 also comes in silver and red varieties.

Sony Erricson W995 is a flat device of the walkman series which looks stylish and delivers top notch high tech functionality. Its display measures of 2.6 inches and is larger than its previous models which are in the lineup. Despite the QVGA resolution the screen remains usable in the direct sunlight. All the buttons are on the keypad on the front side are very comfy to use, pleasingly prominent and easy to press. Whereas on the right hand side we don’t have enough space to travel and some of the buttons are harder to use. They are the volume rocker, camera shutter and phone music player control. The walkman button is on the opposite side along with the charger port. Fortunately the W995 is equipped with two large loudspeakers and a 3.5 mm jack and this is the first time we have seen it on a walkman series device.

The backside houses an 8.1 megapixel camera with a flash and video stand that makes the video watching experience more enjoyable although it’s rather unsteady. The interface of Sony Ericsson feature phones is quite friendly and W995 is no exception. Applications can be placed from the home screen and the novelty feature here is called the noise detection sensor. Thanks to the themes in the phone all menus can be personalized and there are scores of phone themes that are easy to come by on the internet. Fortunately, connecting to the internet is easy as reciting nursery rhymes. With W995 is very easy as it supports high speed 3G and WiFi. The phone browser too loads heavy pages without the hitch and the pan mode it comes with makes navigation really comfortable.

The W995 delivers great connectivity options – HSDPA 7.2Mbit/s and Wi-Fi with DLNA support. The latter allows the phone to wirelessly connect to other devices. The browser home page lets you navigate to PlayNow easily, where you can listen to new bands or install Vringo to download video ringtones.

If you happen to like a song and decide to pick a band you will be able to take really nice pictures using the 8.1 megapixel camera of the phone. Its interface offers great preset smile detection, standard, Bestpic, panorama and colored frames in the shooting mode.

Preset options come with auto, sunset shooting, landscape, portrait, beach/snow, sporting events, and documents, focusing settings – auto, face detection, macro mode, and infinity. Flash on/off, self-portrait, white balance, effects and extra settings – geographical tagging, image stabilizer, picture quality. However the overall image quality of the snapshots take outdoors is quite good. Colors are somewhat pale but pictures have enough details. Things get much worse indoors especially when there is not enough light because the phone flash is a bit weakened that fails to light up the objects properly. The quality of the captured videos is not good either. Listening to music on W995 is something which is quite pleasing indeed. Its walkman player offers equalizer with lots of presets and you can also fine tune it with your own liking. The big loudspeakers produce sound that is clear, enjoyable and packs quite a punch. The boxed earphones lack proper basses almost entirely and sound is painfully sharp, plus they are plugged into the left hand side of the phone, which prevents the video stand from opening. Batteries that do last have always been one of the strengths of Walkman models and Sony Ericsson W995 is no exception. According to Sony,  you will have 20 hrs of continuous audio playback, 9 hrs of talk (4 on 3G networks) and 360 hrs in standby.

Although the phones doesn’t supports Divx, we’ll have to admit that the Sony Erricsson W995 is a really good device in terms of watching videos how come there a dedicated supporting stand that allows your phone to sit on the desk conveniently. Sony Ericsson has never been famous for the video capabilities of their cell phones. The W995 is unfit for being a proper video player by today´s standards as well. The obvious solution to the problem with codec support is called MediaGo. This is a program that is quite similar to iTunes – it automatically converts videos, so that they can be played on your phone (including DivX/Xvid, but you would need to have the codecs installed on your computer). Video playback quality cannot be compared to what multimedia monsters such as, say, the OMNIA HD deliver. All told, it is OK for killing time during long travels or exhaustive waits. Despite being rather unsteady, the video stand contributes to the pleasant experience and like we said, sound quality is really good. So, just open the stand, set the phone steady, put your feet up and enjoy. It also converts videos to other formats which the phone supports. However, overall quality cannot be compares with Omnia HD but it is completely acceptable.

The in call quality is loud and realistic whereas the people at the other end might have to turn down the volume to make out what you are saying. But everything will be fine after that. On the whole the Sony Ericsson W995 is a really good cell phone that doesn’t have any major drawbacks aside from the video capture and the scan decode support, the latter is easily fixed by converting videos with MediaGo. The thing is the flagship status gets the phone into the same pricing range of where devices like the Samsung INNOV8 and the UltraTOUCH are and they both have cameras that aren’t worse and better video playback capabilities. Still, the W995 is a nice option, because along with MediaGo, it is up to the task of providing enough entertainment.