Media Capabilities

No review about a Walkman phone can ever be really complete without a full in-depth look into the phone's media capabilities, and the same applies for the W810i. Bridging the gap between the first generation W series phones (the W800i, the W550i/W600i and W900i) and the next (W300i, W700i, W710i, W850i and W950i, for now at least), the music player element on the W810i remains similar to the ones found in its predecessors.

Powered by the first generation Walkman media player software (version 2 is due on the W850i, while the W950i uses its own, Symbian UIQ based system), it is still capable of playing a variety of formats (MP3, MP4, 3GP, AAC, AMR, MIDI, IMY, EMY, and WAV – up to 16 kHz), but it does not support OMA DRM 2.0, meaning any protected music you purchase online (for instance through iTunes) might probably be unusable on the W810i. All these formats can be set as the W810i's ring tone, alarm tone and message alert as well.

Music transfer is facilitated with the included Disc2Phone software, which helps simplify the process of ripping music from CDs and then transferring them to the W810i in the correct Artist-Album-Title folder arrangement order to aid music management on the phone. But for me, I simply connect the phone to my computer using the USB 2.0 cable (which has a somewhat slow transfer speed, more on that later), wait for it to be recognised (which it did, even without any driver installations... Thank you, Sony Ericsson) and then load the music I want manually in the supplied 512MB Memory Stick Pro Duo. There's enough space in the Memory Stick for around 100 or so mixed format/quality music files, and for those who find that insufficient, the W810i supports higher capacity Memory Stick Pro Duo (up to 4GBs).     

Once loaded onto the W810i, you just press the orange Walkman button, load up the tracks of your choice into your own, personalized playlists, and that's it. Within the Walkman player interface, the D-Pad turns into a control pad, allowing easy manipulation of the player. For former users of the W800i, the old Walkman control keypad shortcuts work as well. Pressing the button again (or using the Activity Menu) minimizes the Walkman player and you are free to do whatever else you want to do on the phone. Outside the Walkman player interface, the player can be easily controlled by using the Play/Pause and Volume control buttons located on the sides of the W810i (except while using the camera).

Other features of the Walkman media player include the fully customizable, 5-band equalizer with 5 presets: Normal, Voice, Bass, Treble Boost and the instantly recognisable MegaBass (non-adjustable).  Differences between the different equalizer settings (except the difference between MegaBass and the other presets) are not really distinguishable when music is played through the (remarkably weak) external speakers, but there's a distinctive difference when you listen to the music through the supplied HPM-70 earphones; which, by the way, are excellent.

Looking like (and sounding remarkably like) a re-badged version of Sony's EX-51SP headphones, the HPM-70 in-ear canal headphones provide excellent insulation from outside sound and are generally clear-sounding across a wide range of frequencies (for a factory packed pair of headphones, that is). The general consensus that Sony headphones are a bit heavy on the bass holds true here, though, making it quite suitable for use with the MegaBass preset on the W810i.

There is also a Flight Mode that would allow the W810i to be started solely as an music player with the its phone components inactive, allowing it to be used in hospitals or on-board aircraft; or for an even longer play time then the normal 12-14 hours in normal mode.

If listening to the same (512MB worth of) music gets old, you can always tune into the radio, which supports RDS (Radio Data Support) feeds to allow you to receive data transmitted from your radio station. The radio does need the HPM-70s to be hooked up before it can function, though.

Now, for the negative side of the W810i's Media capabilities, most of which has to do with the Walkman player. The greatest problem with the player is the existence of a everlasting hiss when slow music is played, or music is played at below 3 bars of the volume; and a loud popping/clicking noise sometimes when changing tracks. The hiss is loud enough to annoy, but one gets used to it after (quite) a while. This problem has existed since the K750i/W800i, and is well discussed in forums all over the net. Some complaints to Sony Ericsson seems to have been made, and while no steps to rectify this problem has been made by SE (in an email to a complaining user, they have even gone as far as to say that no steps WILL be taken to solve this problem on the W800i), most owners of the W810i remain optimistic that SE would release new firmware that would address this problem.

The Walkman player also restarted a few times during me the first few days I had the W810i, the reason for which I do not really know. But it seems stable enough now, maybe issues with MP3 decoding?

The hardware play/pause button has also exhibited strange characteristics in which it would behave strangely when the phone is in standby mode and the Walkman player is still running. Pressing it under these conditions would cause it to pause the song currently being played, and pressing it again would strangely cause it to play the first song in your playlist, rather then the song you just paused. A walk-around to this problem seems to be to press the keypad first (to bring the phone out of standby) and then use the hardware play/pause button, but its another problem that SE needs to look into.

Then there's the problem with the DCU-60's slow-ish transfer speeds. Rather then be as fast as a true USB 2.0 connection should be, the USB connection on the W810i feels more like USB 1.9. If you want to transfer large amounts of music (say around 1GB or more), maybe you should consider getting a Memory Card reader, as there are some that can write faster to the Memory Card then the W810i USB connection can.

Next, like many other Sony headphones, the HPM-70 has wires that feel flimsy and weak, and other then the headphone plug connection wires themselves, the part of the main wire near the FastPort connector (the one near the white HPM-70 tag, circled in red below) looks like it wouldn't be able to stand too many twists and turns before failing. With users taking the phone from their pockets and putting it back on a regular basis, stress of this part of the wire might cause it to malfunction (which I know, through experience, happens a lot to headphones. Particularly Sony ones). The microphone on the HPM-70 is also very susceptible to wind  and other ambient noise, impeding telephone conversations under noisy environment conditions.

NEXT: The Phone, Connectivity, Internet Capabilities and Battery Life