Sony Ericsson W995 Review

It seems a bit odd that the second 8-megapixel camera phone of Sony Ericsson comes as a Walkman and not C-Series device. Well, the lines delimiting their different lineups have been getting increasingly blurry and the Sony Ericsson W902 is an illustrative example - its interface is pretty much the same as the one found on top camera phones of the manufacturer. The W995 features all modern functions available on latest C-Series models (C510, C903). You have:

-    Shooting Mode – standard, smile detection, BestPic, panorama, colored frames
-    Presets – auto, sunset shooting, landscape, portrait, beach/snow, sporting events, documents
-    Resolution
-    Focusing settings – auto, face detection, macro mode, infinity
-    Flash on/off
-    Self-portrait
-    White balance
-    Effects
-    Extra settings – geographical tagging, image stabilizer, picture quality



Image quality of outdoor pictures is identical to what the Sony Ericsson C905 delivers – snapshots have enough details, but colors are rather pale. Pictures taken indoors are mediocre, due to the badly performing camera flash. As a whole, the phone camera delivers passable quality, especially if you don´t go through your snapshots at maximum zoom level.







The iPhone couldn’t capture videos until recently. The W995 can, but at QVGA resolution and with rather low quality. Let´s get to the audio player, shall we?


The Sony Ericsson W995 utilizes Walkman v4.0 that shows multimedia menu against the main menu background. The audio player features equalizer with quite many presets, plus you can fine tune its settings to your own taste and save them. You won´t be caught off guard at the sight of trail-blazing extras or beautiful visualizations (like those on the Yari and Aino, for an instance). Sound through the loudspeakers is clear, enjoyable and packs quite a punch. The boxed earphones lack 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. We put the 3.5mm jack to good use and connected our headphones, which instantaneously resulted in significantly improved sound quality. We do recommend that everyone invests in a better pair, if intends on using the Sony Ericsson W995 as a music player.






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.

The Sony Ericsson W995 sports FM radio with RDS that store up to 20 stations and comes in handy when you get bored with the music you have on the phone. We are happy to see the device comes with preloaded games and some of them are really entertaining (Playman Extreme and Real Football 2008 for an instance).






The other piece of good news is the phone is equipped with Wayfinder – software for navigation that tells you where to take a turn and is much better than Google Maps. It comes free for three months and you would have to buy after the trial expires – If you want to use the Sony Ericsson W995 for navigation.