Sony Ericsson W980 Review

Introduction:

‘I want a phone which I can listen to music by without compromise!’ - if this thought keeps running in your head, then look here before you go shopping. W980 is one of the latest models in  Sony Ericsson’s Walkman series and may just be  the perfect fit for you. It belongs to the high class and is Sony’s first device with an  FM transmitter, by which you can play music on radio-receivers near you. Like the W960 before it, the W980 offers 8 GB of internal memory.

In its box you will find:

Design:

The overall appearance of the W980 is quite atypical compared to other Sony offerings. Taking the role of fashion experts of Armani and Ferre’s rank (we are joking), we define it as a combination of retro elements and extravagant charm. We last saw it in the budgeted Z555 which is also made of plastic like this one. However, the material here gives a cheap feel; unbecoming  for a high-class phone.



You can compare Sony Ericsson W980 with many other phones using our Size Vizualization Tool.

The face is a transparent plastic that fingerprints so easily it is a CSI agents dream.  The external TFT display sits in the middle and has a 176x176 resolution and 262 144 colors. It shows the menu for fast access to the musical functions but we’ll discuss this in more detail in the multimedia part.  Unfortunately, it is totally unusable in sunlight.

There are three round buttons beneath for music control which are touch-sensitive and create the illusion of being embossed but in fact, only the middle one is concave. You can press them with anything but they are designed for easy handling by fingers.

The face ends with a transparent strip through which you can see the ‘W’ logo. When playing music it flashes orange to the rhythm of the song, similar to the pulsing keyboard of the W890.


Opening the phone with one hand is a bit difficult due to the lack of space to tuck a finger in. Furthermore, there is no assisting mechanism and you will have to open all the way through. We hadn’t expected such a flaw in a high-class phone but maybe this has been affected by the retro appearance. Yet, in the past you had to lift the receiver with one hand and the microphone with the other one to talk.

Opening the flip reveals the 2.2” QVGA display.  It has 262K colors and  looking at it in direct sunlight the picture fades just slightly, but everything is clearly seen and using it in such conditions is not a problem.


The display brightness sensor, the navigation buttons and the keyboard are on the lower half. The overall layout of the control buttons resembles the layout of the touch buttons on the outside. The keys around the 5-direction pad are small and close to it and are inconvenient to handle but at least pressing them is clearly felt. The keyboard buttons stick with the retro theme and remind us of a rotary phone. They are spaced so that even people with thicker fingers will not have any problems using them.


The strap hole, the charging slot and one of the two loudspeakers are on the left side. The other one is on the right, with the locking/unlocking slider, the key for fast access to the audio menu (operational only when the phone is closed) and the volume rocker above it. Unfortunately, all buttons are hard to press and the action is almost not felt.

The 3.2-megapixel camera without autofocus is very inconveniently fitted on the back side and you should make sure you don’t block it with your finger when taking pictures.

Interface:

The W980 runs on SE’s A200 interface, like the other high-end Sony devices such as the C905 and W902. If you have used it before you won’t see anything unknown here. There are some incremental improvements that simply infuses some freshness  into a familiar OS.


Here you can put a program on the initial screen too; in this case you can use Walk Mate and Standby World. The first one is a pedometer, showing you how many steps you have taken for each day of the week.  The second is a world clock showing three cities at your choice.

Initially, the main menu is comprised of icons arranged in a 3x4 grid style, but you can choose between two other visualizations independent of the theme:

Phonebook:

You can save up to 1000 contacts, each with several numbers for a total of 7000 numbers, e-mail and web addresses, birth date, a personal photo, and both ringtone and video caller IDs.



When dialing a number directly from the home screen the phone will search for number and name matches from both the contact list and call history.

Organizer:

The organizer includes a calendar, tasks, notes, alarms, calculator, stopwatch, countdown timer, coded note, links to programs, file manager and synchronization option. All these functions are standard and are nothing new or unknown so we won’t go into detail.

Messaging:

Standards like SMS and MMS are supported, and the W980 has an email client as well.We were pleasantly surprised to see that after typing a user name W980 offered to check in Internet for available settings itself, so if you use some of the more common web mail services, you will save the effort of manual typing.


Connectivity:

Like most high-end phones, the W980 is a global GSM quad band device. With the support of UMTS/HSDPA (2100 MHz) you will have fast 3G connection, but unfortunately you can make use of this feature only in Europe and Asia.

You can connect locally by means of Bluetooth 2.0 or the USB cable you will find in the box.  The PC Suite CD, standard for all Sony Ericsson phones, is available too. You can do without it as well, connecting W980 to a PC as a mass storage device or in Media transfer mode to sideload or download files from it.

Internet:

W980 comes with an HTML browser for PC-like page viewing. We had no problems viewing a complex site, such as our own.   While surfing, you will have the following options: full screen, vertical or horizontal view, text only, zoom in/out in several ways. They make surfing easier and more pleasant for a phone without a touch screen. We were completely satisfied with this browser.


The available RSS reader works well too, supplying the latest news faultlessly and quickly. From its options you can choose for the latest news to be displayed on the initial screen, like a widget.

Multimedia:

We are sure that most of you have run hastily through the previous sections, eager to come to this one, and rightly so, because the heart of the W980 is right here.

The W980 uses the third and latest version of Walkman player and the interface does not differ much from the interface of the other W series phones. You can use vertical or horizontal view by just turning the phone to the desired position and the rest will be done by the accelerometer.

The equalizer has a fresh appearance, just like W902, and the factory settings are beautifully visualized resembling a slideshow of pictures.  Unfortunately, you can set only one at your choice.



The Flash-animated Media menu we’ve found on previous models is available here too. It gives you fast access to: Photo, Music, Video, Games, Web feeds and Settings. In the Music submenu, you can sort the tracks by Artist, Albums, Tracks (list of all), Playlists, SenseMe, Genre, Year, Audio Books and Podcats. You can create and edit playlist directly on the phone, and you have two by default – Most played and Not played. SenseMe will organize the songs by mood which the computer software, coming with the phone inputs. Here is  Sony Ericsson's description: “When music on your PC or on a CD is imported into Media Manager, it will use SenseMe™ technology to incorporate mood analysis into the track details. So, when you transfer that music onto your phone, each song contains information on the mood of the track, which can then be used with the SensMe™ feature.


You have at hand an FM radio with RDS, but to use it you will need the included earphones. They serve as antenna because it is not built in the phone as was shown initially at MWC 2008. It’s a pity, because the W980 would be the first Sony phone with such a function, but they have obviously decided to take away this title from it. The interface is very pleasant and easy to use. You can bookmark  up to 20 stations and name them.

Both the music player and the radio can be controlled by the touch-buttons on the front panel. Using the key for fast access to the music functions on the right, you can see the individual options in succession – 1) Music player, 2) FM radio and 3) date and time. With this menu you can easily choose what music to listen to without having to open the phone.

The quality of the music coming from the loudspeakers of the W890 is not what we expected from a high-quality music phone. Even the W200, which is the low-end offering in the series, performs better. The sound is heard clearly, but not loud enough and like with most phones, you will hardly hear the low frequencies. However, putting on the earpieces changes the situation completely because they block out background noise very well and the sound is clear, with impressive quality for a phone.

The built-in FM transmitter provides fair sound quality and it can save you all right if, let’s say, the CD/DVD player in your car fails. It is not a bad idea for your phone and radio aerial to be directly visible since the emission power is limited. This is necessary because otherwise there will be interferences with the official radio stations operating at close frequencies. This function is even forbidden by law in some countries. You can check where it is permitted and where it is not on the Sony Ericcson’s site.

The phone handles H.264 and H.263 encoded videos well. The resolution we achieved the best results with mirrored that of the display, and there is no need for higher one. However, at a higher bitrate of 512 kbps the sound and picture do not coincide and get cut. Therefore, we recommend you to convert your files by the software available in the set, or compress in one of the two formats with a bitrate not higher than the above-mentioned.



Camera:

As this is a music phone, we did not hold out high expectations for the 3.2 megapixel camera. SE made no bones about it either, and though the resolution may be on the high end, features like auto-focus and flash were left out. The interface is simple and convenient to use, with minimal standard options. It resembles the interface of the lower class Sony Ericsson phones, and you won’t find any drastic changes.


The photo quality is relatively poor. The details rendering is low, but at least the colors are realistic. Unless you have the steady hands of a surgeon, the pictures have a tendency to end up blurry.  We don’t advise you to shoot in artificial light because the noise is too much and the colors are unrealistic.


Software:

Like with the previous Sony Ericsson phones, there are Photo, Music and VideoDJ programs in the Entertainment menu, which are in fact simplified multimedia editors. Apart from them you will also find Games, Bluetooth remote control function, voice recorder and location services submenus. The latter contains Google Maps, My favorites menu, Status info (accessible only if an external GPS module is available), Log and Settings.


The TrackID function is accessible from the Entertainment menu and thanks to it, you won’t be wondering who is the artist of the song you are currently listening to.

The W980 has 8GB of internal memory, but unfortunately you cannot extend it due to the lack of a slot. Still the available memory allows for around1600 high-quality MP3 tracks,  enough for most people.

Performance:

Sony Ericsson W980 does not work as fast as some of the Symbian smart-phones, but we are happy that there are no annoying delays when browsing the menus.

The sound quality when talking disappointed us. The voice we hear is very unrealistic, robotized and monotonous, accompanied by unpleasant crackling all the time. As a whole, you will have problems with the understanding and you will have to ask to have things repeated even several times. The opposite situation is much better.  The sound is monotonous and quite sharp, but is realistic and strong. We are disappointed because understanding what you hear with great difficulties while you are being heard well makes no sense at all. 

The battery is Li-Polymer with a capacity of 930 mAh. According to the manufacturer it is designed to stand 9 hours of conversations, 300 in standby and only 16 of listening to music. In comparison, the W890 provides 9.5/360/20 hours.

Conclusion:

Our first experience with W980 impressed us in an unexpected way maybe because most of the time we used headphones while listening to the music. The next day revealed the naked truth. The Walkman is a high class phone but it somehow does not match up with its price. Its materials give the ‘cheap’ feel and the single-hand opening could turn into a real struggle. In addition, the calling could be described as an unpleasant experience and the speakers are even worse than the ones you’d find in a low-end music phone.

These drawbacks are not insignificant so the perfect sound through the headphones and the built-in 8GB memory cannot compensate them. After all, W980 should not only be a music player but a mobile phone as well. It must be useful every single day… However, W960 should be mentioned as a good alternative  - it is not more compact but has Wi-Fi and features the Symbian UIQ OS which makes it smart. You may find cheaper and more satisfying solutions such as the W890 or Nokia 5310 XpressMusic. They are compact and sound really nice during a call or when listening to the music. Well, they are not equipped with such a huge amount of built-in memory but compensate with card slots.