Sony Ericsson W995 Review

The W995 is the latest phone from Sony Ericsson that is released under the Walkman phone range. It is considered to be the best Walkman phone ever with features like 8.1 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, A-GPS and a rocking music player. The phone sports a stylish metal build and the most wonderful thing about the phone is that it comes with the 3.5mm standard audio jack.

Body Design
The Sony Ericsson W995 comes in a slider design and therefore the thickness of 0.6 inches cannot be helped. It has an overall physical dimension of 3.8 x 1.9 x 0.6 inches and weighs 4 ounces, which can be considered to be very pocket-friendly for all the features it offers. Remember, this phone will give you top class connectivity, imaging and multimedia feature.
The front of the phone is dominated by its 2.6 inches display with a maximum resolution output of 240 x 320 pixels. You will find the D-pad below the display with the confirm button in the middle which also acts as the play/pause button when you are playing music. The D-pad has a soft key and the menu button on the left and the second soft key and the C (undo/cancel) button on the right as its company. All these buttons have a metallic finish except for the confirm button in the middle of the D-pad. The call key and the end key which also acts as the power key flanks these array of buttons on both sides. The 12-key alphanumeric keypad which is adequately spaced comes into view when the slider is slid up.
The camera shutter key, the volume rocker and the three dedicated music buttons can be found on the right side of this music phone. The volume rocker also serves as the zoom in/zooms out button when the phone is in camera mode. The fast port connector is on the left hand side of the phone along with the M2 symbol that indicates the memory card location. The phone comes equipped with a stereo speaker set which can be located at both the top and the bottom of the phone. The top of the phone also plays host to the often eluded and missed 3.5 mm jack.
There is also a lot of activity on the back of the phone. It has the 8.1 megapixel camera lens along with the powerful LED flash which comes handy while taking pictures in dark surroundings. It even has the very unique kickstand specifically added to adjust the alignment of the display screen.
All in all, the W995 is a stunning handset with the right size and weight. It does not have any creaking or odd noises due to the slider mechanism. The handset oozes class and exclusivity due to its high quality build and the metal finish.
The phone comes in black and silver.

Multimedia
This Sony Ericsson mobile phone is filled to its brim with the best multimedia features. It feels wrong to call this handset a Walkman phone as it also has the feature of the cybershot range from the same manufacturer. The W995 has an 8.1 megapixel camera with auto-focus and a 16x digital zoom. It can take a picture at a maximum resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels, with each photo taking about 2MB of space. The PowerLED flash is very much needed while shooting in dim or low lit surroundings. The camera comes equipped with various features like face detection, image stabilizer, BestPic, auto-rotation, macro mode, geo-tagging among others.
The camera also has the ability to record videos and this happens in the WQVGA resolution at 30 fps. The video clips are saved in MPEG4 format.
The music player is the best feature of the phone and is a Walkman version 4.0. It comes with a support for various audio formats ranging from the normal MP3 to AAC and +AAC. The music player of the phone has a number of equalizer presets and supports album arts. You can sort your music according to artist, album genre or composer. There are also automatic play lists in the phone like recently played and most played. The music player also has shake control, which uses the built in accelerometer to control the music player. There are several hand gestures with which you can change the currently playing song or even change the whole play lists. It also has a very unique application called SensMe which makes you playlists according to your choice of tempo and your mood. Video playback is also supported in this handset. You can rewind, fast-forward or play your videos in slow motion. To video player also gives you the option to play your videos in portrait or landscape mode. You can manipulate the size of your videos and play it in the original size, auto-fit or full screen. The video player offers you the chance to take a screenshot of your video and save that frame as a picture. Unfortunately, the video player does not support DivX, XviD or any other advanced codes.
The music phone also supports the browsing of full internet websites with all the images and videos. To do this, it comes integrated with the Access Net Front browser. You can also receive the latest news on the phone via web feeds.
The built-in FM radio with RDS provides you with non-stop music and other broadcast.
On top of that, the phone also comes with a host of games that rely on motion gaming technology.
The phone also has integrated YouTube, Facebook and an RSS feed reader.

Memory
The phone comes with a built-in internal memory of 118 MB, which again can vary from phone to phone depending on the configuration. But this 118 MB is sufficient enough for storing all the data and file that it was meant to. Here, you can store and save all your contact details, ringtones, messages and even a few pictures and videos apart from the pre-installed applications and games.
For the files that require a bigger data like photos and videos, you have to increase your memory through the proprietary Sony Memory Stick Micro (M2), which can be expanded up to 16 GB.

Connectivity
On top of the phone’s camera and music prowess, the W995 is also high on connectivity features. The device is a Wi-Fi enabled phone and can connect to the internet whenever it can find a signal. It has UMTS/HSPA 900/2100 bands under a 3G network while it works under GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 when in a 2G network.
The integrated bluetooth version 2.0 technology with A2DP profile enables you to listen to stereo music with the help of your wireless bluetooth enabled handset. On top of that you can also transfer files and data with other bluetooth enabled devices which can be other phones or even a printer or a computer. It also has the USB 2.0 that takes care of all wired connections between the phone and other devices. Transfers through wired connections are normally faster.
The other major connectivity feature of the W995 is its DLNA support and GPS with A-GPS support. The DLNA feature is also for the connection of the phone with other devices wirelessly, just like Wi-Fi and bluetooth.

Performance
The call quality of the W995 was more than good. There was no distortion of the voice and outside noises was to a minimum. The music player is the best thing of the phone and now if you have this handset you don’t need to carry another MP3 player as it does the job. You also don’t need a digital camera as image quality of the phone is very good although we cannot speak the same for the video. The inclusion of a 3.5 mm headphone connector is a wonderful change in terms of Sony Ericsson phones as they seldom have those. All Sony Ericsson phones would start using standard accessories the moment they replace their proprietary memory cards with the general microSD ones.
The battery life of the phone is also pretty good with 20 hours of music playback time and talktime of 9 and 4 hours on 2G and 3G networks respectively.

Verdict
The Sony Ericsson W995 is the fusion of a walkman phone and a cybershot phone. It provides us with a high end music player and a very good camera all put together in a mobile phone. We would be lying if we say we are not impressed with the result. This phone is perfect for all the music lovers who hate to carry an MP3 player on top of a mobile phone. Not only would this walkman phone provide you with the best audio quality, it will also come in handy when you want to take pictures on the spur of the moment, and the photos will never be a shabby quality one.
The Sony Ericsson W995 is available for $299.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4/5