SE W890i - perfect correction

Introduction

Reviewing the W960i was the last time I wrote down that thanks to the conjunction of different, very fortunate circumstances we have acquired a phone that although not yet present on the market, is, on one hand, capable of stirring up the readers’ imagination and on the other hand very few people had tested it before. The successor of the W880i did not disappoint me; it is constructed in the same spirit, the design is still a hit, but anything correctable was corrected by the designers.

The latest member of the Walkman family is special because of two things. First and foremost it is made unique by being slim as a blade and second, the use of materials also picks it out from its category. It is undoubtedly a premium category phone, from the same cast as the W880i but besides the acknowledgment of its great design, that phone has been criticized for the small buttons and the radio which only functions through a working Internet connection. Well, these problems are now gone!

The W890i will probably not hit stores this year although the launch timed for the Christmas season would not have been a bad move. The software on our test-phone seemed quite finished (no lockups and hangs) although it didn’t yet contain Hungarian language besides the other Eastern European ones and Turkish. For the very reason that the W890i is a special phone, we didn’t receive either a headset or a charger. A hand reaching out from a car handed over the phone and then: bye-bye!

It’s a pity we had to give it back later.

Exterior

The differences, compared to its predecessor, are observable at first glance. Of course beauty is something very subjective but I think the W890i has changed for the better. The slimness remained the same, the edges and corners are a bit more rounded but the overall style didn’t change. What we can observe at first glance is that the much-criticized small buttons of the predecessor have been replaced by a keypad of a much more pleasant size and such the greatest problem has been corrected by Sony Ericsson.

The metallic color is even more dominant now, furthermore the back of the phone (removable by pulling the two little slides on the side of the phone) is made of metal, too. The quality of used materials is unobjectionable and consequently the assembly is also professional; not even a silent crack can be heard, no matter how hard we keep pressing it.

The display kept its resolution of 240x320 pixels and because its physical size is still not too big, we get a sharp, clear picture. The function buttons from under the display have a somewhat better handling but the use of these keys, designed as three circles, is still not an easy job for people with larger fingers, I personally didn’t have any problem with them. The reason for this is that the edge of the buttons is somewhat sharp and by moving around my fingertips I felt their position quite easily.

The Walkman shortcut key has been moved to the left side of the slim phone and the standard Sony Ericsson data connector is also seated here. This lateral positioning is the subject of many debates, as it is harder to get a case for the phone this way and, furthermore, since it’s not covered with anything, one’s finger can touch it a lots of times during usage, which can cause stains… but it should be the user’s problem how frequently does he wash his hands.

On the right side of the W890i we can find the volume adjustment buttons and shortcut button of the camera. These lateral buttons are quite stiff, they need to be pressed a bit harder than usual. On the back of the phone we can find the phone type, the Walkman logo and the Sony Ericsson label, the “black hole” of the camera is in the upper left corner, the “3.2 megapixel” label hardly fitted near it. A pity it has fixed focus.

Menu, basic functions

Regarding the menu system, there are no surprises. The usual Sony Ericsson structure (which has been a great success for years) is present in the W890i, which can be customized by using themes. The phone comes with two brilliant looking themes besides the classical one, these notify the user with a small wince that a different icon has been highlighted. Besides these a high number of different themes can be downloaded, there are some quite impressing ones on the Net.

We won’t meet any revolutionary transformations regarding basic functions. The phone book can store data about 1000 contacts with a total of 7000 entries, meaning that in average every contact can have seven different types of data associated with, although of course more types of things can be associated with a contact with the help of the usual data fields divided into tabs. It is advised to copy the entries from the SIM card to the W890i’s internal memory, otherwise it will be quite a tough job to hunt them from the depths of the menu system.

With reference to message handling we have everything we would ever need. Since a long time ago every Sony Ericsson worth mentioning includes an email client besides SMS and MMS handling, which, in this case it communicates with authenticated SMTP servers, it’s very easy to set up (we are guided step by step by a wizard), and furthermore, according to all indications it can handle attachments with no size limit. The RSS reader is also worth to mention, which can be extremely important for news-sensitive people like us.

We won’t be disappointed by the organizers functions either: besides the fair calendar (with weekly and monthly view) there is an alarm clock (able to handle multiple time points and has options for repeating alarms), a calculator with basic functions, a stopwatch and a countdown timer also helps us in our organizing needs. Neither from this Sony Ericsson phone is missing the function specific for the manufacturer which has been bearing the name code memory for years. Using it makes us needing to remember only one password to have it store all of our PIN, PUK and other codes.

Multimedia

Let’s start with the greatest deficiency, which is related to the camera. No matter the 3.2 megapixels, no matter the menu from the Cyber-Shot models if there is no autofocus. In my opinion the absence of it makes the high resolution completely unnecessary, since without the autofocus the pictures just can’t reach a high enough quality. This causes problems mostly when taking pictures of near objects.

A regrettable part of Sony Ericson’s company policy is that they want to separate their portfolio of products into musical and photographical phones by any means necessary. This results in Cyber-Shot models usually lacking the Megabass function and Walkman phones without autofocus. To tell the truth nobody really knows the reason for this, but it’s a fact the user gets to such a choice in which it is sometimes quite hard to come to a decision. In the case of W890i the manufacturer hasn’t succeeded in supplying a decent video recording solution, as it has remained at a resolution of 176x144 pixels.

The musical part is all right of course. The phone is equipped with the media player menu and new Walkman software known from the K850i and W910i models. The one thing missing from it is the feature from the two previously mentioned phones which makes it possible to rotate the picture on the display according to the phone’s rotation. We can get the phone’s software to do this manually if we have a perverted attraction to landscape mode. What however is quite a likable feature is that when the music player is running in the background, the animation of the main screen changes according to the current theme.

The music files can be sorted by ID3 tags as appropriate and the tracks can have “moods”, but the phone’s software is not capable of setting these moods, they can be altered after being uploaded to the PC. The equalizer is of course present, we have the Megabass function and the phone can handle podcasts and audio books too. Although we didn’t receive any headset with the phone, the HPM-70 from home perfectly fitted my needs. This is what I have been using with the standard, RDS capable radio too.

Miscellaneous, games

Regarding games, there are three full version applications on the phone (hooray!): Block Challenge by Lumines is familiar from previous Sony Ericsson models. This highly modified Tetris clone can hold one’s attention for a considerably long time. But if we really want to take our time with gaming the mobile version of Sims 2 is an even better choice as it can keep us “busy” for weeks as our character is evolving. The third game was a real surprise for me: the tennis game, which came out for the first time on the K700i, has returned and has gone through a series of developments. On hone hand there is multiplayer via Bluetooth and on the other hand instead of the weakest Mark we can play against real tennis players after a certain level - or at least their names are real; according to the software L. Davenport is the most advanced female player, but the whole female’s field is included. Maybe we won’t be missing Ágnes Szávay for next year.

But in the entertainment menu we can’t find only games: on the one hand we have the PhotoDJ, VideoDJ and MusicDJ trio which can be used to create photos, videos and music and other hand there is the Dictaphone and the TrackID application.

There is a complete submenu, named Location services. Entering here we can discover the first menu item, Google Maps, which is – not surprisingly – what it name tells. Upon starting it we find ourselves at the last visited location on the map which can be panned, zoomed and the satellite view is also functional. Theoretically – if there was such a service in Hungary – the software could locate us with a relatively high precision on the map based on cell information, but unfortunately this feature didn’t work for us. Anyway we can still search by address.

Using the map needs an active Internet connection, since it would be quite a job putting the whole world map on the phone, so the software downloads only the map parts we’re interested in. We can store favorite locations and there is a feature to search for hotels, restaurants and other POI-like stuff (Points of Interest) in the area.

Data communication, battery

The greatest change in comparison with the predecessor is that besides GPRS and UMTS we can find support for EDGE, and the current top standard HSDPA, so in principle we can use the best available network everywhere. For this we get the usual HTML browser which is quite a fair piece of software. There is breaking by page width and landscape view, but I personally still advise everyone to install Opera Mini as a web browser.

In means of local networking the manufacturer ha implemented Bluetooth 2.0 (which is of course available in stereo) and USB with the same version number, which only needs a proper cable to communicate with a computer or other device. I wasn’t really touched by Li-Pol the battery working under the hood; with a performance of 960 mAh the phone was operational for two days, although I fall in the heavy user category, still I haven’t been listening to music very much.

In conclusion I was quite satisfied with the W890i. It is an elegant Walkman and there’s no shame taking it out at a business meeting since it’s a premium category, quality phone. Its price is not yet known and there is some wait left until its arrival, but according to all indications the predecessor has been revised where it had deficiencies. We are upset only because of the fix focus camera, which is a great mistake that could probably be explained by the man responsible for the product, but this won’t console the user in any way.

This is the only reason the phone won’t get the Highly recommended seal, otherwise I have felt through the whole testing period that the successor of the W880i became a mature, high quality and, last but not least, attractive phone. And such – even without knowing the price:

Sony Ericsson W890i

Bog

Translated by: Szasza

Specifications

Sony Ericsson W890i
	General
	Technology	GSM, UMTS, HSDPA
	Size	104 x 47 x 10 mm
	Weight	78 grams
	Colours	silver, brown
	Display
	Display diagonal	2 inches
	Display resolution	240 x 320 pixels
	Display type	TFT
	Number of colors	256K
	Memory
	Phonebook capacity	1000
	SMS memory / max. MMS size	dynamic / 300KB
	Internal memory	26 MB
	Memory expandability	M2 (basic pack: 2GB)
	Data transmission
	Frequencies	850/900/1800/1900 MHz
	GPRS / EDGE	Class 10 (4+1/3+2) / Class 10 (236,8 kbps)
	UMTS / HSDPA	present (384 kbps) / present (3,6 Mbps)
	IrDA / Bluetooth	none / 2.0 (with A2DP)
	WiFi	none
	USB	2.0
	Push-to-talk / RSS	none / present
	GPS receiver	none
	Basic functions
	Profiles	present
	Vibrating function	present
	Built-in handsfree	present
	Voice calling / voice commands	present / present
	Voice recording	present
	Alarm clock	present, also when turned off
	Predictive text entry	T9
	Software
	Platform	SE
	WAP / HTML browser	present / present
	E-mail client	present (POP3, IMAP4, authenticated)
	Java	present, MIDP 2.0
	Games	3
	Currency converter	present
	Extra software	Google Maps, VideoDJ, PhotoDJ, MusicDJ, TrackID
	Multimedia
	Main camera	3,15 megapixels, fixed focus
	Secondary camera	present, QVGA resolution
	Video recording	present, QCIF
	Music player	present, runs also in background
	Equalizer	present
	FM radio	present - RDS
	Battery
	Main battery	950 mAh Li-Ion
	Stand-by time	360 hours
	Talk time	570 minutes
	Other
	Walkman 3.0