Sony Ericsson W595 Review

Sony Walkman series added a new member to its family with the name Sony Ericsson W595. The W595 Walkman phone is the successor to W580 that got quite some attention due to its new design. The W595 plugs in the loopholes and brings in some new features to the table too.

Sony Ericsson W595 specifications :

• Dimensions : 100 x 47 x 14 mm
• Weight : 104 g
• Display : 2.2″ TFT with 240 x 320 resolution
• Connectivity : GPRS, EDGE, 3G
• Card slot : Memory Stick Micro (M2)
• Camera : 3.2 MP
• Bluetooth : Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
• Other features : Stereo FM with RDS, TrackID music recognition,
  Accelerometer sensor, SensMe, Shake Control
• Approx. price : $250

The retail package of W595 has the usual accessories included. These are charger, USB data cable, bass-reflex headphones and a 2GB memory card has also been included . It also has a big Stereo Share adapter that lets you connect up to two earphones simultaneously to share music with your friends.

Design and Display

design of the phone is slider form factor inherited from W580. The surface is rubbery and has metallic edges and the D-pad too has metallic accents. The ergonomics of the phone are great and it won’t slip out of your hand easily. The weight of the phone is just above 100 g that makes it easy on the pockets. Both the top and bottom are curved that adds to the aesthetics of the phone.

The display has QVGA resolution and the 2.2″ screen does a splendid job. The pictures produced are crisp and the brightness and contrast levels are high enough for dark environments too. The keys below the display are large enough for comfortable use.  The keypad is revealed by sliding the display up and the keys are easy on fingers as they offer tactile feedback. The keys have sufficient space in between them and SMS junkies would find them easy to use.

The Walkman key is located on the right side of the phone but is a bit too small for our liking. The stereo speakers are located at the top and the bottom for surround sound effect. The logo in embedded inside the phone leaving the phone flat on its back. The back cover is made up of thin plastic so don’t fiddle around with it too much or else it might crack. The memory card slot is located underneath the panel making hot-swapping impossible.

Music Player and Camera

Walkman 3.0 has become the standard music player on Walkman phones. The music player supports a wide variety of formats along with preset equalizers. The player has all the extras included making it one of the best possible music players out there. The player supports Album Art and features such as Shake Control that use the phone’s inbuilt accelerometer. Visualizations on the music player are supported too. Now Playing screen gives you all the song information of the currently playing track. D-pad is used to control the functions of the music player. Animations get tuned on home screen when music player is running in the background depending on the Flash Lite theme enabled.  SenseMe and Shake Control are two features that take the Walkman experience to a new level. The audio quality of the music player is great as expected and the external loudspeakers do a decent job.

The camera has a 3.2MP sensor without any autofocus or flash, but still manages to do a decent job. The camera settings are limited and only a handful are present to fiddle around with. But there are nifty features such as auto-rotate, geo-tagging that add to the limited settings. The camera supports geo-tagging of images using cell-ID which is fairly accurate within city limits. The interface uses a pop-out menu system and the settings are neatly categorized. Some of the settings include  self timer, while balance, scenes. picture size, effects etc. The image quality is just about average  with fair amount of detail and no purple fringing. However, at time there is excessive sharpening of the images. The video quality could have been better than QVGA resolution and 15 fps.

Web Browser and Organiser

The web browser bundled with the phone is NetFront browser with extended custom home screen. The browser does a good job but the browsing experience is limited by the small screen size of the display. The browser has loads of shortcuts that are listed on the home screen. You also get access to free content such as clips, tracks etc from Sony Ercisson’s website too. Rendering has never been a problem with the browser and pages of all kinds fit perfectly in the browser. The zooming and panning speeds are good. The accelerometer works in the browser switching from portrait to fulls screen landscape view or vice versa. Search is bundled with browser letting you search for any word/phrase on the loaded page. Overall the browser does it job well but is limited by the screen size.

Time management features are plenty on the device and it has applications such File manager, Video Call, Alarms, Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Synchronization, Timer, Stopwatch, Calculator, Memo etc. Calendar offers both monthly and weekly views. Alarms can be set to repeat on certain days. Voice Recorder’s recording capabilities are limited only by the space on the memory card. There is however, no office document viewer bundled with the phone. The organizer lives up to the reputation and does its job efficiently.

Pros :

• Good display
• Accelerometer
• 2GB bundled memory card
• Stereo speakers
• Great browser
• Good organiser
• Geotagging

Cons :

• Small display size
• Average camera quality
• No office document viewer

Final Thoughts

The Sony Ericsson W595 is a nice upgrade to the W850. The display has good quality but is small in size. Also the phone has all the goodness of a Walkman phone and comes bundled with a 2GB memory card. The music capabilities are undoubtedly good but the camera quality is average. The organiser and the web browser are great. Its biggest drawback is that it does not compel you to upgrade. Overall a phone targeted towards music lovers with decent imaging capabilities.

Rating : 3.5/5