Sony Ericsson W902 Review

Sony Ericsson W902, the latest Sony Ericsson Walkman phone to hit the market that holds much in store to please the current generation. Boasting of a 5 megapixel camera along with the Walkman tag is bound to get many users turn their eyes towards this phone when looking around for a phone to buy. The phone has loads of features but it misses out on GPS and WiFi, something that might hurt its sales.

Sony Ericsson W902 specifications :

• Dimensions : 110 x 49 x 11.7 mm
• Weight : 100 g
• Display : 2.2″ TFT with 240 x 320 resolution
• Connectivity : GPRS, HSCSD, EDGE, 3G
• Camera : 5 MP, autofocus, flash
• Bluetooth : v2.0 with A2DP
• Card Slot : Memory Stick micro M2
• Other features : Accelerometer, Shake Control, SenseMe, FM Radio
• Approx. price : $375

Sony has included all the usual stuff in the retail package. One can find the USB data cable, stereo headset with 3.5 mm remote and of course the charger. Sony Ericsson has been generous enough to include a 8GB memory card in the package.

Design and Display

The dimensions and the weight of the phone are rather tiny. At just 11.7 mm it feels quite slick and the grip is quite strong in the hands. It feels like feather at just about 100 g and would hardly be felt in the pockets. The overall design is however a bit letdown as there isn’t a refreshing feel about it and it looks just like another Walkman phone. The phone has dedicated music buttons which is a welcome change. These are located on a bar at the right side of the phone. The keys thought are a bit too tiny for comfort and would take time to get used too. The edges on the phone are not curved, the way we prefer. The proprietary port is located on the left side and is not accompanied by any other button or port.

The 2.2″ TFT display with QVGA resolution is very good. The display clarity is crisp and the brightness and contrast levels are fine. Indoors, the display is a charm too use but the goodness is diluted when outdoors. The sunlight visibility is good but not great.

Music Player and Camera

The phone is media centric and that truly shows with the Media Center bundled with the phone’s interface. It manages all the media files, be it images, audio or video files at a single place. The interface is intuitive and the navigation is pretty simple. The auto rotation feature works with the application perfectly.

The music player included is Walkman 3.0 that has proven its worth before. The player can be accessed by hard pressing the dedicated music keys too apart from the main menu. The player supports a wide variety of formats and has various preset equalizers. Tracks can be filtered through various preferences and Album art support is also present. Now Playing screen has all the necessary information such as track name, duration, artist, album etc. One can choose from various visualisations too instead of album art.

The home screen is lit up with visualisation when the player is running in background, an excellent feature that we admire. And not only that, it also shows the song information on the home screen too. This is possible only when you have a Flash Lite theme enabled though.

Shake Control is another interesting feature that we have seen before. It allows you to change tracks by flipping your hand forward to skip to next track and flip backward to listen to previous track. Both the actions have to be done while pressing the music key though. Doing both the actions together will shuffle you playlist. Tilting the handset while holding the key can change the volume. Nice use of accelerometer there.

SensMe is another feature that has completely taken me over since it was first introduced. It can sort tracks based on the tempo. So, if you are in the mood to listen to some slow tracks but don’t have the time to go through your whole library searching for them, put SensMe to task. It creates a galaxy of tracks according to tempo and you can choose the radius of circle and place it according to your mood.

Walkman phones have never boasted of great cameras, that task had been left off to the Cybershot series. But the Sony Ericsson W902 is set to change that by integrating in a great 5 megapixel camera in the device. The camera features autofocus and has LED flash. The camera is a full fledged application with every feature that is present in Cybershot phones. These include BestPic mode, auto-rotate, geo-tagging(cell-ID), macro mode etc.  The geotagging works fine in city due to close proximity of cell towers but same does not hold true for remote areas. The image quality is amazing is great detail and good clarity. Some images though, do suffer from excessive sharpening and purple fringing. The video recording though is average at QVGA resolution at 30 fps.

Web Browser and Organiser

Web browsing on a small screen is never pleasnt, no matter how good the browser it and W902 suffers from the same drawback. W902 uses Access NetFront browser v3.4 found on many other Ericsson phones. The renddering is good for almost all kinds of pages. Panning and zooming is fast enough for comfort. Accelerometer auto-changes the view mode to landscape and back depending on orientatiion. It  also has a virtual mouse pointer making navigation so much easier.

Organiser has so many bundled applications such as File manager, Calendar, Notes, Tasks, Alarms, Syncronisation, Calculator etc. Calendar has monthly and dialy views. Alarm application can set up to five alarms at a time. Voice recorders capacity is limited to free space on memory card. Tasks application can be used to handle your tasks. Overall it does a good job of managing your time effectively.

Pros :

• Great display
• Sleek and light weight
• Great music player
• Excellent camera
• Good organiser

Cons :

• Old design
• Small display
• Tiny dedicated music keys
• No GPS, WiFi

Final Thoughts

The Sony Ericsson W902 has a lot of stuff going in its favor. It has a great display that is only limited by its size. The phone is sleek and light weight with great multimedia capabilties. The camera just sweetens the expereince in a Walkman phone. Sony Ericsson needs to consider bringing in refreshing new designs. The price is definitely on the higher side as it lacks both GPS and WiFi.

Rating : 3.75/5