Gadgets and Gizmos

Sony Ericsson W880i

Sony Ericsson W880i comes with software and a cable for sharing data with your PC, and in this case that means both calendar and contacts synchronizing and automatic copying of music to the handset - a service which can change the bit-rate on the fly to keep file size down. It has 16MB of memory in the phone itself.

This slots into the left edge of the casing and allows you to carry a fair amount of music around, but still, we’d have liked more internal storage too There is a handset design problem associated with the memory card in that its slot is very close to the connector that is shared by earphones and mains power, and when it’s in use you can’t get to your memory card.

There are some extra gadgets included in the music department. TrackID lets you identify a song (name, artist and album) from a few seconds recording, e.g. a song that you hear on the radio or in a club. The PlayNow download service lets you buy and download MP3 ring tones from your phone. The phone is supplied with a 1 Gbyte memory card, so there’s lots of room for storing music tracks - almost 250 tracks.

Most types of connectivity are supported. Bluetooth lets you connect your phone to another phone, a PC, a Bluetooth stereo headset, or a car hands free kit. USB and Fast Port are supported too. The phone is also equipped for the internet age with a web browser, support for RSS feeds and a picture blogging function.

Flight mode lets you use the music, imaging and organizer functions of the phone with mobile telephony switched off. The W880’s camera is a two-mega pixel job. It has 2.5x digital zoom, but only if you’re willing to take snaps that have a 0.30-megapixel resolution.

Nighttime shots and indoors snaps show a fair amount of noise, though this can be reduced with the camera’s night mode. Outside you can take a better pic with the W880, but viewing the images at full size reveals the detail lost to image compression and the camera’s unimpressive optics.

Overall the camera is not much cop, but the rest of the W880 is very good. It has a talk time of 9 hours and standby time of 16.5 days. Music time is at 30 hours.

The software itself, however, is easy to use, Music quality compared quite well and was much better than that of most MP3 phones. Still, it won’t please as much as a stand-alone MP3 player.