Sony Ericsson W705
Friday, March 27, 2009 14:43
ony Ericsson W705 Hi-Tech Walkman Phone
The Sony Ericsson W705 mobile is a true MP3 player – to the point where its ability to play music often threatens to overshadow its ability to make calls.
The company has gone to substantial lengths to make an attractive and small phone, and the W705 excels on both fronts.
Aside from the feels-cheap slide-out keypad, the build quality is very good, with the silver model coming with an attractive gold-coloured trim.
Dimensions of the W705 are 9.5cm by 4.8cm by 1.43cm and it weighs 98g. So it is quite a small, slight and light phone, especially when compared to a larger mobile like the Nokia N85.
Firstly, and most impressively, the W705 is the first dedicated music phone to offer Wi-Fi connectivity. It has some great technologies, including EDGE, HSPA, and a built-in modem and is compatible with most formats and quite easy to use.
Applications such as Google Maps, YouTube, and video-streaming, look great on a large screen of 320×240 pixels. Other impressive features include the always-on internet connection plus the usual collection of tasks, times and alarm clocks.
On the downside, the camera is a fairly standard 3.2 megapixels with a 3x digital zoom, nothing special and certainly nothing to write home about.
Like other Walkman phones, the W705 includes SenSMe – a technology that incorporates mood analysis into the track details, which allows you to create playlists that suit your mood. Also part of this smart package is a shake control, which allows a user to change tracks and adjust the volume by flicking the phone. Cool.
It also incorporates a system called Clear Stereo to actually enhance the music and make it clearer.
It is easy to navigate your music files and the system is very intuitive. The Sony Ericsson W705 also comes with a decent pair of in-ear headphones, with a non-proprietary jack adaptor – saving the hassle of buying another pair.
Overall the W705 is a great phone. It looks fantastic, has all the standard features you would expect from a top-end mobile. And it includes a spectacular music player. It’s just a shame about the phone’s keypad.
Price: Dh1,359
Verbatim
‘It won’t necessarily stimulate sales, but it clearly will keep sales of the Shuffle going forward’
Charles Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Co on the new iPod Shuffle music player. The new 4GB gadget is half the size of the previous Shuffle, and carries up to 1,000 songs – twice as many as the last generation of the device. The new VoiceOver feature announces songs and playlists to users in 14 different languages, according to Apple.
