Sony Ericsson W995

Sony Ericsson Walkman phones are famous for their outstanding audio quality, but its slump in market share may have been well-documented worldwide. However, the manufacturer hasn't stopped pushing the envelope when it comes to high end phones, and the w995 is no exception.

Sony Ericsson W995's appearance has some rigid elements as the Sony Ericsson W705 does, but the edge is rather soft and mellow. It features a metallic shell with wiredrawing surface and is 15mm thick, which gives a high quality impression that belongs to flagship phones.



With an 8 Mega Pixel camera in this Walkman phone, there is no need to say this device has amazing function. It inherits Sony Ericsson phones?characteristic - light weight. Compared with Nokia N86 which weighs 149g, Sony Ericsson W995, with a dimension of 97x49x15mm and weight of 113g plus colors of progressive black, cosmic silver, energetic red, can get more marks especially from women users. The phone has a built-in accelerometer for auto-rotation of the screen. This works really smooth and can be very useful when browsing the internet or viewing multimedia files.

Sony Ericsson phones usually change their button design to gain an appearance breakthrough. But there is an exception in this handset, as the navigation and music buttons are from another slim Sony Ericsson phone ?Sony Ericsson W880. The function keys also seem very familiar.

The music-control key and M2 expansion slot tell this is a typical music phone; the camera key on the right and digital zoom bar rank this Walkman phone into Cyber-short series. These shortcut buttons are not only a perfect combination of music and camera, but also they bring convenient operation.

The Sony Ericsson W995 is equipped with a set of stereo speakers, placed at the top and bottom of the handset. As expected by all, the Sony Ericsson W995 finally packs a 3.5mm headphone jack. Usually in-ear HPM-77 is offered, but sometimes in some markets it is HPM-88 with sound noise reduction effect offered. Considering Nokia N82 which has 3.5mm audio jack doesn抰 have ideal audio quality, it takes time to say if these accessories have outstanding music effect on Sony Ericsson W995.

The external dual speakers, two at each end, are very loud and provided decent sound which seems to become Walkman Series standard equipment.

Another special feature is the metal desk stand on the rear of the set. With the companion of dual stereo speakers, it will provide an ideal effect for viewing movies on the go. Different from that of Nokia N96, its widest angle could be as much as 180 degree. So with a string circling through it you can hang the phone around your neck.

Sony Ericsson W995 also improved its hardware configuration ?a 2.6?QVGA display, 260k colors. But had it utilized popular AMOLED display it would have been more attractive.

Though Walkman 4.0 has not been announced yet, you will not be disappointed at this high-end Walkman phone. The Sony Ericsson W995 features all Sony Ericsson抯 music functions. Apart from a variety of music files and FM radio, it has Clear Audio Experience, SensMe, Shake Control, TrackID, and other equalizers. Besides, Media Go, brand new multimedia management software, is attached to this device.

Devised by Sony, it enables an easy transmission of music and videos between PC and phones. Meanwhile applications such as synchronization, SenME, Podcast, document transformation, etc, are available.

The 8MP camera is a first for a Walkman-branded phone, Which offers a wide range of features as autofocus, face detection, digital zoom, stabilizer, continuous shooting, BestPic, PhotoFix, etc However, it is not a Cyber-shot phone anyway. It doesn抰 offer a smile shutter or Xenon light. Only an ordinary LED light is equipped for shooing at night or in inadequate light. The image quality of the W995 snapper is just adequate.

As for other functions, they don抰 bear much difference from Sony Ericsson C905抯. It supports GDM/GPRS/EDGE/WCDMA/HSDPA and WLAN, as well as A-GPS, Google Map, Tracker, Wayfinder Navigator.

Though not equipped with 8GB memory as rumors said, it embraces 118MB memory and a M2 card for expansion. Sony Ericsson is very generous to offer an 8GB card for storage of multimedia files and pictures of high resolution.

In a word, Sony Ericsson has reached the top for a music phone. Large display, 8.1 MP camera, WLAN, HSDPA, 3.5mm audio jack, dual speaker and desk stand... all of them are packed in Sony Ericsson W995 - a flagship music phone.