“Imagine a world without photography,” said the photographer Berenice Abbott, “one could only imagine.”
“Without music,” proclaimed the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, “life would be a mistake.”
Substitute ‘mobile phone’ for the words ‘world’ and ‘life’ in each of those quotations, and you could be reading an advertisement for the W995.
Because, as Register Hardware explains, “if you're a music mad, photo enthusiast, then Sony Ericsson has you in its sights with its most advanced convergence of camera and music phone features to date.”
“The W995 is one of the most feature-heavy handsets we’ve seen in a long time,” agrees Mobile Choice. It does, says T3, “everything we’ve come to expect from a classic Walkman phone and a little bit more.”
“This,” pronounces Cnet, “is a music phone that takes everything great about the Walkman range and makes it even better.”
But “outside of its true MP3 player-replacing music capabilities,” continues Knowyourmobile, “the W995 stands out from its stablemates because of its 8.1-megapixel camera and inclusion of Wi-Fi.”
“It’s also the most well built Walkman phone we’ve handled,” adds Trusted Reviews, “with a solid torso, snappy spring-heeled slider action and sturdy buttons.”
“A sturdy phone that looks that bit more sophisticated than its slide-out predecessors, the W595 and C905,” according to Knowyourmobile. Indeed, “compared to the lardy C905, it’s incredibly svelte,” suggests Stuff. What Mobile makes the same comparison, describing it as “slimmer, more reliable and having a larger screen.”
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However, as if to confirm beauty is invariably in the eye of the beholder, Techradar considers it “a neat, if slightly bulky and button-heavy slider package,” while Register Hardware calls it “a chunky little slider.”
Techradar is not alone in noting that “this is the first Walkman phone with a 3.5mm jack plug.” Nor are they the only ones to discover this to be “the first time we've felt that we didn't really need it.”
Register Hardware confirms “the sound is really very good through the HPM-77 headphones, one of the very few supplied headphones that you don't immediately feel you need to upgrade.”
“Sound quality is excellent,” Mobile Choice corroborates, “and the supplied earphones are top-notch” offering, according to Techradar, “a pleasingly broad dynamic range and decent levels of bass.”
“Sound-wise,” states Stuff, “the W995 is up there with the Apple iPhone and Nokia 5800 XpressMusic” but, they caution, “the above-average quality supplied earphones lack sufficient wire length to plug straight in for a comfortable listen.”
Cnet also acknowledge this failing, but find some compensation in the fact “the stereo speakers on the phone are large compared to those of other handsets, and they belt out solid sound at a surprisingly high volume.”
Further enhancing its music phone credentials, “the Sony Ericsson W995 also comes equipped with its own set of external stereo speakers,” says Register Hardware. These, think Techradar, “do a good job of augmenting the handset's own stereo output, and provide enough volume to fill a medium-size room with background sounds.” The downside is, Techradar goes on to warn, “they run off the phone's battery, and there's no way to plug either into the mains when they're connected, so it's a feature you'll want to use sparingly.”
The bundled Media Go software is also “a massive improvement over Sony Ericsson's old music-transfer software,” Cnet points out. “Easily better than Sony's Media Manager or what's available on the Sony Ericsson PC Suite,” confirms Register Hardware, “though it still lags behind iTunes for intuitiveness.”
And, enthuses Cnet, “the W995 has great connectivity, with Wi-Fi and 3G, so downloading more media isn't a problem, and there's plenty of room on the 8GB memory card.”
“It's well connected too,” adds Register Hardware, “with quad-band GSM, HSDPA 3G (up to 7.2Mbps), Wi-Fi and Bluetooth with stereo A2DP. There's A-GPS too, backed by Google Maps, plus a Wayfinder Navigator satnav trial.”
“The 8.1 megapixel camera is very similar to that found on Sony Ericsson's last Cybershot device, the C905,” according to Techradar. “It has auto focus and an image stabiliser, plus smile detection, BestPic, and a powerful 16x digital zoom,” adds Register Hardware. But, says Trusted Reviews, it “suffers from having only an LED flash and not a Xenon one.”
“Picture quality is good but not great,” states Stuff. Quite, agrees Knowyourmobile, “the fact the megapixel count on its camera is bound to grab attention and yet doesn’t really result in particularly good pictures is disappointing.”
Indeed, concurred Mobile Choice, “image quality is merely adequate, as a high megapixel count does not equate to superior image quality.”
However both Register Hardware and Trusted Reviews chose to disagree. The latter is of the view that “image quality is very good”; the former “picture quality is very good”.
Either way, concludes Techradar, “the quality of the pictures doesn't put it clearly in front of other 8 megapixel warriors such as the LG Renoir or Samsung's Pixon M8800.”
If there were reservations about the camera, then there were even more about the screen.
Even though, as Register Hardware says, “the 2.6in, 240x320-pixel screen boasts 262,000 colours and is as clean and crisp as you could expect from an LCD this size” it is, fears Knowyourmobile, “arguably not quite large enough for watching long videos or movies.” Or “not so clever when squinting to see catch up TV,” as T3 prefers to put it.
And, says Mobile Choice, “the W995’s screen doesn’t have the widescreen aspect ratio that most videos have, meaning most films are going to look a little squashed.”
In other words, to quote Techradar, the screen is “fine for a phone, but not so clever for a media player, which is exactly what the W995 really wants to be.”
Inevitably screen size is also a consideration should internet access be important.
That said, “the Access Netfront browser is okay,” according to Register Hardware, “though not as flashy as what you'll find on many touchscreen phones.” Techradar agrees it “makes a decent fist of web browsing,” with Stuff finding “web browsing is snappy over HSDPA and super-quick with Wi-Fi but,” they advise, “we still recommend downloading the Opera Mini browser for effortless surfing on a smallish screen.”
Techradar “didn't encounter any problems with sound or call quality,” but did warn “the battery won't win any awards for longevity.” That’s because, as What Mobile explains, “with only a 930mAh battery there is a concern that it won’t last very long if you use the media functions heavily, as you probably would want to. For music, you won’t notice much impact, but switch to video and things do become more of a, no pun intended, drain.”
Even so, concludes Cnet, “with the Sony Ericsson W995 Walkman, we've finally found a phone that could replace our MP3 player.”
“If you're looking for a music phone with sounds on par to a high-end MP3 player you won't go far wrong with the W995,” agrees T3.
“Hands down the best Walkman phone ever and a great all-rounder,” concurs Stuff, “but the camera falls just short of theCyber-shots.’
In other words the W995 is an outstanding music phone with a more than passable camera, but were watching movies or browsing the internet to ever be anything more than occasional activities, and were you determined to own a Sony Ericsson, you might be better off considering the Satio.