The Sony Ericsson W995 is the latest phone to carry the famous Walkman name.
Sony Ericsson's music-oriented Walkman series and photography-centred Cybershot series have been drawing closer for a while now, as the camera phone's music player has improved and the music player's camera has got steadily better.
And it's quite possible that the two will disappear altogether next year following announcements from Japan that the company is planning to move away from the two sub-brands next year, instead focusing on providing similar quality levels of each function in specific phones
So if this is to be one of the last Walkman phones to appear, it's just as well then that it's the best one yet, with an 8.1 megapixel camera, an improved media syncing system (which few could deny it needed), HSDPA 3G, Wi-Fi and A-GPS, all wrapped up in a neat, if slightly bulky and button-heavy slider package.
Casing
The Sony Ericsson W995 is a slider, so you'd expect it to be on the chunky side. That said, they've kept it reasonably slim by keeping the top part to a svelte 4mm, delivering the vital statistics of 97x49x15mm and 113g. So it's still a fair old handful, but not bad at all considering what's inside.
SIDE: it's not the slimmest slider phone, but it does pack a lot of features
But before we get to that, we have a wealth of buttons to get through, namely the six semicircles surrounded the circular D-pad on the front (call start and stop, plus two soft keys, cancel and the shortcuts menu), and the music controls on the right side, plus a volume/zoom rocker and camera shutter button.
BUTTONS: each button takes on a different role depending what you're doing
On the left side there's Sony Ericsson's Fast Port power socket, a dedicated Walkman button and the Memory Stick Micro slot, though it's hidden under the back cover.
At the top there's a 3.5mm headphone jack (at last!) while on the back is the 8.1 megapixel lens (wot, no cover? For shame…), LED flash and a small metal flip stand so you can set it somewhere handy to watch video.
It's right at the end of the phone though and ours kept falling over until we realised it worked best with the slider open.
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Your comments (5) Click to add a new comment
obertelli
January 27th
5. QUOTE: "the marvellous BestPic, which takes seven pics in quick succession, both before and after you press the shutter".
Don't want to be picky, but that isn't marvellous, it's absolutely miraculous. A camera which knows when I want to take photos even before I've decided to press the shutter would be a truly magnificent technical achievement! I suspect that a bit of journalistic hyperbole has crept into the review ;-)
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gazza_82
January 12th
4. i own this phone about 2months now, i have taking many pictures whilst on holidays and at my sisters wedding nd stored all my music on the phones memory sd card.. i want to print out these pics so i took out the sd card to put it into my computer to print, but wen i took out d card realised it wasn't the right size for my laptop i need an adapter, so i put it back into my phone straight away but then everything was GONE!!!:( everything pics, music the lot, that was stored on the sd card:( please can some1 tell me if i can get back the pics?? when i go to take a pic now it says on the screen,, memory card not available photo will be stored to phone memory.. i've checked that i put the card in right, seems like i did.. can anyone help?? p.s other than this prob i love the phone..
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aldinho
November 10th 2009
3. thanks whale ... or is it monster ? its strange because nobody seems to be paying much attention to the w995 , what with the release of the AINO , the SATIO and the new XPERIA...im not at all a fan of touch screen though (i think all its good for is time wasted on trying to clean the screens) AND i have been a die-hard walkman fan since their very first (was the w800 right?) so i think il stick with this, especially since it's rumoured to be sony's last stand-alone walkman...one question though : is it uncomfortably bulky ?
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whalemonster
November 7th 2009
2. I own this phone - the camera's great in daylight and only suffers in poorer lighting conditions, as do most mobiles without a Xenon flash. Battery life is 2 days with average use. The kickstand is a little gimmicky but works well IF you slide open the phone during playback, which balances the weight evenly. Only complaint is that RSS feeds have disappeared from the Media section and can't be found anywhere in the phone menu. Overall, though, very happy - had it since August and SE has rolled out 2 firmware updates already, so looking forward to further improvements in camera and battery life soon.
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aldinho
November 2nd 2009
1. so i have a query concerning the general reviews I have read on this phone...due to the camera not being fully up to scratch ,the battery-life not exactly everlasting , it being slightly bulky , and the apparent anti-climax of a kickstand , is this phone still worth the buy ? when comparing it to the w910 , would there be dramatic change ?
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