Sony Ericsson W610i - Music To The Ears

 
Ever since Sony Ericsson first brought their Walkman-branded phones to the market, they’ve consistently led the field when it comes to mobile phones that are not only versatile, but have superb audio features too. This continues wholeheartedly with the W610i, the unofficial replacement for the best-selling W810i.

Although it’s not one of their top-of-the-range handsets, the Sony Ericsson W610i is still well stocked when it comes to features, despite its relatively small size. Measuring 102mm in length, 46mm wide and only 14mm in depth, it makes for an extremely comfortable phone to hold. The only gripe with its overall size is with the keypad buttons – they’re extremely small, and can be slightly awkward to use.

Like all mid to upper-range phones, the screen is a sharp LCD type, with the 262,000-colour resolution allowing the pictures taking on the W610i’s 2.0-mega pixel camera to look fairly sharp and defined. Combined with auto-focus as well as the photo light feature, which enables better quality when your in dark surroundings, as well as a handy little video recording feature, and it’s a good camera for this type of phone.

 
 
However, like all the best phones that Sony Ericsson has to offer, it’s in the sound department that the W610i really shines. This newer model benefits from having the latest Walkman software, the Version 2.0 player, and you can tell the difference immediately. The W610i comes with Sony Ericsson’s popular MegaBass feature, and as such offers added depth to any MP3 or FM radio tracks played through the supplied headphones (although the phone also supports Bluetooth headsets).

Yet it doesn’t stop there. Sony Ericsson are quite rightly proud of the fact that their Walkman range of mobile phones can stand up to more dedicated MP3 players, and the W610i has a couple of aces up its sleeve in this department too. The first is Playnow, which allows you to easily access downloadable tracks, while the second is an innovative feature called TrackID, which identifies any song that you might be hearing on the radio, so you can search it out and buy it.

If that’s not enough for you, the W610i also comes with its own dedicated software for ripping CDs, called Disc2Phone. Using the same idea as drag and drop that you would use on a PC when burning discs, Disc2Phone makes use of the USB connection to transfer music as easily as using a mouse.

Although the supplied memory stick is only 512 Mbytes in size, which will only be good for around 100 MP3 files, there is the option to upgrade the memory, with the W610i supporting the newer M2 Memory Stick Micro cards from Sony.

With the handset supporting quad-band coverage as well, it’s a phone that you can take pretty much anywhere with you, whether for business or pleasure. Combine this with WAP web browsing, as well as full organizer options like calendar, contacts and notes, and there really is no reason not to consider the Sony Ericsson W610i as your next mobile phone.

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