Sony Ericsson W810i

About 1 month ago my Nokia 6310 cellular phone started giving me problems. Perhaps it had enough of being accidentally dropped. One thing I have to admit is that it served me well for about 2.5 years. It wasn't the most technologically advanced, it didn't have all the fancy features, but it was a solid phone. It did indeed have perfect reception.

But after the keys started giving me problems I decided it was time to get a new phone. I was never really a fan of flip-phones like the LG and Samsungs that everybody was sporting, and I wasn't too keen on a tiny phone. But somehow the mp3 features of the Sony Ericsson W810i seemed to scream my name since I was in the market for an mp3 player while rollerblading and biking. The convenience of having a cell phone and mp3 rolled into 1 was a big selling feature.

Granted I've been a Nokia-fan for a long time. Something about their simple menu feature and readability of the LCD screen in daytime light kept me with a Nokia phone through several generations. That's where my first problem comes into play when I started using the Sony. Nothing about the menu structure is simple, especially the added movement of left-right navigation with the "joystick" which complicated things tremendously.

Second were the size of the keys on the keypad. I was able to dial the Nokia phones with ease not looking at the keypad at all. The keys were spaced enough apart and big enough to find with my thumb. The little notch on the 5, and a simple up-down/left approach to finding the remaining keys made it simple and quick to dial. With the Sony the level-variation betweeen the keys while tracking your finger across 2 keys is negligible - not enough of a difference to distinguish when a new key is being pressed.

Third, the tiny little hole where you put your ear. At certain positions the caller is barely heard. You have to play around with the phone to find the optimal position it must sit placed next to your ear. The phone might have benefitted if more holes for listening were placed at the top of the phone.

Fourth, the volume switch on the side of the phone is just too small. Seeing as Sony had the whole side of the phone to work with (they had about 1.5 inches of empty space before you reach the camera button) they could have at least made the buttons for volume-up and volume-down bigger. Now during a call, I have to physically look at the phone and press the volume with the tip of my finger to adjust the levels. With the Nokia I could easily increase the volume without moving the phone from my ear.

There are many, many more minor annoyances I have with this phone such as :

• call list displays all received, missed, dialed calls (instead of the default - missed calls)
• the screen is not easily visible in the daytime
• where is a normal phone ringtone?
• dinky cable connections (prone to possible breaking)

And on the plus side I can say quite a few good things about it :

• attractive black design
• good call quality (that may be my local provider, Rogers)
• easily expandable ... comes with 512mb of memory
• great walkman mp3 feature
• fm transmitter add-on seems very promising