Sony Ericsson W610i

In my opinion all the Walkman phones by Sony Ericsson, like the W880i are great portable music players. The latest addition — the W610i — is no different, although we have had some unusually bad experiences with the piece we got for review. I’ll talk about those later however. Although I’ll also mention here that after getting it replaced we observed some rather unwelcome behavior.

Design

At first glance, the phone casts a lasting impression. It’s a sleek and elegant piece of work. At 102 x 46 x 14 mm and just 93 g it’s not just appealingly slim, but also comfortably light.

The display is a 262K colored TFD (Thin Film Diode) supporting 176x220 pixels. Although TFD is a far more ancient a technology than TFT, it helps burns less battery power than the latter making it ideal. Although TFD screens have a fast enough refresh rate, it still can’t beat a TFT screen.

The keys on this one will need a lot of getting used to. The keypad has tiny protruding keys that, with my moderately plump fingers, pose a bit of a challenge. While typing messages you will often end up hitting the surrounding keys and after a lot of jabbing, the keys will begin to hurt your fingers.

The four-way D-pad is a circular ridge that works fine, and can also be assigned as shortcut. On either side of the D-pad are the regular - back, select, cancel and menu buttons. Just a small thought about these buttons — they are bit of a hassle. To begin with, they aren’t comfortable to press, considering the protruding nature. And the fact that they are designed with a semi-circular shape, leaves you with more surface space to long for.

In the center of the D-pad, the play/pause button makes for cozy access. It also doubles as the menu button. On the left side of the phone you will find another play/pause button. So what we have here are two play/pause buttons and two menu buttons. Making good use of the available space? Apparently Not!