Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman Review

There’s 320 MB of internal storage, just like the Neo V. Locking into GPS does take a little time, as compared to the DEFY PLUS that we reviewed earlier. Sony has covered the connectivity department pretty well. 

Misc apps

Misc. Features

A few pre-built apps have been loaded on to the phone. There’s AppXtra that geographically segregates trending and popular applications. There’s also Wisepilot that takes care of your navigation needs. A few PopCap games have been included as well, but some are try n buy and only one of them is free. This one doesn’t really have too much content on it, but you know where to look.

5MP shooter with 720p recording

Camera

A 5MP autofocus camera with LED flash and 720p recording sounds good, ain’t it? Yes, we’ll agree. In our outdoor tests, the Live with Walkman captured colours pretty well. Low light snaps do tend to get a lot of noise, but they’re captured pretty well even without flash. We’ve always liked macro shots on touch focus camera phones and the Live with Walkman is now a part of that list. The front camera is quite good for both, self portraits and video calling. 

Pretty, eh?

In terms of video recording, there was some slight colour banding we noticed, while moving from darker to brighter surroundings and the other way round as well. Anyway, it’s quite functional and all your casual videos and snaps are well taken care of. There’s 3D sweep panorama, also put in for good measure. 

Battery Life

1200mAh good enough for a phone with a 3.2 inch screen? Well, the Live with Walkman performed averagely in this department. Under normal usage, it would last about three fourths of a day, with active Wi-Fi usage, music and calling. In our standard loop test, the phone lasted for a total of seven and a half hours. This involved one and a half hours of calling, two hours of video, two hours of audio, two hours of streaming via Wi-Fi. In our video loop test, the phone ran out of juice after six hours of usage. A decent performer, but nothing out of the ordinary. 

Any competitors below 15K?

Verdict

The Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman is priced at Rs.14,400. It directly competes with a few older models in that price range – the Galaxy Ace, the HTC ChaCha (which is a couple of grands cheaper) and the Nokia 603 (with Symbian Belle). From the current generation, however, there are extremely limited options from the more popular brands. The Live with Walkman fared well in all our sections. Plus, with the additional Walkman branding, Sony seems to have hit a sweet deal for those looking for a phone below Rs.15,000.