More Than The Best Walkman Phone Ever Created

An upgrade from the W880i, the Sony Ericsson W890i is everything that the older model wanted to be, a grown-up version, if you will. It is still a gorgeous superslim phone, but with all new improvements that has given the W890i the status of being the best Walkman phone yet.

Unlike its predecessor, the Sony Ericsson W890i has an FM radio with RDS, but that's not all that this excellent Walkman phone does, musically. It has the latest Walkman software installed, making sound quality several notches higher than the rest of the series of Sony Ericsson's Walkman phones. The phone boasts of an easy playlist manager, with the new SensMe feature, which lets you organize your playlists according to the mood and feel of the songs. Other music features of this phone include a sound recorder, MegaBass, TrackID and PlayNow, which lets you sample a ringtone before downloading it. The phone can also play AAC format ringtones aside from standard polyphonic and MP3 ringtones, and it has installed the MusicDJ polyphonic ringtone composer, as well. It promises to be a cutting edge Walkman phone and it delivers in every aspect. You have the option of listening to music with a standard headset or you can buy a Bluetooth wireless headset. You can also transfer music files from a disc on your PC to your phone using the Disc2Phone software, as well as by USB or connecting via Bluetooth.

Storage is not a problem with the W890i, with its 26 MB of internal memory and the 2 GB memory card that comes with the mobile unit. This is almost 300 songs more than the W880i. Downloading music, or any other file, is also a lot faster on the W890i, especially with HSDPA, which some have begun to cheekily call, 3.5G. This, of course, means that video calling is allowed on this phone, using the 3.2 megapixel camera with digital zoom.

Not a lot of customers are happy with the camera, especially if they had planned to have prints made out. Although an improvement over the W880i's camera, it still doesn't have flash or autofocus, but then neither do the other phones in the Walkman series. The Sony Ericsson W890i has other charms of course, including the VideoDJ video editor and a beautiful 1.8 inch TFT screen, displaying 262,144 colours.

The W890i is very beautiful as a whole, and its metallic finish is quite stunning, even in mocha brown. The other colour available is sparkling silver. It is very sleek at only 9.9 mm thin, 46.5 mm wide and 104 mm tall, and quite lightweight at only 78 grams.

If you value this phone as a music player, you'll appreciate its flight mode function, allowing you to still listen to your songs, and play with the phone, in general, even while airborne. The network switches off, but you can use the rest of the phone as usual. It's also ideal to take it wherever you may travel, as it's on quadband.

Winning points in functionality, unique features and design, it's easy to see why the Sony Ericsson W890i is touted to be the best Walkman phone ever created. Of course, now we know that it's that and so much more.