Sony Ericsson W610i

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http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39030107,49293506,00.htm

Reviewed 22 October 2007

Reviewed by Frank Lewis

The W610i is essentially a cut down version of Sony Ericsson's W880i. Unfortunately, it doesn't share the W880i's slim dimensions, but it does borrow its distinctive metallic keypad and top notch music playback features.

It's available for free on most contracts and around £100 on some pay as you go plans.

Strengths
Although the W610i is a good deal thicker than the ridiculously slim W880i, it's still an attractive looking handset. It's available in two colour options. Our review sample had a black front with a rather striking metallic orange paint job on the rear, but it's also available in a white and black combination if you prefer a more traditional colour scheme.

For taking snaps, you'll find a 2-megapixel camera mounted on the back of the phone. It has both autofocus and dual LED flash, so it produces good results even when working in dimly lit conditions. The 2-megapixel resolution means the pictures it takes are not great when printed out, but they're fine for uploading to a Web site. The phone also has nifty picture blogging software built-in, which automatically creates a blog that you can upload pictures and comments to directly from the handset.

The W610i falls under Sony Ericsson's Walkman range of handsets and it features the Walkman 2.0 music player, which is accessed via a dedicated button on the front. The player is excellent and as good, if not better, than many dedicated MP3 players on the market and a 512MB M2 memory stick is included for storing tunes.

You can browse tracks by artist, song or album title, create playlists and tweak EQ settings to your hearts content. There's also a FM tuner with good reception, for when you're bored of your own selection of tunes. The sound quality from both the music player and FM tuner is excellent, as Sony Ericsson has included a pair of top quality sound-isolating headphones that also double as a handset-free kit.

The phone also has good connectivity. It's quad band so you can use it in the US and it also has Bluetooth, with support for A2DP for beaming music to a stereo wireless headset or speaker kit, and infrared for swapping files with a laptop.

There's also an excellent RSS reader which provides a great way to quickly check the latest news or footy results. But if you want to actually browse Web sites directly then you'll find that the phone's Web browser is excellent and has a handy smartfit function that automatically resizes pages to make them more readable on the small screen.

Both the phone's call quality and the reception were excellent and the battery life is also very good. You'll get around seven hours of talk time out of it and it'll run for over 14 days on standby.

Weaknesses
The W610i is one of the cheaper handsets in the Walkman range so it lacks some of the really premium features. The phone doesn't support 3G so you're limited to GPRS download speeds when using the Web browser and there's no video calling facilities. Also, the screen has a noticeably lower resolution than some of the other Walkman phones, making icons and text look rather blocky.

The biggest issue most people will have with the phone concerns the keypad. Although the phone's keys are thin metal strips similar to those on the W880i, they're actually longer so more comfortable to use. However, Sony Ericsson has also made the soft keys at the top of the numerical keypad into circular strips and these are more fiddly to use. In fact, we found them downright annoying at times.

Conclusion
The W610i is a solid, rather than outstanding Walkman handset. It has great music features and good connectivity, but the screen isn't as impressive as you would find on the premium Walkman phones and its buttons can be fiddly to use. However, if you like the W880i, but can't quite afford it, this phone would still be a good second choice.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Jon Squire