Sony Ericsson W600i Walkman

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Display

The 176 x 220 pixel 262,000 color display is brilliant and crisp which makes gaming quite fun. The screen measures 1.8”, which is large enough for games and reading text messages. The relatively small size of the screen is not a bother because of the good resolution and fast refresh rate. Photos look great on the display, as do videos.

MP3 Player and FM Radio

The MP3 player is easy to get to compared to phones like the LG VX8100 and LG VX9800 on Verizon where the player is buried under layers of menus. Simply select the Walkman icon to start the player, which reads and displays MP3 ID tags, so you'll actually see your song info too. To listen to MP3's you can use the included headphones with inline remote or the three speakers, one of which is a sub woofer. It has surprisingly good audio quality for such a small phone and beats most other mobile phones easily, though it does sound a little tinny—let’s face it, it’s still just a phone! Speakers that small can do only so much. Volume wise, the little phone packs quite a punch for small rooms or in the car. The interface for playing MP3's could use a few minor tweaks but for the most part, it’s intuitive and easy to navigate. When the Walkman application is minimized, you can use the side buttons to controll music playback and volume. The MP3 player has an equalizer and even offers Sony's signature Mega Bass. All in all, it's a great sounding MP3 Walkman with a strong feature set by phone standards. If only it had more memory or an expansion slot so it could hold more tunes. Sony Ericsson includes their Disc2Phone software which burns tracks from MP3s and helps you get them on your phone. You'll use the included USB cable to copy tunes to the phone (it works like a removable drive under Windows and Mac OS). One caveat when using the Walkman feature: the battery level drops quickly when playing MP3's through the speakers, so don't plan on listening to a lot of music through the speakers if you want to make several calls afterward. Stick to those nice-sounding earbuds!

The phone uses Sony Ericsson's connector for headphones. The connector and inline remote can be separated from the earbuds should you wish to use your favorite headphones with a standard 3.5mm connector instead.

The phone has an FM radio tuner and application which supports RDS (radio data support) so it can show station names and other info provided by the station. You'll use the included earbud headphones whose cord has an integrated antenna when listening to FM radio. Reception and sound quality are good by phone standards.
Camera

The1.3 megapixel CMOS camera can take pictures up to 1280 x 1024. Other modes include 640 x 480 and 160 x 120. In video mode, you can shoot at 176 x 144 or 128 x 96. The camera saves video clips as 3gp files so viewing them on your computer is quick and easy if you have Bluetooth and QuickTime.

Pictures taken at sunset or in low light look better on the phone’s screen than the computer screen since the pixels are packed in tighter on the phone’s screen and noise isn’t as apparent. The flash isn’t the brightest, but it does help improve low light shots. The pictures had a very blue tinge when viewed on a PC.

Pictures taken in other lighting conditions came out much better though. The auto white balance did a good job and they looked sharp for being taken with a cell phone. Sadly, the W600i’s photos can’t compare to the S710’s, which were truly superb by camera phone standards.

Specs:

Display: 262K color LCD. Screen size diag: 1.8 ", r esolution: 176 x 220 pixels.

Battery: Sony Ericsson Standard BST-37 Lithium Ion rechargeable battery. 900 mAh capacity. Battery is user replaceable. Claimed talk time: up to 8.5 hours. Claimed standby time: 400 hours.

Performance: 256 megs of internal memory.

Size: 3.6 x 1.8 x .9 inches. Weight: 4.2 ounces.

Audio: Built in speaker, mic and a Sony Ericsson's proprietary stereo headset port. Supports polyphonic (40 voice), MIDI and MP3 ringtones. Vibrating alerts supported.

Camera: Integrated 1.3 megapixel CMOS camera with digital zoom. Also records video clips with audio. Picture resolutions range from 160 x 120 to 1280 x 960 and videos can be taken at 176 x 144 and 128 x 96 resolutions.

Phone: GSM quad band world phone, 850/900/1800/1900MHz. GPRS and EDGE for data. Access NetFront WAP browser with limited HTML support, text and MMS messaging applications included.

Networking: Bluetooth. IR.

Software: Sony Ericsson OS. Bundled applications include Contacts, Organizer (Calendar, Tasks and Notes), Messaging (supports SMS, MMS and email), WAP/xHTML browser, RSS reader, voice recorder, media Player, image viewer and file manager. Desktop syncing software for Windows: PC Suite. USB drivers to use the phone as an external drive when copying music to phone is included. CD ripping software for Windows included.
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