The Sony Ericsson W660i belongs to the company's Walkman lineup, though the handset focuses a little more on design compared with its siblings. The phone is currently available in Record Black and Rose Red. One thing to note is that the actual color of the latter is about two shades lighter than what it looks like from the picture.
Design of the Sony Ericsson W660i Smartphone
This is where the W660i aces the first lesson on design: To build a phone that's usable. It's that simple, but increasingly rare today when manufacturers try to cram all the latest features into every nook and cranny of the handset. You won't find any frills on this Sony Ericsson. There's none of the fancy swiveling tricks or groovy sliders you see on other mobile devices. But that's also why we really like this handset.
The numeric keypad is very similar to the Cyber-shot K800i, albeit with more groove which makes it easier to type on. There's a saying that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Although the Swedish-Japanese company has produced handsets like this with a user-friendly keypad, it's bewildering to find it heading the other direction with tiny pegs as buttons on the K810i and the upcoming K850i. Whatever was Sony Ericsson thinking?
Like the W610i, the main controls on the W660i are laid out in three circles, each with a center button that's disjoined from the disc. Although it may seem congested at first, the keys are actually very usable and thumb-friendly. We had one problem initially and that's mistaking the center play/stop button as a joystick.
The W660i is also a little flashier compared with its siblings. While we like the pastel gold lining running the circumference of the handset, some of our friends didn't share the same sentiments. The top half on the back of the phone also has some motifs etched onto it. There's no practical aspect to it and it doesn't interfere with the use of the unit in any way, but it's nice to look at.
Our review unit was the red version and, like we mentioned earlier, the color of the actual unit is about two shades lighter than what is on the picture. So don't be alarmed if you can't find the dark mahogany-red version of the W660i in stores.
Features of the Sony Ericsson W660i Smartphone
Let's get the basic specs out of the way. The W660i has a triband radio and it comes with 3G on the 2100MHz UMTS band. There's also Bluetooth with support for A2DP, FM radio with RDS, an external Memory Stick Micro card slot (you'll need this because there's only 16MB of onboard memory, barely enough for anything) and Sony Ericsson's proprietary port for cabled connection to the PC and earphones. A 512MB card is bundled with the commercial retail unit.
The W660i comes from the Walkman family so it has to meet those expectations on the music front. It supports a broad range of formats, including MP3 and AAC. There are two ways to listen to tunes on this Sony Ericsson: One is via the play/stop button on the left edge of the phone and the other is from the Walkman button on the front fascia. The first works like a shortcut so we could continue where we left off from our songs. The latter calls up the music player for additional playback options.
The interface on the music player is a bit utilitarian, but it works. The menus are arranged such that they require the user to scroll down to an option. For example, hitting Artists, then continuing with a right motion for a listing of all the artists in the folder. It's similar to a tree-like navigation system, but this is done mainly horizontally. Once we got the hang of it, finding our music was a breeze. There are also additional options to set the equalizer, visualizations, light effects and skins.
On the digital imaging front, the W660i comes with a main 2-megapixel camera and a secondary front-facing shooter for 3G video calls. It lacks the bells and whistles of its Cyber-shot counterparts, though. There's no built-in photolight or autofocus. The lens is protected by a tiny piece of clear plastic and our fingerprints regularly made nice lattice markings on the surface. So remember to clean it before you shoot. Digital zoom, if it was even useful in the first place, is not possible at the 1- and 2-megapixel resolution due to its interpolation nature. When you're done taking a picture, you can either save, upload to your blog or edit it via the onboard editing program.
Other applications preinstalled on the W660i are the Video/Photo/MusicDJs, video player, sound recorder, Web browser, RSS feed reader and organizer functions. The Bluetooth connectivity allows for wireless connection to a desktop, media player or controls for a slide presentation. There are also two onboard games: Extreme Air Snowboarding and Tower Bloxx.
We're a little bothered by a phonebook glitch we stumbled across, but hopefully it's an isolated problem with our review unit. When we tried to search for a contact (with SIM card as default) to send a typed SMS to, pressing an alphanumeric key didn't bring us to the corresponding letter in the list. So if we wanted to find TechTaxi, usually we would press the number 8 three times to get to the letter T. On our unit, it bought us straight to the last contact on the phonebook. But once we copied our contacts on the SIM card to the phone's memory, this wasn't an issue anymore.
Performance of the Sony Ericsson W660i Smartphone
Sony Ericsson rates the W660i for 9 hours of talktime and approximately 15 days on standby. With moderate usage that included chitchat, sending text messages, taking pictures and piping music to our HBH-DS980 earphones via Bluetooth stereo for about 2-3 hours each day, the 950mAh battery lasted us about 2.5 days on a full charge.
Music quality was admirable and on par with other Sony Ericsson phones. The speakers are on the back of the unit below the camera lens and if we placed the phone on its back audio was significantly muffled. We had hoped for a pair of stereo speakers bundled with the W660i, but channeling music through our Bluetooth earbuds proved just fine.
The 2-megapixel camera produced average day shots and we noticed a watercolor effect in some of our pictures. Image quality wasn't the best of the lot, although it is decent for the Web and printing in 4R sizes and smaller. The lack of autofocus and photolight made it tricky to get certain shots during our review.
Conclusion
Even though it's a decent all-round performer, the handset could have benefited from a quadband radio, with autofocus and photolight for the 2-megapixel camera. Last thing to note is that the travel charger doesn't come with an extra port. So after we plugged in the charger, we weren't able to hook up the headset to the phone.
Design of the Sony Ericsson W660i Smartphone
This is where the W660i aces the first lesson on design: To build a phone that's usable. It's that simple, but increasingly rare today when manufacturers try to cram all the latest features into every nook and cranny of the handset. You won't find any frills on this Sony Ericsson. There's none of the fancy swiveling tricks or groovy sliders you see on other mobile devices. But that's also why we really like this handset.
The numeric keypad is very similar to the Cyber-shot K800i, albeit with more groove which makes it easier to type on. There's a saying that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Although the Swedish-Japanese company has produced handsets like this with a user-friendly keypad, it's bewildering to find it heading the other direction with tiny pegs as buttons on the K810i and the upcoming K850i. Whatever was Sony Ericsson thinking?
Like the W610i, the main controls on the W660i are laid out in three circles, each with a center button that's disjoined from the disc. Although it may seem congested at first, the keys are actually very usable and thumb-friendly. We had one problem initially and that's mistaking the center play/stop button as a joystick.
The W660i is also a little flashier compared with its siblings. While we like the pastel gold lining running the circumference of the handset, some of our friends didn't share the same sentiments. The top half on the back of the phone also has some motifs etched onto it. There's no practical aspect to it and it doesn't interfere with the use of the unit in any way, but it's nice to look at.
Our review unit was the red version and, like we mentioned earlier, the color of the actual unit is about two shades lighter than what is on the picture. So don't be alarmed if you can't find the dark mahogany-red version of the W660i in stores.
Features of the Sony Ericsson W660i Smartphone
Let's get the basic specs out of the way. The W660i has a triband radio and it comes with 3G on the 2100MHz UMTS band. There's also Bluetooth with support for A2DP, FM radio with RDS, an external Memory Stick Micro card slot (you'll need this because there's only 16MB of onboard memory, barely enough for anything) and Sony Ericsson's proprietary port for cabled connection to the PC and earphones. A 512MB card is bundled with the commercial retail unit.
The W660i comes from the Walkman family so it has to meet those expectations on the music front. It supports a broad range of formats, including MP3 and AAC. There are two ways to listen to tunes on this Sony Ericsson: One is via the play/stop button on the left edge of the phone and the other is from the Walkman button on the front fascia. The first works like a shortcut so we could continue where we left off from our songs. The latter calls up the music player for additional playback options.
The interface on the music player is a bit utilitarian, but it works. The menus are arranged such that they require the user to scroll down to an option. For example, hitting Artists, then continuing with a right motion for a listing of all the artists in the folder. It's similar to a tree-like navigation system, but this is done mainly horizontally. Once we got the hang of it, finding our music was a breeze. There are also additional options to set the equalizer, visualizations, light effects and skins.
On the digital imaging front, the W660i comes with a main 2-megapixel camera and a secondary front-facing shooter for 3G video calls. It lacks the bells and whistles of its Cyber-shot counterparts, though. There's no built-in photolight or autofocus. The lens is protected by a tiny piece of clear plastic and our fingerprints regularly made nice lattice markings on the surface. So remember to clean it before you shoot. Digital zoom, if it was even useful in the first place, is not possible at the 1- and 2-megapixel resolution due to its interpolation nature. When you're done taking a picture, you can either save, upload to your blog or edit it via the onboard editing program.
Other applications preinstalled on the W660i are the Video/Photo/MusicDJs, video player, sound recorder, Web browser, RSS feed reader and organizer functions. The Bluetooth connectivity allows for wireless connection to a desktop, media player or controls for a slide presentation. There are also two onboard games: Extreme Air Snowboarding and Tower Bloxx.
We're a little bothered by a phonebook glitch we stumbled across, but hopefully it's an isolated problem with our review unit. When we tried to search for a contact (with SIM card as default) to send a typed SMS to, pressing an alphanumeric key didn't bring us to the corresponding letter in the list. So if we wanted to find TechTaxi, usually we would press the number 8 three times to get to the letter T. On our unit, it bought us straight to the last contact on the phonebook. But once we copied our contacts on the SIM card to the phone's memory, this wasn't an issue anymore.
Performance of the Sony Ericsson W660i Smartphone
Sony Ericsson rates the W660i for 9 hours of talktime and approximately 15 days on standby. With moderate usage that included chitchat, sending text messages, taking pictures and piping music to our HBH-DS980 earphones via Bluetooth stereo for about 2-3 hours each day, the 950mAh battery lasted us about 2.5 days on a full charge.
Music quality was admirable and on par with other Sony Ericsson phones. The speakers are on the back of the unit below the camera lens and if we placed the phone on its back audio was significantly muffled. We had hoped for a pair of stereo speakers bundled with the W660i, but channeling music through our Bluetooth earbuds proved just fine.
The 2-megapixel camera produced average day shots and we noticed a watercolor effect in some of our pictures. Image quality wasn't the best of the lot, although it is decent for the Web and printing in 4R sizes and smaller. The lack of autofocus and photolight made it tricky to get certain shots during our review.
Conclusion
Even though it's a decent all-round performer, the handset could have benefited from a quadband radio, with autofocus and photolight for the 2-megapixel camera. Last thing to note is that the travel charger doesn't come with an extra port. So after we plugged in the charger, we weren't able to hook up the headset to the phone.
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1 Comment:
Anonymous
October 06, 2008 12:06 PM