ReviewColumn’s rating :

Sony Ericsson W880i is the slimmest Walkman phone ever at just 9.4mm thick - the depth of a CD case - and yet it promises to outperform previous Walkman phones. It’s that thin and light you don’t even know it’s in your pocket. Besides its thin form factor, the brushed metal face resists fingerprints, and its soft-touch rubbery backing also provides firm grip - it feels excellent to hold. The Sony Ericsson W880i comes in a beautifully designed casing with a choice of two colors - black or silver.

Sony Ericsson has crammed the W850i’s highlights into its thin frame. The industrial steel-clad W880i has an ultra-crisp 1.8in QVGA screen, a 2MP camera, a 1GB M2 memory stick, and it’ll do 3G browsing and email. The menu interface is intuitively animated and colorful; every feature on the phone shows thoughtfulness in their design.

Thank God, Sony Ericsson W880i uses a 5-way scroll key rather than the irritating joystick used on some of its other phones. The keypad is designed exactly like three big i’s, if you notice. Text addicts may complain about the small and fiddly keypad, but I decided to overlook it. As a matter of fact, the keys, although small to grapple with for fast texting, are very well spaced out and are very responsive; they are easy to operate after a couple of days. The keypad takes a bit of getting used to but it’s still a class act. Perhaps it’s time to grow your nails out?

Besides the primary 2MP camera behind the LCD display, Sony Ericsson W880i also comes with a second lens just beside the earpiece for video calls. My biggest gripe with the W880i is probably its camera. It’s indeed an extremely good camera but it misses a flash and an autofocus. Again, I decided to overlook it as the emphasis in W880i is on music. I can always opt for a digital camera if I want to take a high quality camera, furthermore, who takes pictures at night in a dark environment with their phone anyway?

The built-in speaker is very tinny, but plug in the good quality headphones included and you wouldn’t really notice the difference from a normal mp3 player. Like W850i, the W880i also comes with the TrackID feature that will provide the user with the name of the song, artist and album from a few seconds recording. It’s expected that the Sony Ericsson W880i doesn’t come with an FM radio, who needs an FM radio while you don’t even have time for the 1,000 tracks stored on the supplied 1GB memory card anyway? Yet it may be a disappointment for DRM lovers, as the W880i doesn’t support DRM tracks.

Overall, Sony Ericsson W880i is a stylish music phone that has everything in a combo device, backed by its easy-to-use Walkman 2.0 software, it is destined to be the best iPod Nano alternative around.

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