The interface for the Sony Ericsson W800i's MP3 and AAC music player is spartan, but it's extremely user-friendly. Opening the player takes you directly to the main menu, where you can organize music by artist, track name, or playlist. To navigate through the player, you use the joystick while choosing between the left soft key and the side-mounted play/pause button to control songs. Settings include album/song shuffle and loop, Sony's Mega Bass, and an equalizer. Unlike the iTunes interface on the Motorola Rokr E1, the W800i doesn't display album art when a song is playing, but we didn't miss it. Switching between the cell phone and the music player is seamless, as music automatically stops when you receive a call. Hang up and press the dedicated music key, and your song picks up again from the same point you left off. There's also an airplane mode that lets you listen to your tunes in flight with the cell phone turned off.
Although you must download music from a PC with the included USB cable and Disc2Phone software, the Sony Ericsson W800i's music player still has a few distinct advantages over the Rokr E1. Music capacity isn't restricted to the number of songs but instead is limited by the available memory. Integrated shared storage is only 38MB, but you get an included 512MB Memory Stick Duo card. Even more impressive, the phone accepts Memory Stick Pro Duo cards up to 2GB, the trade-off being that you can use Sony's proprietary Memory Stick cards only. Unlike with the Rokr E1, you can also use tracks as ring tones (tracks are conveniently listed in the ring-tones folder), and you can send tunes via e-mail, multimedia message, Bluetooth, or infrared port. You even get an FM radio that automatically scans and programs up to 20 presets and grabs Radio Data System info from stations that digitally broadcast their names and call letters. The only real catch is that like with the Rokr E1, you can't listen to music through Bluetooth headphones.
Although you must download music from a PC with the included USB cable and Disc2Phone software, the Sony Ericsson W800i's music player still has a few distinct advantages over the Rokr E1. Music capacity isn't restricted to the number of songs but instead is limited by the available memory. Integrated shared storage is only 38MB, but you get an included 512MB Memory Stick Duo card. Even more impressive, the phone accepts Memory Stick Pro Duo cards up to 2GB, the trade-off being that you can use Sony's proprietary Memory Stick cards only. Unlike with the Rokr E1, you can also use tracks as ring tones (tracks are conveniently listed in the ring-tones folder), and you can send tunes via e-mail, multimedia message, Bluetooth, or infrared port. You even get an FM radio that automatically scans and programs up to 20 presets and grabs Radio Data System info from stations that digitally broadcast their names and call letters. The only real catch is that like with the Rokr E1, you can't listen to music through Bluetooth headphones.
posted by wirefly at
9:26 PM
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