Gizmo Of The Week

Sony Ericsson W980

Sony Ericsson has launched yet another music phone from the Walkman Series which has really distinct features and comes with all new package. Sony Ericsson's W980 is here not only to fight with Nokia N81, Samsung I450, Motorola E8 and many others but to better the standards of performance set by the previous Walkman Phones. W980 carries along 8 GB worth of storage, a 3 megapixel camera and a built-in accelerometer. The touch-sensitive keys and the latest Sony Ericsson feature phone interface add to the excitement.

The looks and design of this latest gadget sets the pulse racing. The front panel features the square secondary display of 262K colors and a resolution of 176 x 176 pixels for the audio player with a set of soft touch controls (with Haptic feedback built in) for navigating the player’s menus and music. Sony Ericsson calls this technology "Walkman on Top". The internal or the main display features 2.2" TFT supporting QVGA resolution and 262K colors. The secondary video call camera is placed just above the display. The keypad is large and extremely user friendly. It has a 5-way nav-pad with plenty of shortcut keys.

Along with normal applications like calculator, stopwatch, code memo in W980, there is a new converter application that even lets you calculate a restaurant tip based on the bill amount as well as the number of diners. It also has 3D World Clock application, Sony Ericsson’s Music Mate 5 and the Plus application for downloads.

The Music Player of this Walkman Series new arrival is simply awesome with default features like SenseMe and The Shake Control which can only be used when the flap is open though, as the Walkman Key is located on the main keypad. The sound from dual speakers and stereophonic headphones blows off the mind(though lacks a bit of thump of bass). Another great feature with the W980’s Walkman Player is the FM transmitter for playing music though any FM player.

Being a music phone, it wont have the best camera, but W980's 3.15 Mega Pixel camera with no flash and auto focus though, offers decent image quality. The camera interface is very low end and lacks advanced features.

It supports 3G(UMTS) with HSDPA, EDGE/GPRS and WAP, Bluetooth with an A2DP profile and has The FastPort connector placed on the left side, used as a combined port for charging, data transfers and earphones. Though the W980 doesn’t have WiFi and but has an inbuilt GPS unit, it does have Google Maps with an integrated image tagging feature.

Well, the conclusion is that, the Sony Ericsson W980 is a power packed music phone, with decent camera, light effects and accelerometer. This gadget is certainly one to reckon with for all other leading brands.

Technical Specifications and More Details