The hero of today's review is Sony Ericsson W995. It has a large screen, it has both GPS and Wi-Fi. The phone has a built-in 8-megapixel camera and a Walkman 4.0 player with SensMe and Shake functions. The manufacturer added a standard headset jack and a retractable footrest to everything.
Sony Ericsson W995 went on sale in the second quarter of 2009.
Appearance
Sony Ericsson W995 is a slider. Has dimensions 97x49x15 mm. The weight of the device is considerable - as much as 113 grams. But this does not prevent you from carrying it in your pocket on a daily basis. The phone is released in three colors: Energetic Red (red), Progressive Black (black), Cosmic Silver (silver).
Let's start the description of the device from the front. The subject's screen is the largest among all Sony Ericsson mobile devices (except smartphones). Display resolution 320x240. The screen does not behave badly in bright sunlight, the information is easily viewed. On both sides of the screen there is a camera for video calls and a light sensor.
Unusual semicircular keys located under the screen are quite comfortable. Both fragile female fingers and courageous large hands can work with them without much difficulty.
By sliding the slider, you can see the usual numeric keypad. It is convenient to use, but the response is a little lacking. He, of course, is available, but weak, and difficult to catch. But the buttons are large, there is practically no possibility of erroneous clicks, even with blind typing.
The Walkman button is located on the left side. With its help, you can easily turn on the player. Also, it is used to control the Shake function. Just like the keys on the keyboard, it has poor travel and response. On the same side there is a connector for a cable, as well as a slot for M2 cards.
On the right side there is an abundance of various controls: this is a double button for camera zoom, it is also a key that controls the volume, and a key that activates the camera, and buttons for controlling the player. In principle, everything is convenient, with the exception of the volume rocker, which is very small.
In dark conditions, the backlight turns on on the keys under the display, on the keyboard, and, which is really nice, on the end buttons for controlling the player.
Both the bottom and the top of the device have stereo speakers. And if the user watches the video, throwing back the footrest, then they are on the sides (left and right), just like on a TV.
And now about something that you never expected to see in the Sony Ericsson W995. This is a 3.5mm headset jack. This has never happened before in Walkman phones.
On the back, an 8.1 megapixel camera with autofocus and a flash designed for shooting at night is comfortably located. The camera is worthy of respect for its characteristics and features, it is a pity that the manufacturer did not take care of protecting such a value - it is not protected by a shutter and is not hidden in the body.
The flip-up stand is located next to the flash. Thanks to this support, it became possible to place the phone on a table for viewing video in a horizontal position. The same stand is also entrusted with the role of an eyelet for a strap, having thrown it all the way up, you can thread a string into it.
The battery cover is made of metal and is very pleasant to the touch. It fits snugly enough to the body so that no gaps are observed. It opens only by opening the stand.
Under the lid is a 930 mAh lithium-polymer battery, which will provide the device for 370 hours in "sleep" mode and up to 9 hours in active use.
The build quality is at the highest level, there are no creaks or backlashes. Excellent weight and size allow the device to fit into the hand without any problems. The ergonomics of the device are also flawless. It can be considered almost perfect.
Menu
The desktop did not stand out as a supernova, everything is normal: battery status, signal strength indicator, date, time, soft buttons and operator name. Animated wallpaper. It is possible to install the application that was launched on the desktop in terms of wallpaper. Naturally, not any, but one of three. These are Sound Sensor, WalkMate and Rock Bobblehead.
There are three menu options. This is a carousel menu, a standard 3-by-4 grid and a menu with a centered icon, and the rest are placed vertically on the side.
The menu of Sony Ericsson W995, like in previous models from Sony Ericsson, offers quick access to selected applications. In "airplane mode" it is not necessary to remove the SIM-card, but upon returning from heaven to earth, the device must be rebooted.
Phone book and call log
It is possible to place up to 1000 contacts of subscribers in the phone book, for each of them up to 20 fields are offered for filling. The records are viewed either from the phone's memory or from the SIM-card, but not together. In Sony Ericsson W995 you can set the mode when all contacts created on the SIM-card will be copied to the phone's memory by default. And it also became possible to create a backup copy of all phone numbers from the phone book on the SIM card, which can be restored, in which case force majeure is not so terrible. The Sony Ericsson W902 has a similar safety feature. Each subscriber can be assigned his own melody, video or picture. But this has long been the standard for mobile devices.
Adds comfort when dialing and the Smart Dial function. The user gradually enters the digits of the phone number, and at this time he is looked for in the phone book. The same search occurs when entering a first or last name.
The call log also has the usual form, it consists of the following tabs: all calls, incoming, dialed and missed. Even if several calls have been received from a certain subscriber, the information will be shown only about the last one.
Messages.
The latest models from Sony Ericsson use the same interface type, but the Sony Ericsson W995 has undergone a reorganization. If earlier there was only an SMS and MMS editor under the item in the main menu "messages", now it has become possible to create other types of messages - electronic and voice.
Editing emails is as easy as editing regular SMS messages. The machine automatically downloads all e-mail settings. The size of the fonts can be easily adjusted.
The ability to save attached files is present, but there is no special need for this, since the Sony Ericsson W995 cannot open office documents. DOC and PDF are beyond the bounds of the possible.
Multimedia center
The multimedia center allows you to forget that the user is in the hands of the phone, not the PMP. A fairly simple and very clear interface with a slight touch of animation smoothly immerses the user in the world of multimedia. Behind this point all the most entertaining is hidden: music, photos, videos, Internet, games.
The device Sony Ericsson W995 supports DLNA protocol, which is quite rare for mobile phones, this will allow you to exchange content without unnecessary wires with other devices that support the same technology.
The photo gallery in the Sony Ericsson W995 is by far one of the best that you have ever seen in a mobile phone. It is very convenient to flip through the photos and find the desired picture from hundreds. Viewing photos is carried out in the traditional slideshow mode (with a superimposed musical composition) or in full screen mode.
Walkman player.
The phone is equipped with Walkman player version 4.0. The most important innovation is the support for skins. The rest remained in place. The player, as before, plays many formats, and the equalizer still has a few settings.
The Shake-control function, which has already become familiar to music phones from Sony Ericsson, is also located here. For those who are not in the know, its essence lies in the fact that the user can control the player by shaking or moving the device.The accelerometer built into the phone ensures that this function works perfectly. Thanks to him, the auto-flip of the display works from portrait mode to landscape mode and vice versa.
For those who do not want to attract special attention of others by strong shaking of the apparatus, it remains possible to use less eccentric control - the keyboard. Moreover, there is also freedom of choice here: either using the D-pad, or using the side player buttons. There is already someone as convenient.
To fully enjoy the music, the user's attention is presented with several animated pictures that rotate on the screen and delight the eye while the user is listening to the music.
Equalizers have the form of full-screen graphs, and if the graphs provided by the manufacturer seem a little to the user, then there is always an opportunity to add your own.
SensMe is another rather interesting feature of the Sony Ericsson W995, which is present in all the latest models of the Walkman series. With its help, you can choose musical compositions according to your mood. In this mode, all music is not in the form of lists, but of anonymous points on the coordinate system. The horizontal axis denotes sadness or fun, and the vertical axis denotes tempo, slow or fast. Each composition is located here in its places, which are assigned after the appropriate analysis. No unnecessary manipulations are required for this, you just need to load all the music into the device using the Sony Ericsson Media Manager program.
Sound is one of the most important achievements for the Sony Ericsson W995. This device can definitely be referred to the list of the best sounding phones. On the positive side, I was surprised by the frequency response, although the low frequencies were cut off very slightly.
FM radio
The phone radio supports TrackID and RDS. The phone memory can store up to 20 radio stations. There is a mode of automatic saving and auto-scanning of found pages. It is possible to minimize the radio, in this case it will continue to work in the background, and you can control it using the Walkman button.
Video player.
The video player in the Sony Ericsson W995 is capable of fast rewinding and rewinding, as well as slow motion playback. The video player plays files in both portrait and landscape mode. The display is capable of reproducing pictures in the original, full-screen mode, as well as in the "auto-fitting" mode.
You can take a screenshot of the video that is playing and successfully save it to the gallery. The frame-by-frame rewind mode will be able to catch the frame you like.
But not without a fly in the ointment. Sony Ericsson W995 does not support either XviD or DivX. But this amount of memory (8 gigabytes) allows you to watch and store videos of excellent quality. Of course, you can always convert video to MPEG4 format, but this will significantly reduce the bitrate.
Camera
The camera of the device, in addition to the matrix of 8 megapixels, can boast of a convenient and effective interface, which many have already appreciated in Cyber-Shot devices, for example, C905. But that's about the interface. The camera of the Sony Ericsson W995 was a bit disappointing. Here it is just ordinary, while in the C905 it is exceptional.
Let's take a look at the functions of the camera. These are exposure metering, geotagging, face detection and stabilizer for photos and videos, as well as BestPic, auto-rotation, macro mode, and so on. You can turn off the shutter sound when shooting.
Sony Ericsson W995 takes photos with a maximum resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels with an average file size of 2 megabytes. The LED flash will be able to catch the subject even during twilight shooting, and during video shooting, the flash acts as a flashlight.
When you start the camera, by tradition, it becomes possible to adjust the shooting modes, picture size, scene, exposure, flash, white balance, effects, as well as set a timer. As in most camera phones, the Sony Ericsson W995 recognizes faces in the frame (three faces at a time). Well, recognition of children's smiles in the phone is not provided, which is a pity.
There are two speeds in BestPic mode: slow and fast.Slow speed takes 7 shots at 8 megapixels at 1.7 second intervals, while fast takes 0.8 seconds.
The built-in GPS receiver is responsible for the geotagging function. When viewing tagged photos in the gallery, you can see the location on the map where each one was taken. The preinstalled Google Maps are the helpers here.
With macro mode, you can photograph subjects from very close distances, starting from 10 centimeters.
Well, now about the quality of the photos. In contrast to the C905, the shots taken by which are surprising, the W995 has some difficulties, which are inherent in all Walkman phones. More specifically, all the pictures are slightly spoiled by increased sharpness, noise, and the colors do not look vivid. Well, the traditional purple border on the border of contrasting objects.
But in reality the situation is not so gloomy, the overall impression of the camera is good, after all, this is a mobile phone, not a digital camera. And if you work on the photos a little more in a graphic editor, then in general the pictures will turn out to be priceless. But it's better to see once:
We shouldn't forget that Sony Ericsson W995 still shoots video.
Communication and connections
Sony Ericsson W995 works on HSCSD, GSM, EDGE, GSM and 3G networks. Therefore, you need to work very hard to find a place on Planet Earth where, having this device in hand, the user will be left without communication.
In addition to network connections, the Sony Ericsson W995 establishes communication using both Bluetooth v2.0 (A2DP support) and a USB cable. Do not forget about the presence of Wi-Fi with DLNA support, and also GPS with A-GPS support. And the last argument in favor of our hero is the presence of a memory card slot.
Applications requiring an Internet connection initially try to connect using Wi-Fi, and only if this network cannot be found, they resort to using GPRS services.
MediaGo
The Sony Ericsson W995 is the first mobile phone to feature MediaGo Media Sync Manager. With the help of this software, it is possible to automatically synchronize media libraries of mobile and computer, as well as get access to PlayNow. In general, this program is very much reminiscent of the familiar Apple iTunes owners.
Browser
The W995 uses the NetFront v3.4 FEATURING browser, which is already quite familiar from the previous models from Sony Ericsson, which has a lot of settings.
Pages can be opened in full screen mode, both vertically and vertically. You can turn off images and consider only text, or still spend valuable traffic on images. There is a possibility of page scaling. The "find on page" function is also very convenient. The virtual mouse is good enough to use.
In case, even with all its merits, this browser does not suit the user, then there is always the opportunity to replace it with another, for example - Opera Mini.
Basic applications.
In addition to proprietary applications, the phone from Sony Ericsson also contains the basic ones available in all mobile devices. These are File Manager, Video Call, Tasks, Alarm Clock, Calendar, Timer, Synchronization, Code Memo, Flashlight, Stopwatch, Tasks.
The calendar is traditionally displayed for Sony Ericsson either monthly or weekly. If the user adds a date of birth to the Phonebook, it appears here too.
Tasks come in two flavors, they are simple tasks or phone calls. The foreseen input of T9 has become available here as well, which is very pleasing.
You can set up to five alarms. Each of them can be assigned its own signal, image and note. It is also possible to set up a snooze signal, daily or for a specific day of the week. Even if the “silent” mode is enabled in the phone, the alarms will go off at the set time.
The voice recorder has no definite restrictions on the length of the recording, so if you wish, you can fill all the free memory. Stopwatch, calculator and timer are standard.
An LED flash located on the back of the device is used as a flashlight. It can shine continuously or for one minute, or blink if necessary.
There are several not-so-ordinary applications present - these are VideoDJ and MusicDJ.With VideoDJ, you can create personal video clips by mixing shots and adding music, beautiful transitions and various effects. MusicDJ is a fairly simple application with which the user can create polyphonic ringtones.
Entertainment applications
The set of entertainment applications in the Sony Ericsson W995 phone is quite diverse. These are Sound Sensor, Walk Mate, Comeks Strips, CamPlus, Music Mate 5, YouTube client, Rock Bobblehead, VoiceFX and Music Quiz.
One of the most exciting applications in the device is Music Mate 5. It contains mini-programs, each of which imitates musical instruments, which are played after the device is shaken. All this thanks to the accelerometer.
Comeks Strips - diversifies the user's photos with all sorts of "tricks": put on glasses or wigs on friends, write comical dialog bubbles and send it all to them via MMS.
Music Quiz is a quiz game reminiscent of a guess the melody game. An excerpt from a song located in the phone's memory is played, and the user guesses it.
Walk Mate is a pedometer. This application can run in the background as well as the wallpaper on the desktop.
Rock Bоbblehead is a funny and not very useful application in which a parody of bubbles on Elvis Presley dances to the shaking of the apparatus.
VoiceFX - this application will allow you to record voices, and apply various effects to them before saving.
Sound Sensor is a kind of ambient noise sensor. Shows its intensity as a graph in real time.
And the last application is the YouTube client. Gives access to the services of the YouTube site, where you can watch and download videos.
Navigation.
The Sony Ericsson W995 phone has Google Maps pre-installed. These maps can be viewed as a hand-drawn map or as a satellite photo. The only thing, without being connected to the Internet, using them in full is impossible.
But using GPS navigation in this phone is very easy. A few clicks and the user receives full information about the object of interest on the map. Favorite places can be saved, and each entry will contain the time, date and exact coordinates.
Games.
You will definitely not be bored with the Sony Ericsson W995, since in addition to the mass of exciting applications, there are seven interesting games: Real Football 2008, Bowling, Playman Extreme Running,, Bubble Town, NitroStreet Racing, Diamond Island, Guitar Rock Tour.
Real Football 2008 is a game that lives up to its name.
Bowling - It's easy to figure out what kind of game it is. By moving the phone, the user controls the ball.
Playman Extreme Running is a jungle adventure game. It is required, overcoming various obstacles and performing a lot of acrobatic stunts, to reach the finish line.
Bubble Town is a standard game. When shooting balls of different colors at balls of the same color, you need to add them in three pieces.
NitroStreet Racing is an analogue of the computer game Need For Speed. The goal is first place in the race.
Diamond Island - Control of the primitive men pushing the stone block. Along the way, collecting diamonds. The levels have a traditional structure: from easy to hard.
Guitar Rock Tour is a game for those familiar with Guitar Hero. The essence of the game is the same.
Output
Sony Ericsson W995 is a striking representative and a new standard of the Walkman series, which is proved by its technical characteristics. The interface is so user-friendly that it seems like it couldn't be better, but this is hardly the limit. The 3.5mm jack for a wired headset is a big joy.
In general, the Sony Ericsson W995 is a great option for those who have not yet decided what is more important in a mobile phone, a camera or music capabilities. This device successfully combined both qualities - the qualities of Cyber-Shot and Walkman. Having, at the same time, a compact and pretty pretty body.
