Sony Ericsson W508 Walkman

Enjoy music the way you want it with the Sony-Ericsson W508 Walkman phone. Consumers can have the most interactive mobile experience as individual as they are, with clever technology such as Shake and Gesture control, SenseMe and TrackID, as well as one extra Style-Up cover with the new Sony Ericsson W508 Walkman phone. The Sony-Ericsson W508 also includes popular Walkman features such as SensMe, for matching your mood to the music and touch keys on top to play, stop and skip tracks.

Size and Weight :

The clamshell measures 93.5 x 50 x 14mm and weighs 98g (including battery).

Network and connectivity:

The Sony Ericsson W508 Walkman clamshell features the basic connectivity tools, but has also been gifted with the HSDPA 3.6Mbps technology, which greatly improves data transfers. When benchmarked, the phone attained outstanding speeds: 1233 Kbit/s download and 211 Kbit/s upload in 3.5G network. EDGE data transfers were a little bit lower than expected, but still reached speeds of 156 Kbit/s for download and 81 Kbit/s for upload services. The handset is also compatible with Bluetooth 2.0 with an A2DP technology and features a USB 2.0 connectivity. Applications like Google Maps have no real use until you get an external GPS receiver, but you will also need something like Wayfinder Navigator 7, so your device will really come in handy with localizations.

Camera and Video:

While the 3-megapixel camera is not one of the strong points of the clamshell, pictures taken with the clamshell are medium in quality, so you don't have to worry about it. Still, the camera lacks some features that would've improved the quality of the snapshots, such as the autofocus and flash. Besides the lack of auto-focus and flash, the clamshell also misses some advanced features, like image stabilization and macro mode. Still, users will be able to use the geo-tagging (CellID) and video-recording capabilities. The camera can record movies in the QVGA resolution at 15fps. The quality of the clips is very low, which means that one will be limited to getting pictures mostly. You can take pictures with a 3.2-megapixel camera that offers a 3.2x digital zoom. Among imaging features you can find Geo Tagging, Photo Fix, Picture Blogging as well as Photo Feeds.

Memory and Display:

The handset comes with a 100MB internal memory, but features a micro M2 memory slot card to expand the storage space up to 16 GB. It has been placed under the back cover of the phone, but it can be inserted without the need of powering off the device (hot-swappable). Moreover, it comes with a 1GB M2 memory card in the sales package. The W508 comes with a Monochromatic OLED screen that offers the resolution of 240 x 320 pixels and displays up to 262k colors. The screen measures 2.2 inches. The secondary, monochrome screen on the front part of the phone measures 1.1 inch and supports a 36x128-pixel resolution. Both displays are scratch-resistant, and the main screen's contrast and brightness are very good, so that you won't have problems when you're outdoors in the sunlight.

Entertainment Features:

As it has been expected, Sony Ericsson W508 is a complete music phone and features excellent music sound quality. The clamshell offers very good music quality, as it features the Walkman 3.0 music player and the famous MegaBass equalizer mode, thus making the sound pretty impressive. Besides the earlier mentioned MegaBass mode, users can take advantage of a few more equalizer modes. It supports almost all possible music file formats available on the market: MP3, AAC, AAC+, E-AAC+, WAV, WMA, M4A and MIDI. Furthermore, the music player is compatible with the Album art function and, thanks to the integrated accelerometer, it takes advantage of the Shake control feature. The latter enables users to go one track forward or backwards by shaking the phone forward or backwards. It is also possible to shuffle the playlist by simply shaking the phone both ways twice. Another new feature introduced by Sony Ericsson is called SensMe, which enables users to make their playlists according to their mood by simply selecting "Happy" or "Sad." The only drawback of the service is the fact that only the songs that are tagged by Sony Ericsson's Media Manager will be taken into consideration. If one wants to use this feature a lot, one will need to transfer all their files through the Sony Ericsson Media Manager application, which could take a while. The stereo earphones (HPM-64) that are coming in the sales package are more than decent and include a 3.5mm adapter, which means that you can even attach your own headphones in case you're not satisfied with these ones. The clamshell also includes an FM radio function with RDS, which can memorize up to 20 base stations. The reception and sound are also very good. Both music player and radio can be run in the background. The integrated video player can run movies in full screen, in landscape or portrait mode, thanks to the accelerometer. Overall, Sony Ericsson W508 features excellent sound quality levels and above-average multimedia features at a convenient price.

Even if Sony Ericsson W508 has a standard clamshell form, it can attract fans of the Walkman series through its slimness and price. The only thing I found annoying was the big size of the phone when you actually unfolded it and put it to your ear. Otherwise, I think W508 is a pretty decent clamshell, with nice multimedia features and a medium price.