Was I the only one who hated the design of the W800, had to buy a K750 and convert it to W800, and still didn’t love the design? Sony Ericsson today unveiled at CES Las Vegas an aesthetic blend of those two, with essentially the same features and the addition of Quadband and EDGE support, dedicated music buttons in the joystick a la W900. The rest of it, you know: 2 megapixel camera with autofocus and flashlight, 1.9″ 176×220 pixel 262k color screen, Memory Stick Duo Pro slot, etc., etc., etc., and 20mb of internal memory. Yes, more than half less than the W800, but it comes with a 512mb card so why even bother, no? Actually, something bothers me… apparently they took out the Radio FM! At least the Press Release (I just have it in Spanish) doesn’t mention it. Anyway, it’s called the W810i and will be available worldwide in the first quarter of this happy new year.
The Spanish Television and Press Graphic Reporters Association (accronym banned) has awarded the K800 the distinction of the Best Cameraphone of 2006, as an outstanding product that helps the professional photographer optimize his job.
In the United Kingdom, Sony Ericsson has also been awarded by consumers with the Best Manufacturer Of The Year award, the Best Mobile Phone Of The Year award to the K800 —which also was voted the “Readers’ Dream Phone“—, and the Best Music Phone award to the W810.
Finally, the German edition of the Connect magazine granted, with readers’s votes, the awards of Best Cameraphone to the K800 (45,2% of the votes, and the apparently-not-so-old K750 being in third place), Best Music Phone to the W810 (with 59,9% of the votes), Best 3G Phone to the W900, and Best PDA Phone to the P990 (hmm…).
To summarize, Sony Ericsson nowadays seems to be losing the “best phone with wheels and facial hair” category only, or whatever. Unstoppable!
Sorry, third-parties, all JAVA-enabled Sony Ericssons now have official support from Microsoft to run their new Windows Live Messenger Mobile application. MSN/Windows Messenger site Mess.be found this goodie in a chineese MSN website. Well, actually, functionality may be a little below some other JAVA clients, but if you’re like me and only need your contact list and being able to chat with some few emoticons, you’ll take this Windows Live themed instant messenger over anything else. Apparently these download links (be careful to chose the version for your model) are completely legal and free to download, but after a couple of months they will stop working unless you pay a small unknown monthly fee. Hmm, let’s just enjoy it in the meantime and we’ll talk again in January. Check some screenshots of it running on K800 inside this entry. [Via Mess.be].
If your exact model number isn’t listed here, make sure your phone supports JAVA and then download the version of models using the same screen pixel size.
Straight out from the French Riviera, Noreve offers a series of high quality leather cases for almost all current mid-high Sony Ericssons, for those who don’t mind losing some portability in favor of protecting the precious device inside while adding a touch of style and personalization with the many leather colors available. I say losing portability because after trying these with my P990, it just won’t fit any comfortably in trousers any tighter than 50 Cent’s. It shouldn’t be a big problem for smaller models’ users though —the P990 itself isn’t very pocket-friendly anyway—, but it’s fair to say that these cases add considerable bulk to your phone, not to mention if you even attach the huge belt clip. This belt clip led McCoy, reviewer of the black M600/W950 and red P990 cases, to find a funny problem with the back screw, which you can check in the video (in all Superhandz style) after the jump, along with photos of those and my black and white P990 cases.
Tired of my K750’s remote control template for Media Player lacking a couple of functions, I have customized it a bit and thought I should share it with you. As you can see in the background image, it’s the same template but adding the Shuffle, Repeat, Full Screen and Mute functions of Windows Media Player. If your phone has a smaller screen resolution than 176×220 you can resample the image and edit the template with the Sony Ericsson Bluetooth Remote Control application.
It caught us by surprise when we first saw these fake W800 and K700 some months ago, but they’ve now faked the W810 in Hong Kong and we’re getting used to cheap imitations of Sony Ericssons. It has a 1.3 megapixel, doesn’t support MP4, barely plays MP3’s, but it has a nice touchscreen and stylus, includes a 128mb MicroSD card and supports MP5 which apparently means Karaoke. The buyer in this story asked for a full refund when he found out it wasn’t a real Walkman. Obviously, he got slapped. [Via Engadgetmobile]
Posted by Luis Camino on Apr 25, 2006 in Reviews| W810
Another great review from the lovers of the Sony Ericsson interface —which being the best one available, keeps improving little details in almost every model— and yet another “Highly Recommended” rating. Enjoy these excerpts [Via Engadgetmobile]:
Overall build quality seems to be good, which is what we have come to expect from Sony Ericsson. But the device does seem to creak more when squeezed than the earlier models, and just doesn’t come across as rock solid as the W800 and K750 did. The look also seems to be a bit more plastic-like. Of course it is, indeed, made of plastic, but I just feel that the K750 and W800 made that less obvious. This is probably much a matter of taste, though, so judge for yourself. (…)
The Sony Ericsson W810 exhibits further refinements to its user interface. (…) One of the themes, Orbit, has not only a little fellow that orbits the selected icon and follows you as you navigate, but it changes colors each time you enter the menu. On top of that, the Orbit theme also blips the vibration alert lightly each time you navigate in the main menu, giving you physical as well as visual feedback for your actions. This is great. (…)
I’ve long been espousing the virtues of Sony Ericsson’s user interface here on MobileBurn, and now that the basics have been covered, it is nice to see the company focusing on the fine little details that really make a UI sing. The W810’s user interface is, simply put, the best available on the market today. (…)
The maximum number of contact records has been boosted to 1000 from the 500 limit imposed on the K750 and W800, which is a welcomed change. (…)
The Sony Ericsson W810 is simply one fantastic handset. While I found the speakerphone to be weak, and was disappointed by the lack of stereo Bluetooth support, it simply does everything else exquisitely well. (…) The W810 is my new favorite, currently available handset. I give it a “Highly Recommended” rating with no hesitations at all.
We missed this CeBIT report on time, but Olav from Esato.com did a pretty good job posting (big) photos and first-hand impressions of the new Sony Ericssons (and others) from Hannover:
Entry level phones J100, K310, K510, W300/Z530 and W810 [?]: Weighting only 70g makes [the J100] the lightest model ever by Sony Ericsson. (…) An untrained eye could have misstaken the Sony Ericsson K310 with a K700. (…) I was told the new M2 cards could be used with an adapter in older Sony Ericsson models.
Hands on Sony Ericsson M600: This is an exciting new feature found in M600, W950 and P990. The new spell checker. Once you start writing a word, the M600 list the best suggestions. The list of suggested words is based on the sentence content as well as word grammar. Very cool.
P990 showing very cool features: Joseph started typing “Dear ” using the stylus with handwriting recognition. The P990 responded with inserting “Sir” as a suggestion to the next word in the sentence. After clicking on “Sir”, a space was automatically inserted, and the next word “and” was typed. To finish off, P990 suggested “Madam” as the final word when this was typed in “Dear Sir and “. It did not need the “M” to suggest “Madam”. Impressive.
Sony Ericsson K800: The two buttons you see above the display is short cuts to common settings when capturing photos. The give you direct access to scenes and shoot modes
Hands on Sony Ericsson W950: The W950 should be equipped 4GB memory. The file explorer reveals that this prototype only have 64MB installed.
I waited until I got it shipped because I wanted to see if it lived up to its promises, and it certainly does! If you need a 1 or 2gb USB pendrive, but already have that amount of storage in your Sony Ericsson,this is for you: it just turns your memory card into a USB 2.0 plug and play mass storage device! And the best way to load MP3’s, of course. Okay, maybe not a technology wonder, but it’s as small as it can get, sleek, really fast and it’s price is a joke. How else can you get a gigabyte flash drive for less than 3 dollars?
NOTE: I’m not the seller nor do I get commission or anything, I just LOVE it
Their photos are so good, and make the K790/K800 screen look so awesome, we wish they weren’t the size of an M2 card. But anyway Jorgen shares his love for the new products; a feeling I’m pretty sure is common around Die Messe.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the first real camera phone. Granted, Nokia’s N90 came close – but at 3.2 Megapixels and with stunning picture quality, the Sony Ericsson K800i blows the competition out of the water (…) One word: splendid. (…)
Although bested by the 8 GB Samsung SGH-i310, [the W950's] 4 GB of flash memory should allow for considerably longer battery life – and despite its spacious storage and superb screen, the handset remains ultra-slim at 15 mm thick. (…)
Few phones harbour the kind of functionality offered by the P990i. The swiss army knife of business phones, it couples a luscious, high-resolution touch screen with a 2 Megapixel camera for video calling in conjunction with 3G as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for shorter-range options. Unfortunately, its thumbboard is a tad on the cramped side, but for the power user who needs every feature under the sun it’s a winner. Did we mention the Opera 8 browser also does landscape mode? Genius.
Was I the only one who hated the design of the W800, had to buy a K750 and convert it to W800, and still didn’t love the design? Sony Ericsson today unveiled at CES Las Vegas an aesthetic blend of those two, with essentially the same features and the addition of Quadband and EDGE support, dedicated music buttons in the joystick a la W900. The rest of it, you know: 2 megapixel camera with autofocus and flashlight, 1.9″ 176×220 pixel 262k color screen, Memory Stick Duo Pro slot, etc., etc., etc., and 20mb of internal memory. Yes, more than half less than the W800, but it comes with a 512mb card so why even bother, no? Actually, something bothers me… apparently they took out the Radio FM! At least the Press Release (I just have it in Spanish) doesn’t mention it. Anyway, it’s called the W810i and will be available worldwide in the first quarter of this happy new year.
The Spanish Television and Press Graphic Reporters Association (accronym banned) has awarded the K800 the distinction of the Best Cameraphone of 2006, as an outstanding product that helps the professional photographer optimize his job. 
Tired of my K750’s remote control template for Media Player lacking a couple of functions, I have customized it a bit and thought I should share it with you. As you can see in the background image, it’s the same template but adding the Shuffle, Repeat, Full Screen and Mute functions of Windows Media Player. If your phone has a smaller screen resolution than 176×220 you can resample the image and edit the template with the 
