Sony Ericsson W995a Walkman Unlocked Phone with 3G, 8.1 MP, WiFi, Stereo Bluetooth, and Assisted GPS–U.S. Version with Warranty
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- This unlocked cell phone is compatible with GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile. Not all carrier features may be supported. It will not work with CDMA carriers like Verizon Wireless, Alltel and Sprint.
- Unlocked quad-band GSM cell phone compatible with 850/900/1800/1900 frequencies
- Slider phone with 8.1-megapixel camera/camcorder; Wi-Fi networking; GPS for location and geo-tagging; Bluetooth music streaming; Walkman 3.0 digital media player
- Up to 9 hours of GSM talk time (4 hours on 3G networks), up to 370 hours (15+ days) of standby time
- What’s in the Box: handset, battery, charger, 8 GB Memory Stick Micro (M2) card, wired handsfree headset, USB cable, Sony software
Product Description
The W995 Walkman is the ultimate mobile phone to keep you entertained when on the bus, lunch break or waiting for a train.With Media Go it’s easy to bring your media with you. This unique Sony application makes its worldwide debut on the W995 Walkman and lets you effortlessly and automatically transfer any audio, photos and videos between your phone and computer. You can even find podcasts with exciting content easily from the directory – just two clicks and you’re away, and watch the action in all its glory on the bright clear 2.6″ screen.Amazon.com Product Description
Combining a high-performance digital audio player, high-megapixel digital camera and ultra-fast mobile communicator in one package, the Sony Ericsson W995a Walkman Phone will keep you easily connected to family and friends wherever you roam as well as keep you entertained with your favorite tunes and YouTube video. This slider style phone offers a gorgeous, brightly colorful 2.6-i… More >>
Price : $449.95
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I decided to purchase the w995a after carefully researching some viable alternatives such as the Nokia n86 8mp, the still-good and underrated n96, and the n82. I chose the Sony because it looks and feels better than the other phones, not because it IS better than the others. Let me explain.
This phone is absolutely gorgeous. Its made of brushed metal, it feels amazing in your hand, and the sliding mechanism is nearly perfect. It’s a feature phone, so you really don’t have any options to customize the UI like you would with a symbian phone (i.e. the nokias mentioned above), but if this doesn’t bother you (which it did not bother me), it really won’t matter because the menu layout is really perfect and intuitive. It has great sound, it’s beautiful when lit up, and the call quality is superb. That being said, it’s simply not a “better” phone than the nokias I’ve listed.
For one, the camera is simply “ok.” Shots taken indoors will disappoint you, while those taken outdoors look very good. The video recording is old-school at 30fps QVGA while the nokias mentioned record DVD quality video at 30fps in VGA. Not to mention the nokias have carl ziess optics (regarded as one of the best lense makers in the world).
I decided not to go with the Nokia N86, it’s “closest” competitor. The N86 is a better phone, it has an 8gb hard drive while the w995a comes with an 8gb card. The nokia can be expanded with up to a 16gb card, has a variable aperture 8mp that takes exquisite photos, and has the ever- customizable symbian UI. But its ugly, and plastic; typical Nokia.
So, to sum it up:
THE GOOD:
-beautiful
-well built
-beautiful interface
-good pictures
-excellent media player
-best sliding mech. ever
THE BAD:
-other phones in its price range are arguable better
-should take great pictures, not good ones
-video recording is 2004-era phone
-has a TFT 256k screen, while all others in its price range have AMOLED 16M screens.
It was a tough choice, but for me, the look and feel of this one took the cake!
Rating: 4 / 5
This review is very hard for me as I lovED the phone so much for so many things but there are few things that really ticked me off for making me hate the phone I love so much. Sounds complicated? Well, first let me tell why I returned the phone.
Reasons I returned the phone:
1. Battery cover doesn’t feel solid when you hold the phone and press keys. You will feel your hand pressure slightly pressing the battery cover that causes movement. This got very irritating for me as this is otherwise an excellently built phone that looks super sexy. First I thought it could be with my phone. But the replacement phone had the exact same problem. Then I went to couple of Sony Style stores and noticed one store phone didn’t have problem but another one had. So, looks like some lucky buyers may get a good one but not sure how long that will feel firm if you keep opening and closing the phone. I do that quite often to change SIM cards.
2. Fonts are too big for beautiful display with 2.6″ screen. Where were SE developers thinking? For example, the contacts screen shows only 6 contacts at once. With a slightly smaller fonts it would have displayed 8 contacts quite easily. They should have had a settings to choose small, medium, and large fonts and the current fonts should fall in X-large fonts.
3. Kick stand. What a joke! The phone would have felt better if they left this completely or designed it in a way for users to remove it if they don’t need it. You have to place phone in your shirt pocket with screen facing front or the kick stand would pop out easily. Another silly design by their engineers.
4. 256-K colors. What are you thinking SE? When will you catch up with others here?
Good things about the phone:
If you already are familiar with Sony ericsson phones they have the best OS among non-smartphones. Frankly, they have many features better done than many smartphones including iPhone. First, the one’s common to all new Sony Ericsson phones.
Some of the cool things found in SE feature phones:
Smart Dialing, ease of sending SMS, MMS, emails to a contact and the interface of MMS is super cool. I think they have the best implementation for MMS among all phones, FM radio, Accelerometer, Exchange ActiveSync (office outlook emails and calendar syncing and also to sync your google contacts and calendar with Push) and Call logs. With SE phones when in call logs you can select “Open” and it brings up all other contact information for that person like other numbers, email, etc. So, you can easily call that person at his other numbers or just send SMS, MMS, or email from logs. Also, D-pad arrow buttons can be used to create shortcuts (4 applications) to your favorite applications. This is one of my favorite feature in SE phones along with call logs and smart dialing as I hardly have more than 4 apps I like to use on a phone.
When it comes to apps for the phone, there are plenty to feed your needs. Check out getjar.com or even browse Sony Ericsson site from the native browser in the phone and you will see several free apps you can download. If you change the Location of the country in the sony ericsson site while browsing you will find more free apps as Sony seems to provide few different applications for different countries. Also, if you google you will find lot of Free Themes for the phone that will let you customize the look of the menus and standby screen.
Some specialties with W995:
1. In spite of the problems with the kickstand and the battery cover, the phone feels like a tank and it’s sure to ‘WOW WOW’ your friends. One work around to fix the battery cover issue is to fold a small piece of paper and place it above the battery to stop the movement on the cover. Kickstand? Glue the stupid thing if you think you will never use it.
2. Display looks super bright and clear even in sunlight.
3. Walkman sound quality is simply amazing. I thought it sounded as good as Zune which I thought sounds way better than iPhone.
4. It will be a joke if I mention having 3.5 mm audio jack is a plus with this phone. But, Sony finally did it. Good job there.
5. WiFi, GPS, 3G on AT&T all work like a charm.
Some of my favorite FREE apps:
Gmail, Google maps, Shozu, GetJar, TruTap, Fringe, Comeks, Opera Mini (of course), Blogger, TrackID.
Even though I returned the phone I still am addicted to Sony Ericsson phones for their well thought out software for making calls and sending messages. Unfortunately, most of their recent phones have severe build quality issues. Most of them with the slider design or the battery covers. Still, I sometimes feel like buying W995a and deal with the problems it has as the goodness of the phone over shadows the problems. Moreover, there really is no perfect phone out there. At least for me
. Well, I even sold my iPhone after few months of use as I thought it feels too wide, battery doesn’t last a full-day, and making calls is not as convenient as it’s on Sony phones, or Windows Mobile phones, or Blackberries.
The current $399.99 price on Amazon is tempting but I will try hard to resist until Xperia X2 gets announced this week.
Rating: 3 / 5
The W995 is probably the best Sony Ericsson phone Ive used to date. I was considering higher end smartphones like the Sony X1 and Nokia N900 but couldnt bring myself to paying the high premium price. With the rate technology is going nowadays it would be worthless in 6 months, or the price would drop considerably. I got the W995 for a good deal and feel it was a good compromise. Physically the device looks very sleek. Build quality is very good with the brushed metal finish, definitely feels more sturdy than your average plastic phone. The screen is very nice as with most Sony phones Ive seen, very bright and vibrant display. Also I just learned that it is made out of scratch resistant material which is another plus. The biggest difference Ive noticed on the W995 compared to past phones Ive used is how snappy and fast the UI feels, especially things like browsing the internet over WiFi which is usually a chore on such a small device. Whether its the menus, GPS, scrolling on pages or turning the phone to landscape view (using the accelerometer) everything responds instantly. One cool thing I use the phone for (why I wanted WiFi in a small device in the first place) is to use it as a remote to wirelessly control my Logitech Squeezebox and it does it perfectly. Out of all the phones Ive owned, the SE UI remains my favorite because it is fast and to the point. The phone also includes an 8.1 megapixel camera, walkman with standard 3.5mm audio jack and 8GB memory card. Finally, Sony includes a 3.5mm jack on the phone which I dont know why they didnt do it sooner.. after all it is called a walkman phone. The camera also takes pretty decent photos, still some noise when indoors (or low lighting conditions) but much better than previous models. It wouldve been nice if it had the xenon flash over the LED, like on the C905. But the camera is not my first priority and its adequate for my uses. Ive found that as long as the subject is properly lit the phone will take good pictures. Using the phone for all the tasks mentioned above the battery has held up OK. Almost depleted at the end of the day but thats under heavy usage since its my new toy. For normal usage I think it could last 2-3 days before a charge. Guess Im just used to older SE phones which could last up to week, but they also did not have as many features as the W995. Overall, feature and quality wise the W995 is one of the best phones Ive used and probably the best non-smartphone.
Rating: 5 / 5
I love the thin/slim design.
I love the large screen and great graphics! This works especially well for web and gps.
Much improved over previous SonyEricsson sliders I’ve seen or used.
The only drawback is the poor battery life – esecially when using wifi, bluetooth, and internet capabilities. When using these options, I usually have to charge each night. I guess I guess I was spoiled when I was using a phone without these options since I only needed to recharge my phone every 3 or 4 days.
Rating: 4 / 5
I purchased this phone from Amazon a week ago, after researching for over a month looking to replace my classic iPhone 16GB. I was looking for an unlocked multimedia phone and was leaning towards the Nokia N85. I have to say that while most reviews out there favor the Nokia, I cave into the looks of the W995a. Someone at Cnet said it is not the sexiest phone around, but I beg to differ, the phone is very sleek, the slider mechanism is flawless and the overall presentation of the hardware is much higher end that any of the new (available) Nokias I’ve seen. It is slimmer that the N85, and the brushed metal case is very elegant and looks way better than the plastic on the mentioned Nokia handset.
It should be noted, as mentioned by other reviewers, that this is not a smartphone, meaning that there is limited customization and most of the applications you get are web based, a la iPhone two years ago. Since this phone is unlocked (something I really desired, and the main reason I did not upgrade my iPhone) you have to play around with the settings a little bit to get the most out of the features of this phone. For instance, I had a hard time figuring out how to get it to stream videos over the YouTube application that comes as part of the media interface. I have MediaNet (EDGE) service from AT&T and was not able to stream any video. Then I discovered that if you turn off the WiFi you will get it, though a bit chopped since EDGE is not the best for video streaming. That being said, I still have to figure out how to get it to stream over WiFi, which should be much better. Oddly, most reviewers elsewhere had the opposite problem: they were able to stream over WiFi but could not get it to stream over EDGE. The workaround for the WiFi problem seems to be opening extra ports on your wireless router, something I am completely illiterate on. So this is a major drawback of the phone: for a phone that is claimed to be the flagship multimedia device from SE, all these bugs and problems should not be present, especially at this price range. Not being able to access YouTube properly is just unacceptable. Paying customers should not have to waste time trying to figure out things engineers and technicians at SE get paid to do. If you go to the SE webpage and look for support for this device you will be able to get the settings sent to your phone for proper web navigation, email and picture messaging… but nothing for the video streaming problem.
This phone comes with an 8.1 MP camera with single LED flash. The pictures outdoors with good natural light are OK, but things get much worse indoors or with limited light. If you already have a nice point and shoot, this phone won’t replace it. If you are looking for a new phone and to upgrade an old point and shoot, then maybe this phone will save you some bucks. Don’t get me wrong, the camera is very good, it’s just that reading 8.1 MP on the specs creates very high expectations.
The real treat of this phone comes from the music player. The sound is just amazing. I did not know how much sound quality I was sacrificing with my iPhone and iPods until I listened to the music player in this phone: I was blown away. It should also be mentioned that the phone comes equipped with FM radio, which is actually very nice. The bundled Media Go software serves as an iTunes-like application to manage all your media files on your phone. It has a drag and drop interface that makes easy to add any songs, videos or photos to your phone, and guess what? Also from your phone to your computer (take that iPhone!). As any new piece of software, Media Go is not without flaws. When transferring songs from my library into my phone I received many error messages about unsuccessful transfers. I was able to go back and fix some of those but sometimes there were so many that it was hard to keep track (the program puts a check next to all successful transfers but puts no visual indication whatsoever next to the unsuccessful ones). It also failed to display some of my iTunes artwork. However, if you already use iTunes as your music player and media organizing program, MediaGo will easily import everything from your iTunes folder. Another important caveat is that updating your phone’s firmware erases the phone’s internal memory (not the memory card or the SIM card), so it is important to back up your phone using the SE PC Suite before every update.
Call quality is just OK. It can get pretty bad in noisy environments, e.g. supermarket. Google maps works great. So, to sum up, if you are looking for a great-looking phone with a superb music player, OK video player, and OK camera and do not want to sign up for a 2-year bleed-out contract, you should definitely consider the W995a.
UPDATE (After 3 months with the phone): So even though the media Go experience hasn’t been the best, I was happy overall with the phone. That is until today when I updated the firmware. I backed up the phone as recommended, and followed all the instructions. Then, after the update I restored my phone using my backup. The contacts failed to restore and now I have lost all my contacts, but what is worse, all the customizations I had for some of them, i.e., ringtones and photos. Not only that, but about half the music and all the videos I had in the memory card got erased, which was not supposed to happen, since only the phone memory is supposed to be cleaned during the firmware update. All these things are just unacceptable for a cell phone this expensive. I never had such problems with my old iPhone. I will try to get rid of this phone as soon as possible and go back to Apple’s boring but reliable products.
Rating: 3 / 5