Sony Ericsson W902 mobile phone

Sony Ericsson's new Walkman mobile phone offers clear bass and premium headphones

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The Sony Ericsson W902 is a HSDPA-capable mobile phone that doesn’t offer any groundbreaking features, but it scores points for its sturdy design and excellent music capabilities.

Pros

  • Candybar design, layout and placement of controls, good screen, excellent sound quality, 8GB M2 card included, Sony Ericsson HPM-77 headphones

Cons

  • Proprietary charging/headphone jack, no outstanding features

Bottom Line

The Sony Ericsson W902 mobile phone doesn't break any new ground, but if you're after a music phone, then the premium headphones and excellent sound quality of this handset is sure to impress. It’s a shame about the proprietary headphone jack.

Would you buy this?

  • Price

    $ 699.00 (AUD)

The most striking aspect of the W902 Walkman phone is its candy bar design. It feels well built, solid and definitely capable of taking a few knocks, but at the same time, it's light and comfortable to hold. The matte black finish attracts few fingerprints, and the diamond-etched pattern on the right side and the rear casing adds some style and at the same time makes the phone easy to grip.

The Sony Ericsson W902 Walkman's controls are straightforward. The five-way navigational pad doubles as music playback controls, and the phone also has two selection buttons, answer and end call keys and a number of shortcut buttons. On the right of the handset are dedicated, translucent Walkman buttons that include a volume control, play/pause key and previous and next keys, while a Walkman button on the top launches the music software. The W902's keypad looks small, but the keys are raised, well spaced and comfortable to type on.

The Sony Ericsson W902 includes the latest Walkman music software, which is integrated closely with multimedia features including photos, videos, games and Web feeds. The included Sony Ericsson HPM-77 premium headphones produce a crisp and warm sound with excellent bass, but the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack is disappointing (despite the included adapter). The sound quality produced is excellent and like most of the Walkman series, audio is definitely the most attractive feature of this music phone. Equalisation options include treble, heavy, pop, jazz, normal, unique, soul, easy and bass presets. Stereo widening, clear bass and clear stereo are also present, aiming to boost the music experience.

Sony Ericsson's TrackID feature allows you to record a few seconds of any song and send the snippet to a music database. If the song is recognised in the database, the title, album and artist name details are sent back to you. In our tests, we mainly sampled mainstream songs and artists on the radio — but we found it works quite well. The W902 Walkman phone also includes A2DP Bluetooth and an FM radio, along with Shake It! and SensMe technologies. Shake It! allows you to skip tracks by simply shaking the phone, while SensMe allows you to create a playlist based entirely on mood and tempo.

The Sony Ericsson W902 is a HSDPA capable mobile phone and also features Bluetooth and USB connectivity (via the proprietary USB cable), but there is no Wi-Fi. The phone comes with just 25MB of internal memory, but the included 8GB Memory Stick Micro (M2) should be enough to satisfy most users.

Other features of the W902 Walkman phone include a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, a video player and some of Sony Ericsson's proprietary applications such as VideoDJ, PhotoDJ and Music DJ. A front mounted VGA camera means you can make video calls over a 3G network. There's also remote control and sound recording functions and a host of organiser features including calendar, tasks, notes, alarms, calculator, synchronisation, timer and stopwatch.

Vodafone offers the Sony Ericsson W902 for $0 on a $49 per month contract over 24 months. The plan includes three months of free access, $340 worth of standard calls and messages, and unlimited free weekend calls to any Vodafone mobile within Australia. For an extra $9.95 per month, Vodafone also offers 100MB of mobile data.

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