Sony Ericsson W8

Today we’ll be reviewing the Sony Ericsson W8. This is a relatively weak phone, and when I say weak I mean really weak. But then again, it’s quite affordable and a really good way of experiencing the Android OS experience without actually paying that much for it. If you’re curious to try out Android on a phone that doesn’t cost much and is fairly reliable.

You can get Sony Ericsson W8 from Amazon.

Without further ado, let’s begin this little review.

GENERAL

We’ll begin by taking a look at the more general features of the Sony Ericsson W8. Here you can find out a bit of info about the supported networks and the announcement and release date. The Sony Ericsson W8 supports both 2G and 3G networks. Those networks are as following : GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900 ( the 2G ones ) and HSDPA 850, HSDPA 900, HSDPA 1900, HSDPA 2100 ( the 3G ones ). This phone was announced in April 2011 and was released a month later, in May 2011. That’s enough about this, let’s move on since there still is a lot of ground to cover.

BODY

Next we’ll be taking a look at the aspect of the Sony Ericsson W8. Here you can find out a bit about the size and weight of the device, as well as whether or not the Sony Ericsson W8 has any particularities we should be aware of. The Sony Ericsson W8 is around 99 x 54 x 15 mm big and weighs somewhere around 104 grams. It has no other particularities, other than being a really tiny phone. If you are to compare it with a normal Xperia, the W8 is roughly half the size. Since there’s nothing left to say here, let us move on.

DISPLAY

Next up we’ll be taking a look at the display of the Sony Ericsson W8. Here you can find out a bit of info about the type of screen of the Sony Ericsson W8, the screen size, the screen’s resolution and its pixel density as well as whether or not the Sony Ericsson W8 has any screen protection and any particularities that we should be aware of. The Sony Ericsson W8 has a TFT capacitive touchscreen with approximately 16 million colors. The screen of this device is around 3.0 inches big and can house a resolution of approximately 320 x 480 pixels. The Sony Ericsson W8 also has a Scratch-Resistant glass surface, to protect your screen. I’m not so sure whether or not it has Multitouch since it isn’t really specified. What it does have, however, is a Timescape UI, which you can activate or deactivate at your convenience. That’s enough for the Sony Ericsson W8’s display, let’s move on.

SOUND

Next up we’ll be taking a look at the audio output capabilities of the Sony Ericsson W8. Here you can find out a bit of info about the Sony Ericsson W8’s alert types, speaker and audio jack as well as whether or not the Sony Ericsson W8 has any sound enhancements whatsoever installed on it. The Sony Ericsson W8 has Vibration and MP3 ringtones as its alert types. This phone also has a Loudspeaker and a 3.5 mm jack. It has no obvious sound enhancements on it, however, the Sony Ericsson W8 is part of the Walkman phones from Sony Ericsson, so you can expect quite a high quality as far as music play is concerned.  That’s enough for the sound, so let us move on since there is still some ground to cover.

MEMORY

Next up we’ll be taking a look at the memory of the Sony Ericsson W8. Here you can find out a bit of info about the RAM memory and the phone’s internal storage space and way s of increasing it. The Sony Ericsson W8 has around 168 MB of RAM, which isn’t all that much, not much at all actually, but that should come as no surprise to anyone since I’ve already mentioned that this phone isn’t all that strong, but at least it’s cheap. The Sony Ericsson W8 has an internal storage space of approximately 128 MB. This time I’ll let it slide, since this phone has little storage space. If you desire more, the Sony Ericsson W8 has a Micro SD card slot that can use any Micro SD card as long as it doesn’t exceed 16 GB. That’s enough said about the memory of the Sony Ericsson W8, so let’s move on to the next part.

DATA CONNECTION

Next up we’ll be taking a look at the data connectivity of the Sony Ericsson W8. Here you can find out a bit of info about the GPRS and EDGE, the Speed and WLAN of the Sony Ericsson W8 as well as the Bluetooth and USB connections. The Sony Ericsson W8 has both GPRS and EDGE. It isn’t specified what Class those two are, but we know the speed for each one. The GPRS can reach a speed of approximately 85.6 KB/s, where as the EDGE reaches a speed of approximately 236.8 KB/s. The Speed of this device is classified in both HSDPA and HSUPA. More specifically, the Sony Ericsson W8 can run at around 7.2 MB/s in HSDPA and 2.0 MB/s in HSUPA. The WLAN of the Sony Ericsson W8 is a Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with no other things, but at least it’s there. The Sony Ericsson W8 also has Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP and its USB port is a Micro USB v2.0 one. That’s enough for the connectivity, so let us move on to the next part.

CAMERA

Now is the time to take a brief look through the camera of the Sony Ericsson W8. Here you can find out a bit of information about the main and secondary cameras as well as their features and capabilities. The main camera of the Sony Ericsson W8 is a 3.15 MP one capable of photographing at a resolution of around 2048 x 1536 pixels. The only feature of the Sony Ericsson W8 is : Geo-Tagging. The Sony Ericsson W8’s camera can record in VGA quality only with approximately 30 frames per second. The Sony Ericsson W8 has no secondary frontal camera, to some people’s disappointment.

BATTERY LIFE

Next we’ll be taking a look at the battery life of the Sony Ericsson W8, since battery is usually such a problem for Android Phones. Here you can find out a bit of info about the type of battery of the Sony Ericsson W8 and how long it can function. This phone has a Standard Li-Po 1200 mAh battery. This battery can survive for approximately : 446 hours in Stand-By 2G mode and 476 hours in Stand-By 3G mode. Also, the Sony Ericsson W8’s battery can last up to 4 hours and 45 minutes of talk-time and up to 23 hours and 40  minutes of continuous music play. There’s nothing more to say about the battery, so let’s just move on since there still is a bit till the end.

HARDWARE

Next we’ll take a look at the hardware of the Sony Ericsson W8. Here you can find out a bit of info about the three main hardware components of the Sony Ericsson W8 : processor, motherboard and graphics card. The Sony Ericsson W8 has a Single-Core 600 MHz ARM 11 processor which is accompanied by a Qualcomm MSM7227 chipset and an Adreno 200 GPU. All and all, not the strongest hardware configuration, but it will do for those that don’t want to pay a lot of money. That’s enough for the hardware, so let’s move on.

SOFTWARE

Next we’ll be taking a look at the Operating System of the Sony Ericsson W8. Here you can find out a bit about the OS version of the Sony Ericsson W8 and whether or not it can be upgraded to a better one. The Sony Ericsson W8 has Android OS v2.1 Eclair installed on it. Frankly, with it’s hardware, I see no other version functioning on this phone – no official version, anyway. Otherwise, you are free to install anything on it, however there may be unseen consequences such as the voiding of the warranty or contracts or such and certain malfunctioning of the phone. Enough with the software, let’s move on to the last part of the review.

FEATURES

Last but not least, we’ll take a look at the more random features and capabilities of the Sony Ericsson W8. The sensors of the Sony Ericsson W8 are : Accelerometer, Proximity and Compass. The messaging on this phone can be done via : SMS ( with Threaded view ), MMS, E-Mail, Push Mail and IM. The browser of the Sony Ericsson W8 uses HTML but has no integrated support for Adobe Flash. The Sony Ericsson W8 has a Stereo FM radio with RDS. This phone also has a GPS with A-GPS support and Java via Java MIDP emulation. The Sony Ericsson W8 is available in the following colors : Azure, Orange and Red.

Here is a brief list of what the Sony Ericsson W8 can do :

• SNS integration
• Walkman player
• MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player
• MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV player
• TrackID music recognition
• Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk
• Voice memo
• Predictive text input

This concludes our little review of the Sony Ericsson W8.  If you feel that anything is lacking from this review feel free to leave your suggestions in the comment section below for things which should be added and I will be sure to take them into consideration when writing my future projects. In the meantime, I sincerely hope you had as much fun reading my little review as I had writing it.

You can get Sony Ericsson W8 from Amazon.