Muse.On-The.Net

My current phone is a SonyEricsson W810i. I have been very pleased with this phone. It has everything I can think of a mobile phone should have, and most features are quite well done. I heartily recommend this phone for general use.

The disappointments are the camera and the video player. The camera has a number of nice features, including flash (which doubles as a flashlight!) and excellent controls which feel very much like a compact digital camera. However, the 2mp images are grainy and blurry. It seems nearly impossible to take a good picture, and far too easy create an eyesore. The video player’s fault is that is doesn’t maximize the display, so while the phone has a nice display area, the video is much smaller and therefore hard to see. If these features are important to you, this is not your phone of choice.

However, outside those setbacks, this phone rocks. Literally. It has the walkman label with pretty decent speakers, usable equalizer and megabass, a technology to enhance the perception of better bass. Sound is good enough that I never use earphones unless I’m around other people and don’t wish to disturb them. Radio reception is good, and you can preset 20 channels plus the seek function works very well (useful when traveling). Supplied applications allow you to create your own music and video clips and much more. The supplied games are fine but I just get went and got some free mobile phone games at MobileRated.

The flashlight feature has proven useful time and again. Once again, the ubiquity of the phone creates opportunity. Calendars, notepads, timers, alarms, stopwatch, etc. I had a contest of sorts with some friends to think up a function available on a hand-held electronic device that this phone didn’t provide and didn’t come up with anything useful. The phone even functions as a bluetooth remote.

At one time it was hard to convince people that mobile phones would become their interface to the world, but this reality is becoming easier and easier to imagine. While you may not work on your mobile phone, you may well transfer data files using it, or access your work remotely using it. When voice recognition becomes a standard feature, voice controls may simplify many tasks that today seem daunting with the small keypad interface. The W810i is a nice phone that is helping to lead us to the future.