Sony Ericsson s W595 is the successor to the very popular W580i. The company has made quite a few changes in the new model and added some more features to the list. As a result the performance of the device is expected to be much better than its predecessor. But how much better is what we are about to find out.
Bundle
Sony Ericsson W595
Battery
Charger
Headset
Data cable
2 GB memory card
PC Suite CD
Quick Start Guide
User's Guide
Design and Construction:
The Sony Ericsson W595 like its predecessor is a slider phone. Its dimensions are 100 x 47 x 14 mm and weighs 104 gm. The phone fits in the palm well and is quite slim and light, which makes holding it and carrying it around easy. The design of the phone is very attractive with tapering edges at the top and bottom, chrome trimming on the sides and honeycomb pattern loudspeaker grilles. Thankfully, except for the display the entire phone is covered by matte plastic, keeping it clean of fingerprints.
On the front we see the call speaker at the top centre with the light sensor on its right. Below it is the 2.2 display occupying most of the space. Below the display are the phone's navigation keys, consisting of the two soft keys, Call/End keys, the Activity menu key, Clear key and the 5-way D-pad. Sliding open the phone reveals the phone's alphanumeric keypad.
On the phone's right are the volume control keys. Below it is the shortcut key, the Walkman player and also works as the camera shutter key. One can also perform certain accelerometer-based functions in the phone by pressing and holding this key and then moving the phone accordingly (more on that later). On the right side we see the Fast Port connector.
On the top side of the W595 we can see the loudspeaker grille for the left stereo speaker. The grille however is a dummy and the actual position of the loudspeaker is on the rear side of the phone below the 3.2 megapixel camera lens. The lens is unprotected and hence is vulnerable to fingerprints and scratches. On the bottom side we can find the grille for the right loudspeaker.
The Sony Ericsson W595 feels pretty solidly built for the most part. But as is usual with sliding phones, the slider on the W595 is prone to some wobble. However, the sliding movement of the slider is very smooth and the phone can be easily slid open or closed with the thumb. The rear cover felt slightly loose though, especially after it was removed and closed a few times. Another thing to notice is the rather poor choice of placement of the Fast Port at the bottom right. Holding the phone in the hand becomes very uncomfortable when an accessory like a headset is connected to the port. Ideally it should've been at the top or bottom.
Display and UI:
The display on the Sony Ericsson W595 is a 2.2 262k TFT LCD. The display performed very well with incredible brightness levels and vibrant colors (the Reds did look a bit Orange though). Outdoors, the display remained readable even under direct sunlight. The brightness of the display can be manually adjusted and is also automatically done by the light sensor. The sensor automatically brightens the display in bright surroundings and vice-versa. However, sometimes the sensor tends to get confused about the intensity of the ambient light and hence tends to increase and decrease the display brightness continuously. You would then need to change the position of the display till it settles down at one level.
The Sony Ericsson W595 runs on the A200 platform. The main menu can now be displayed as a grid of twelve icons, in a rotating type or as single icons. Sometimes certain themes have their own way of displaying the menu icons. The sub-menus are always in the form of a list however. The W595 has the new Media player whose interface resembles that of the Sony PSP. The Media player combines the image gallery, the Walkman 3.0 player, the video player as well as the games and the web-feeds. You can have the accelerometer decide the orientation of the UI in the media player according to the way you hold the phone or permanently set it to portrait or landscape orientation. The accelerometer can also work similarly in the web-browser and certain applications and games which may support it. Everywhere else the accelerometer remains dormant.
A worrying fact that I noticed was the slow nature of the user interface, especially in the Walkman player when the music was playing. Opening of the menus and the animations seems much slower compared to what they once were in older Sony Ericsson phones. Even upgrading the phone's firmware didn't solve the problem. In fact the UI speed is more in line with smartphones rather than a regular feature phone, with certain smartphones being even faster. Compared to this the Nokia's Series40 interface is much faster.
Keypad:
The keypad of the W595 is quite decent. The earlier W580i had a problem with the initial batch of the phones where the keypad would crack. It was then solved in the later phones that were shipped. The W595 seems to have none of it, as even after some heavy typing the keypad felt solid. The navigation keys of the phone are very good. They are large enough and are comfortable to use with almost no mishits.
The alphanumeric keys of the phone are pretty good themselves except for a couple of things. First is that they are a bit too hard to press, which is a bit difficult initially but later on you do get used to it. Secondly the top row of keys is too close to the edge of the slider and this is something you never get used to. The Walkman key on the side however is very easy to press, even when you don't want to like when you are just picking the phone up thanks to its position and the key being very soft.
The backlighting of the keypad was a bit weird of the keypad was a bit of hit and miss. The navigation keys are well lit but the alphanumeric keys are very unevenly lit. The backlight seems to be only under the '1' and '7' keys and hence only the left side of the keypad is lit while the right side remains dark. And this wasn't just a problem with the W595 we received but others too.
Connectivity:
The Sony Ericsson W595 is a Quad band GSM 850/900/1800/1900 handset supporting 3G HSDPA. The presence of 3G will be fully appreciated when 3G gets launched everywhere in India. However, for now we can rely on the GPRS and EDGE support in the W595 for emailing and web browsing. The call quality and network reception is up to the standards that now we all expect from our phones (in other words it is great). The W595 also supports Bluetooth v2.0 and USB 2.0 for connectivity with your PC. You can also use your phone as a modem if you have GPRS activated on your SIM card.
Multimedia:
The Sony Ericsson W595 is a Walkman phone, but this time the focus is mainly on sharing your music. The phone has two stereo loudspeakers at both ends and more importantly comes with a headset that has an extra headphone jack for another person to connect his headphone and share your music. The music player is the traditional Walkman player, now in version 3.0. It supports MP3, AAC, eAAC, eAAC+, WMA and WAV formats as well as audiobooks and podcasts.
You can have your album art display on the Now Playing screen or can have one of the preset visualizations to play instead. The visualizations are however too small (about the same size as the album art) and mostly uninteresting. There is also a 5-band manual equalizer with 4 presets, including Sony's patented Mega Bass . The equalizers however only work when you have a headset connected and not with the loudspeakers. There is also a Stereo widening option along with Repeat and Shuffle playback.
Speaking of sound quality, I first tested it with the supplied headphones. These are the same ones that come with low-end Walkman phones like the W200i and W350i and needless to say don't sound as good as the in-ear ones that come with other Walkman phones. They have Bass Reflex printed on them, yet had very poor bass reproduction. Also, the left speaker on the headset we received distorted at high volumes. So it was time I switched them with something better.
Upon exchanging with the speakers on the HPM-75 the bass improved, the sound quality was much better now. Having said that, the bass response was still a bit low and this time it was the phone that was at fault. Only after judicious use of the equalizer did the bass manage to improve. The mids and highs however were respectable and so was the maximum volume. The phone however seemed to struggle a bit when two headphones were connected to it. The volume level would drop down considerably.
The loudspeakers on the phone are very good. They aren't the loudest ones that I have heard, but produce good quality balanced sound, much different from the usual treble-heavy sound of Sony Ericsson phones. However, I did notice that the sound from the right loudspeaker seemed to be louder than the left speaker. Also, the left speaker was bottom facing and would get muffled when kept on a flat surface. The odd positioning of the loudspeakers also ruined the stereo sound staging of the speakers (which reminded me of the old W550i). Still their overall performance was quite satisfactory. In fact they even sounded better than the speakers on the Nokia N85, which we recently reviewed.
The accelerometer on the phone serves more purpose than just auto-rotating the phone's UI. One can perform different functions by pressing and holding the Walkman key and then moving the phone in different directions. Moving the phone LEFT or RIGHT takes you to the previous or next track respectively. Moving the phone UP or DOWN increases or decreases the volume. Shaking the phone LEFT and RIGHT vigorously shuffles the playlist and randomly plays a track. The W595 also has Sony Ericsson's SensMe technology. You'll need to set the mood of your tracks through Sony Ericsson's Media Manager software before transferring and then through the SensMe feature the phone plays music according to the mood you are in. All these features might seem interesting but to be honest these are mostly gimmicks and one is hardly likely to use them everyday.
The Sony Ericsson W595 also comes equipped with an FM radio. The radio application has auto scan feature where it would automatically scan for radio stations and save them in the memory. It also has support for RDS. The reception strength of the phone seemed a bit weak and it would refuse to catch radio waves indoors. Outdoors however it worked fine. The FM radio cannot record the broadcasts though.
The camera on the Sony Ericsson W595 is a 3.2 megapixel with CMOS sensor. The camera lacks auto-focus, flash or a lens cover. You can adjust the resolution, the white balance, exposure levels and change the color settings. You also get the option to change the shutter sound or switch it off completely. You can shoot the image normally, in burst mode, through different frames or in the panorama mode. There is also a self timer; however there is no option to select the time lag.
The quality of the camera is average. In daylight the colors are accurate; however the overzealous noise reduction smudges the details in the images. This can be seen in pictures with foliage where the leaves sometimes are not distinct. The lack of auto-focus means macro images are out of the question. In low light condition the noise reduction helps in obtaining images with very little noise. But the lack of flash means, in very low light conditions it'll be hard to figure out what your subject is. Overall the camera on the phone is just an add-on rather than a major feature of the phone and should just be limited to some casual daylight shots.
The images and videos can be played in the phone's Media player. They can be viewed in Portrait as well as landscape mode. You can also start a slide show with various background music and transitions for your images. Image opening and zooming is pretty quick in the W595. Also it can open and play videos in QVGA resolution at 30 FPS but anything higher does not open.
Web-browsing:
The Sony Ericsson W595 comes with the Access NetFront web browser. This browser is one of the best out there, second to only the Symbian S60 browser and the Mobile Safari and in line with Opera Mobile. Pages look just as they would on a PC screen. There is even an option to modify the page layout so that it fits the phone's display without having to scroll left-right. The text-only option completely disables all the images on the page, which helps pages load faster; a boon for those on slow GPRS connections.
You can download any files that you want, even those that the phone does not natively support. Unfortunately there is no support for the full YouTube website. However, you can open the mobile version and stream videos (in fact there is even a YouTube application built-in to the phone for streaming videos from YouTube Mobile). The alphanumeric keys on the phone are assigned certain functions of the browser such as reloading, bookmark, etc. One can also install the Opera Mini browser, which works even faster. Overall the web browsing experience on the W595 is very satisfactory.
Navigation:
The Sony Ericsson W595 does not have a built-in GPS; however it does come with the Google Maps software built-in. It also has support for Sony Ericsson's GPS accessory, which upon attaching works with the Google Maps software to point out your location on the map.
Battery life:
The W595 is powered by a 950 mAh Li-Po battery. The battery life of the phone is pretty decent. With a few calls, some messages, 4-5 hours of music and some Bluetooth usage per day, the W595 lasted for two full days on a single charge.
Conclusion:
The Sony Ericsson W595 is great for those who want a stylish phone. In fact the phone's design is its biggest asset. But apart from that it doesn't really have what it takes to stand out from the crowd. The music playback is good, especially the loudspeakers but there is nothing exceptional about it. Phones like ROKR E8 and Nokia N81 can easily beat the W595 when it comes to sound quality.
Also, the W595 comes with a very average camera that cannot stand against the one in Nokia 5610 XpressMusic or Sony Ericsson's own C702. Even when seen as an all-round package, the W595 isn't particularly enticing. In the end the W595 just ends up getting overshadowed by its rivals (and its own stablemates) which offer a far more complete package at a similar price. I'd recommend this phone only for the style conscious or those who want a phone with two headphone slots.
The Sony Ericsson W595 is priced at Rs. 14,000-/.
Test unit sourced from Weber Shandwick