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 Sony Ericsson is on a roll with its music-centric Walkman phone line, and in the past year and a half, the company has been introducing new models as steadily as the beat of a drum. Its latest entry, the Sony Ericsson W710, puts a unique twist on the Walkman series. In addition to a series of fitness applications, it also comes with a sturdy armband for listening to music on the go. And of course, you get the usual assortment of quality Walkman phone features in an attractive, if a bit blocky, flip phone package. In all, it's a solid effort, despite a few missing features and an unimpressive external display.
   When we are speaking of sports, the other recent phone that first comes to mind is most definitely the Nokia 5500 Sport. But we won't compare the two phones as we don't perceive them as direct competitors. First, Nokia 5500 has a dust and splash resistant body, and furthermore it is based on the Symbian OS and thus it offers more versatile and expandable software capabilities. In the same time, it costs more. So they are not really direct competitors since they are targeted at different customer groups. Appearance and design
Dimension: 88 x 48 x 24.5 mm; weight: 111g.
Seeing W710 for the first time left us with an impression of cheap white plastic combined with unpretentious grey rubber - nothing fancy, really. Opening the clamshell, made things better, since the white plastic seemed glossy from the inside of the clam, while the grey plastic covering the insides felt and looked nice. The design of the W710's external display was a bit baffling. It's plenty big (1.5 inches, 128x128 pixels), but it has a monochrome resolution for showing the date, time, battery life, signal strength, and caller ID. While one on hand it's easy to read in almost any light, the lack of color support means it doesn't show photo caller ID and it can't act as a viewfinder for self-portraits. You can change the backlighting time, but the font size and brightness are not customizable. The camera lens sits just above the display, and in a disappointing move, Sony Ericsson did not include a flash or self-portrait mirror.  Surrounding the external display are dedicated Walkman buttons that give you full use of the player when the phone is closed. Not only can you open and close the player, but, unlike with the W300i, you also can pause, fast-forward, and rewind tracks. It's a very welcome improvement for a flip phone, and we liked the basic design of the buttons themselves. Besides being large they have a rubberized covering that makes them quite tactile and easy to locate by feel. Other exterior controls consist of a nifty slider lock mechanism on the right spine (like that on the Sony Ericsson W600i) and a volume rocker on the left spine. There's also a dedicated camera shortcut on the left spine but unfortunately it's unusable when the phone is closed. Speaking of a camera, this one is located on the usual place for all clamshells - in the upper portion of the external cover. The back of the Sony Ericsson W710 is bare with the exception of the loudspeaker grill which is styled in orange. The cover is made of the same white pearl shiny plastic that we see when the clamshell is opened. As expected from a sports oriented mobile, the cover has a rather secure locking mechanism which is opened with a slide. Keypad
Below the display and the oversize hinge is the well-designed navigation array. There's a four-way toggle surrounding a central OK button, two soft keys, and dedicated Clear and Back controls. As with other Sony Ericsson handsets, the W710i lacks Talk and End buttons; instead the soft keys perform those functions. The toggle is tactile and decently sized, and it can be programmed to give one-touch access to four user-defined functions. The other buttons are also large, and fortunately they are raised above the surface of the phone. Finally, you also get dedicated buttons for the opening the Web browser and a secondary menu of user-defined shortcuts. The latter control is especially useful, but both buttons are too small and are set flush with the surface of the phone.  The keypad buttons are also better than on many previous handsets from the company. As they're raised above the surface of the phone, it's easy to dial by feel, and we liked that there was some separation between the individual columns. What's more, a bright backlighting eased dialing in dim situations. On the other hand, while he had few misdials, we weren't in love with the keypad entirely. Besides being a bit slippery, the plastic buttons felt somewhat cheap for such a high-priced phone. Just below the keypad are a power button and a dedicated Walkman control. But like the aforementioned Web browser button, they're too small for larger fingers. Additional buttons
A look at the left side reveals that they are not the only side keys though. There we also see a dual volume key and the camera shortcut key. Placing the camera key on the left side hinted us from the very beginning that the camera is not made to shoot in landscape mode. Sizes, Ports and Slots
The Memory Stick Micro slot is located on the left spine, but you must remove the battery cover to access it. Though you don't have to take out the battery as well, it's not an ideal location--the cover is rather flimsy. The charger/headset port is on the bottom of the phone, but you can only use one device at a time. The right side of the W710 incorporates only the Infrared port and a hardware keylock for the dedicated music keys. It's a nice feature and it does a good job in preventing unwanted press of those. Display
TFT, 176х220, 262K colors
The main display is a 262K colors TFT one, measuring 1.9 inch in diagonal and has a resolution of 175 x 220 pixels. It's on par with the one used in Sony Ericsson W800 for example. It's legibility under direct sunlight poses no problem at all. You can change the brightness only. Camera
1600 x 1200 (2.0 Mp), Video, 8x ZOOm
The 2 megapixel camera of W710 does its job satisfactory without any bells and whistles. The quality of the pictures taken is comparable to that of pictures taken with Sony Ericsson K610. We've seen better quality cameras from Sony Ericsson, not to mention the lack of autofocus. The camera offers night mode, self-timer, panorama, frames, and burst shooting modes. It also features white balance correction. Several color effects are available, too. When it comes to orientation, the camera can only take pictures in portrait (vertical) mode. The colors in the W710 photos are quite correct; the resolution is not bad at all. As a whole the photo quality of W710 is just a tad worse than the W850 model we reviewed recently. It looks like Sony Ericsson uses different image processing in W710 than it's best photo models, like K800, W810 and the likes. The W710 images look artificially noise free, but this comes at a price. The noise suppressing routines smear fine details like the foliage of a tree. Look at distant trees in our samples and you will agree that they look strange. Menu
The main menu itself is made of a matrix grid with 4 x 3 animated icons. All sub-menus are in listed view with tiny icons on the left side. The phone reacts and performs fast in every submenu and application. There are several themes that come preinstalled in the phone. They change the color scheme, the wallpaper and the menu icons. Basic features for the W710 are similar to those of other handsets in the Walkman phone series. The phone book holds a hefty 1,000 contacts with room in each entry for five phone numbers, e-mail and Web addresses, a job title and company, work and home street addresses, a birth date, and notes. The SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts, and you can organize callers into groups. For caller ID, you can match contacts with one of just 14 (72-chord) polyphonic ring tones or assign them a photo or a video. Just remember that photos and videos do not show up on the external display.   Other essentials include a vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, an alarm clock, a calendar, a task list, a notepad, a timer, a stopwatch, a calculator, and a voice memo recorder (space is limited by the available memory.) On the high-end side, the W710 comes with a speakerphone (usable after you make a call), PC syncing, full Bluetooth with a stereo profile, e-mail, a code memo for storing sensitive information, and USB cable support. Fitness applications include a pedometer for running and walking, a sports trivia game, and a fitness trainer for tracking your workouts. There's even a bizarre yet interesting application that will you calculate how long it would take you to walk to various world locations from your home city.  Of course music is the main attraction on the W710. Its Walkman player is near identical to that on other Walkman phones (see the Sony Ericsson W810i for a full report), except that it doesn't offer Sony's Mega Bass. Also, as on previous models, you must use the included USB cable and the company's Disc2Phone software to load music onto the handset. Internal memory is capped at 10MB, so it's advised you use the included 512MB Memory Stick Micro card. You also get the FM radio that is near standard on Walkman phones and a Music ID application for identifying likeable tunes you can't name. There's also a quirky Music Mate application that shows the correct finger position for various guitar chords and piano chords while playing the notes. You can even use the phone as a metronome. Imaging
2 Megapixel Camera
2.5 x Digital Zoom
Video Clip
Video Record
Video Streaming
Digital Camera Menu
Macromedia Flash Lite™
Picture Editor
Picture Effects
Picture Phone Book
Picture Wallpaper
SVG Tiny 1.1
Image Blogging
Screensaver
Themes Display
VideoDJ™
Viewfinder Display
Wallpaper Animation
Messaging
SMS (Text Messaging)
MMS (Multimedia Messaging)
SMS Long
MMS Video
Email
Push Email
Predictive Text
Sound Recorder Sound
Walkman® Music Player
Media Player
FM Radio RDS
Music Tones (MP3 & AAC)
Polyphonic Ringtones (16 Voice)
Polyphonic Sound (72 Voice)
MusicDJ™
PlayNow™
Mega Bass™
Music Mode Entertainment
3D Games
Java™ Games
Embedded Games
Downloadable Games Organiser
Phone Book
Contacts
File Manager
PIM Sync
Alarm Clock
Business Card Exchange
Calendar
Calculator
Stopwatch
Tasks
Timer
Notes
Calorie Counter
Step Counter
Fitness Applications
Flight Mode
Vibrating Alert
Conference Calls
Handsfree Speakerphone
Connectivity
Bluetooth™
GPRS
Infra Red
USB
EDGE
Fast Port
Synchronisation PC
Network
Quad Band Technology (GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800 & GSM 1900) Internet
Modem
Access NetFront™ Web Browser
RSS Feeds
Memory & Talk Time
10 Mbytes Memory Plus Memory Stick PRO Duo™ M2™
10 Hours Talk Time
350 Hours Standby Weight & Size
101 g
88 x 48 x 24.5 mm Pluses
Attractive design
Good call quality
Walkman digital music player Minuses
Low resolution display
No Auto focus
Low battery life
Sluggish music player navigation Conclusion
Being among the few sports-oriented mobile phones on the market, the Sony Ericsson W710 deserves a nice score just for the efforts the manufacturer has put in it and the risk taken. Music quality on the W710i was on a par with other Walkman phones, though the lack of stereo speakers is disappointing. We still wouldn't chuck our stand-alone MP3 player altogether, but the W710i is fine for commuting, working out, or on plane rides. Nevertheless, we find the W710 to be an excellent implementation of a mobile phone, a portable music player, a personal digital trainer and a digital camera all-in-one. It's not a high-end device and it's not meant to be one. It's meant for fun and it manages to deliver what's expected |
