Sony Ericsson W995 review

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8th April 2009 Author: admin - Unknown - Views:

The three standard layouts

The well-known Activity menu offers quick access to a user-defined list of favorite features, web, recent events and, of course, the Running Apps tab that takes care of multitasking.

Sony Ericsson W995
Activity menu: multitasking and shortcuts tabs

As with other Sony Ericsson phones, you can minimize the progress indicator when receiving a file over Bluetooth but you can't do that when sending a file.

Flight mode can only work with a SIM card in the device and requires a restart.

The interface is snappy and very polished. Auto rotation is enabled in the Media Center and is generally quite responsive. There's a slightly noticeable lag involved but we guess that's to be preferred over an extra-sensitive accelerometer that can often play up.

Phonebook keeps tabs

The phonebook has space for 1000 entries with 20 fields each. You can choose to view contacts in the phone memory or on SIM, but not both. Either way you can set up the phone to auto save to SIM all contacts that are being saved to the phone memory. You can also back up your contacts list on the memory card and restore it from there.

The Sony Ericsson W995 phonebook

Editing a contact uses the tabbed interface found throughout the phone. There are five tabs that group related contact details. The first tab is for names and numbers, next up is web addresses such as e-mails and URLs. The third tab is for storing a picture, a custom ringtone, group, message tone and voice command, the fourth is for postal details and finally the fifth has fields for a note and a birthday (which you are prompted to add to the Calendar too).

Sony Ericsson W995
Contact details are neatly presented in tabs

The name of a contact is filled in a single field, but you still have the option to order contacts by first or last name. The phone guesses which is which and does quite well at that, so even a "John von Smith" won't fool it. Naturally, you can search by gradual typing.

Telephony

There weren't any call handling or reception issues with the Sony Ericsson W995. Voice quality is great in both the earpiece and speakerphone.

Smart Dial is a great boost to usability. It looks up contacts whose numbers contain the digits you have typed or whose names begin with the corresponding letters.

Sony Ericsson W995
Smart dial makes things easier

The tabbed Call Log application should be familiar if you've used a fairly recent Sony Ericsson handset. It displays calls in four tabs, including All, Answered (Received), Dialed and Missed. When there are several calls made to or from a single contact, only the last one gets displayed.