Hands-on: Sony W800 Walkman Phone

It's a phone! It's an MP3 player! It's convergence!

For those too young to remember the original Sony Walkman (a statement that will suddenly make many readers feel very old), we must labour the point that it was to portable music what Hoover was to Vacuum Cleaners. Many people from certain generations still call all portable music players, regardless of what they are, Walkmans.

Over the past couple years we’ve seen Sony attempt to rebirth the Walkman brand with their MP3 players. But while these look great, sound great and have never-ending batteries, they’ve been hamstrung by the horrendous SonicStage file transfer system, and the instance of Sony on using the god-awful ATRAC DRM system.

But this relaunch could recapture the imagination. The W800 Walkman phone takes a little getting used to with its unusual ivory and amber colour scheme, but we didn’t find anyone that didn’t like it. It’s actually more like the uber-popular Sony Ericsson T610 than the excellent K750i (see this month’s magazine).

It does everything that the K750i does – there’s the excellent 2 megapixel phone, speedy 3D games processor and brilliant BlueTooth QuickShare implementation. However, when you turn it on it asks whether you want to disable the phone options and just use it as a music player. The shortcut menu button now takes you directly to the Walkman functions too.

This applet works similarly to an iPod in that you select tracks via artist, tracks, album etc. Tracks played sound impressive even when played on a loud speaker. There’s no integrated 3.5mm jack for your own headphones, but Sony does include an adapter. This plugs into the bottom of the phone and has a 3.5mm jack at the other end (which also sports an integrated microphone – meaning you can use it as a hands free system). Sony also includes a generous 512MB Memory Stick Duo card, PC Cable and some useable headphones making it a very attractive package.