Review: Sony Ericsson's Sporty W710

Sony Ericsson W710i

Sony Ericsson W710i

Sony Ericsson W710i

Sony Ericsson W710i

First announced in May of 2006, the W710i is Sony Ericsson's folder style Walkman music phone for the active set. In addition to the typical features found in a Sony Ericsson Walkman phone, it also sports things like an FM radio and a built-in pedometer to keep runners and walkers both entertained and informed.

Physical Aspects

Physically the W710i looks something like the company's Z520 and Z525 folder handsets, due to their use of a similarly styled loop antenna. But with that said, the loop antenna on the W710i is far less obvious, and will likely be mistaken by most folks as simply being a design element. The rubberized music controls and the associated lock slider, as well as the large external display, differentiate the W710i from the Z52x handsets.

The external display on the W710i is an orange back lit, 4 shade grayscale STN unit that has a 128x128 pixel resolution. It is physically quite large, and is made for displaying text in a high contrast, easy to read manner. This makes it the perfect companion for those rubberized music control buttons that straddle it on the left and right. The two keys to the left of the display act as the previous and next track controls. The pause/play button is on the right side of the display, next to a button that switches the display from showing track/music info to the standard time, signal strength, and battery display. The slider key located on the right side of the W710i locks the rubber buttons so that they won't be triggered by accident when you aren't playing music.

The music controls work well, but are a bit shallow feeling in use and are somewhat difficult to read since they are marked with labels of raised rubber instead of something with a contrasting color. My only real problem with them is that pressing on them while holding the W710i in your hand seems to cause a lot of sideways stress on the phone's hinge. I have not seen any evidence of damage, but I have my worries. The only other controls on the outside of the device, the volume rocker and the shutter button, are the typical metal type that we are use to seeing, and don't cause any potential problems since they are on the base of the device, instead of on the flip.

Sony Ericsson W710i

Sony Ericsson W710i

Sony Ericsson W710i

Once opened, the W710i's stiff but usable keypad and various control buttons are exposed. In addition to dedicated Walkman, web, and power buttons, the W710i also has a round, dedicated "My Shortcuts" key that brings up a user configurable list of menu shortcuts as well as provides a list of running applications, web bookmarks, and missed events/alarms/calls. A back/end key can be found on the left of the reasonable d-pad controller and center select button, and a dedicated C (clear) key can be found on its right.

The upper half of the phone is where the 262k color TFT display is located. It has a pixel resolution of 176x220 and is very bright and colorful. It can't be packed full of text and other information the way a nice QVGA display could, but for a music oriented feature phone like the W710i, it is more than capable of getting the job done.

 

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