stripethree

Last Tuesday I went by the Cingular store and spent near an hour and a half fiddling with two Sony phones and one Treo. I spoke to a rep, got all my questions answered, and got an extra discount card for an ‘event’ for today. I did more research since Tuesday, and was pretty much set on what phone I wanted. I returned today, again fiddled with all three options, and as I expected, there was a clear winner. The Sony Ericsson W810i. I really think the ‘W’ is for ‘Wonderful’.

Maybe it’s just that this phone is so far above any beyond any that I have had before that I am thus far, so amazed. Maybe because I finally have my nerdy little hands on a phone that does everything, so far, that I want it to do. Its probably more feature packed that I need, but I thought, hey, after years of semi-basic phones, I wanted to step up. Thus, the Sony Z525a was out. As nice as it is, it just wasn’t enough. If I got it, I would have ‘settled’. Not something I was prepared to do, again. The Treo was excellent, far above and beyond what I needed and wanted, but just not worth the extra money. All that extra cash would go to features I just wouldn’t use enough, wasn’t really looking for, and certainly could live without.

Anyway, back to the wonderfulness of my new phone. First, it just looks hot. I’m sorry, but it does. It’s fantastic. So much better than the Samsung I had, and nearly the same size.

The screen is large, bright, and very easy to read. The only downside I see to the exterior is the surface of the screen and front, as glossy and nice as it looks, shows fingerprints fairly easily. I noticed this when I played with the phone on Tuesday as the display model had numerous prints from previous shoppers, but it’s something I was willing to overlook given the other things it does flawlessly. Some screen covers for a Palm could remedy this is if becomes overly annoying.

The most prominent feature I wanted in my new phone was the ability to sync address book entries and calendars from OS X over Bluetooth. Um, done. And so easy, it’s disgusting. Setup took… 2 minutes? Maybe? No extra software, no extra configuration, nothing. The grin on my face was large and nerdy. Once it was working, I added numbers from my old phone into OS X Address Book and synced them to the phone while it was resting on the dresser in the other room. That, that is the dream, and, wait for it… wait for it… here it is in my little wonderful Sony.

As a wonderful bonus, it syncs my to do list items, has very iCal-esque month, week, and day views for events, and adding events through the phone is about as easy as it can be without having a full keyboard (and yes, they upload to the computer as well!). This is something I don’t intend to do often, but the fact that the capability is there and after trying it a few times, seems fairly easy to use, is even better. I tried the full keyboard on the Treo, and it just wasn’t going to happen, the keys are took small and too closely spaced. My thumbs thanked me for not getting the Treo.

Now, I wasn’t all that interested in music service or a fancy camera in a phone, until I saw and used those features in this phone. A 2-mega-pixel camera is built in with a light, but no flash. That’s fine, the flashes usually suck anyway, and the light seems to work well for indoor, less than ideal lighting. This will not replace my beat up Canon Powershot, but it’s cool to know I can take pics with them and have them be half decent. Did I mention that the phone came with a 512mb memory card that can store said pictures? Yeah, not bad, and I can always buy a larger card should the need arise. Oh, and it does video too, of course.

The other thing that memory card holds? Mp3s. Wonderful, fantastic mp3s. One of this phones big selling points, as far as Sony and Cingular are concerned, are the music/walkman capabilities. Even though it wasn’t something I was really looking for, it wows me. The visual menus and ‘wheel’ used for navigation are vaguely familiar (:cough: iPod :cough:) in a good way. Flattering in its imitation. The sound quality is pretty good. I can definitely see myself using the walkman capability when I’m iPod-less and bored, provided I remembered some headphones. Side note: it appears you have to use Sony’s connector which then yields a standard headphone jack, so we’ll see how often I actually remember said connector. Did I also mention that I can get Internet radio through Cingular’s MEdiaNet and standard FM radio as well? Um yeah, be jealous. More thorough reviews of said features will come.

Now, the icing on the technological cake that makes these previous two features go from ‘wow’ to ‘oh my god I’m falling all over this little candy bar of wonderfulness’ is the Bluetooth file transfer. I’m lounging on the couch with the phone over on the table. I want the picture I took with the phone and at the same time, would like to get an mp3 on board to test the music capabilities with something over than the sample files. Cords? Hahaha, I laugh at you and you sit far away in the other room! I select ‘Browse device’ from the little Bluetooth icon in my OS X toolbar and I can upload and download files to and from the phone without so much as getting off my lazy rear end. I see the phone light up, indicating the file transfer has started and I can’t help but giggle at the technological marvel. This is how things are supposed to be: intuitive and simple. Sure enough, the picture downloaded perfectly and then I uploaded it to show it off here. Next task for another day in the very near future, figure out how to send pictures from the phone to the blog and have them automatically posted. I know it came be done, just you wait. The music file uploaded perfectly as well and even kept all the artist and album information I had entered into iTunes. The sound quality is damn good, I’ll have to listen to the same song back to back of my iPod and the W810i to compare, but I bet it’s pretty close. Transfer speeds over Bluetooth were pretty good as well, it took less than a minute to get a 5mB mp3 uploaded. I’ll have to try some more files to see how the transfer rate and connection holds up, but so far I am again impressed.

I could go on and on and on, and I probably will in the future, but that’s the tip of the iceberg. I have a temporary number for now until my Sprint contract expires on November 2nd. Rest assured two wonderful calls will be made on the 3rd, one to my Cingular rep. to transfer my longstanding number to my new phone and a second to Sprint to cancel their service with glee. Yes, GLEE. Oh, and how can I forget. Sony phone with Cingular: 5 bars in the apartment. The Samsung and Sprint combo: a measly two bars if I’m lucky, and even then, calls tend to drop once they are connected for a minute or two. No such ugliness with the new service so far.

I love when things just *work* they way they are supposed too. This makes for a happy Jeff.