Sony Ericsson W810i (AT&T)

Performance of Sony Ericsson W810i (AT&T)

Design: 8 Features: 9 Performance: 7 We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; EDGE) Sony Ericsson W810i world phone in San Francisco using the Cingular network. Overall call quality was satisfactory, but we noticed static and patchiness on more than one occasion. While the random fade-outs didn't last more than a second or two and could be related to the network, the phone's audio performance didn't quite measure up to that of its Walkman phone brethren. On their end, callers didn't report problems, but they could tell we were using a cell phone. On the upside, however, there was plenty of volume.

Speakerphone calls were about the same, with a slight echo effect, but the volume level was surprisingly loud, even when the speaker sat face down on a table. We successfully paired the W810i with the Plantronics Explorer 320 Bluetooth headset for acceptable audio quality. We also used Bluetooth to connect to the Sony Ericsson W600i and easily passed photos between the two handsets. The EDGE connection was sufficiently speedy for transferring small files, but game downloads took a couple of minutes.

Using the included Disc2Phone software and USB cable (which also charges the phone), we tried loading 40.4MB of music on to our W810i. Transfer time was relatively slow at 3 minutes, 20 seconds for the entire selection, so you'll be in for a wait if you're trying to move your entire music library. Moreover, while the software was easy to set up and had a simple interface, it wasn't without its quirks. For instance, when exiting the software after transferring some music, the W810i didn't recognize that the USB transfer was no longer active. And when we disconnected the USB cable, the phone froze for a few seconds. On the PC side, it prompted us for a driver every time we plugged in the phone. Though we didn't need to reinstall the software with each use, it was a bit annoying. Criticisms aside, music quality was on a par with that of other Walkman phones: clear and crisp, though one transferred song had some very minor hiccups. The W810i won't replace a stand-alone MP3 player, but it does the job admirably for short stints.

The Sony Ericsson W810i has a rated talk time of eight hours and a promised standby time of 14.6 days. In our tests, however, we got a little more than six hours of talk-time battery life and 12 days of standby time. According to the FCC, the W810i has a digital SAR rating of 1.04 watts per kilogram.