Sony Ericsson W715 – Review And Unboxing Video

Walkman. Not that 30 year old Walkman from Sony, but the popular Walkman series from Sony Ericsson. The W715 is part of this Walkman series – this W715 is not a brand new model, so it’s currently in a good price range, making it a very attractive Walkman phone.

Let’s check it out. The package is quite small and simple. Contains the phone itself, Memorycard/USB adapter, Headset with multiple ear plugs, charger and some information/manuals and a CD with software.

Sony Ericsson W715 is a 3G phone that supports GSM 850, 900, 1800 and 1900 – so it’s a quad band phone. Besides that it also has Wi-Fi (and DLNA), EDGE, Bluetooth and the typical connections. It’s 95mm high, 47.5mm wide and 14.3mm thick and weighs in at 98 grams. The camera is almost not worth mentioning, a measly 3.2 megapixel without autofocus. What a shame. At least they could have included autofocus.

W715 comes with an 8GB M2 memory card – nice!

Quality wise, the W715 seems pretty well built. I remember my old W580 (Walkman edition of the S500), the slider wasn’t anything as good as this. The W715 front is metal and the back is some kind of plastic/rubber that feels very nice and doesn’t make the phone slippery.

When it comes to buttons, it has a typical Sony Ericsson “upper body” button structure, with its D-Pad, activity menu shortcut and so on. They are all pretty good and gives good feedback. The keypad buttons are a bit more “getting used too”. They have an okay feedback but I’m certain they will improve once you get used to them and they’ve been used just a little bit. On the right side there’s a very small volume rocker, could be better. On the top you’ll find a “W”-button that launches the Walkman. It’s very small and almost submerged. I doubt I’d use that button very much.

The Walkman software in Sony Ericsson W715 is version 3.0, the newest available from Sony Ericsson. Unless you’re very much into the whole iPod-experience, you will most likely find this Walkman player to be pretty good and definately easy to use, after a few tries. It plays acceptable through the standard headphones, while the built-in speaker is so bad that your music deserves a lot better. Too bad there’s no 3.5mm jack output directly from the phone, you have to use the enclosed adapter if you need to connect your own pair of headphones. And this adapter goes into the side of the phone, not the top or bottom…

Despite it lacks of a quality camera, the W715 sports some pretty nice multimedia features such as a built-in YouTube player and video player. Five games, including Guitar Rock Tour.

And now to the feature that doesn’t make me want to put this phone off as a low-level phone; the built-in GPS unit. It even comes with Wayfinder Navigator (at least in Scandinavia) but it requires a license after some time, if you want to keep using it. There’s free alternatives though (AmazeGPS and Nav4All, which you can download and install). To make further use of the GPS you will find the “Tracker” application, to help you work out and track your progress. The GPS will also geo-tag your pictures so you can view them on a map, e.g. Google Maps, later on.

Finally- Mac compatibility, yes it’s there. Download the iSync plugin directly from Sony Ericsson and you’re ready to sync your Contacts and iCal from your Mac (requires Tiger or Leopard).

Lets summarize what I think about this Sony Ericsson W7150 phone. The bad stuff first:

• External speaker is so bad that **censored**.
• Side/top-buttons requires a user with small fingers.
• Lack of autofocus in the camera.
• It’s not an iPhone.

And now on to what I like about it:

• Price.
• Good quality and slider.
• Small (physically).
• GPS and Geo-tagging (but on crappy pictures).
• Connectivity (3G, Wi-Fi etc).
• 8 GB memory card in the sales package.
• Great music player for those who’s not too much in love with their iPod.

Rating:

Explained: I wanna give it five apples for being a great phone in its segment, but the camera is so bad (I know, it’s a Walkman phone, not a Cybershot, but still…) that I have to remove one apple for that. Then comes the external speaker, it can’t be that bad on a Walkman phone, one more apple removed. The price and quality does add an extra apple though, so I land it on a 4 apples in total.

Buy the Sony Ericsson W715 if: Price matters, you’re on a budget. You want a great Walkman phone and won’t be using the built-in external speaker much. You like a small cool slider phone. You dislike or don’t need a touchscreen.

Steer clear of the Sony Ericsson W7150 if: You want a decent camera. You need good built-in external speaker(s). You’re into iPod music players. You like touchscreen. You have too big fingers.

Video: Unboxing of the Sony Ericsson W715

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