Sony Ericsson W800i Walkman and K750i preview

After playing around with the K750i and W800i Walkman for a couple of hours I believe Sony Ericsson has managed to created two new best selling phone models. At first glance, the K750i and W800i looks and feels like the popular Sony Ericsson K700i. They are all around the same size and the form factor looks similar. Very few new features have been added. The 700 to 750 upgrade is more like an evolution than a revolution. Number of Megapixels is now counting 2 and that's quite reasonable for a device on it's way out on the European market. The majority of the mid- to high-end phones on display at the CeBIT trade fair had a 1.3 Megapixel resolution camera. Even if internal available memory for user storage is decreased to 38 MB, you can now store up to 1 GB user data on an additional Memory Stick Duo card. That's around 2-300 songs.

The Sony Ericsson K750i

Sony Ericsson W800i Walkman mobile

New connection interface
It has probably been hard for Sony Ericsson to make the decision to go through with this modification, but they have created a new connection interface on the W800i and K750i. This means that you now can throw your old collection of accessories. They will not work with older devices. New accessories made for the K750i and W800i will not fit on to an older Sony Ericsson mobile phone either. All manufactures change accessory interface from time to time and since I have been able to use the Ericsson T39 charger on my S700i it is probably time to do an upgrade. The new connection interface is called fast port. The connector is optimized for fast transfer of images, music and other data between phone and other devices.

2 Megapixel camera
The K750i camera lens is protected with a sliding cover that's easy to open and close with one hand and without turning the phone around to find the opener slider. On the W800i you protect the lens with a small protection lens operated by a little slider key.

The K750i and W800i camera application operates in horizontal mode so you will have to turn the phone 90 degrees counter clockwise to capture pictures and adjust camera application menu settings. A new feature found in the K750i and W800i is auto focus. This might improve the picture quality by keeping correct focus, but I found this feature very disturbing. When you press the capture button, auto focus uses a couple of seconds before the picture is captured. I talked to some of the Sony Ericsson representatives about this and they also though this was strange. A half press on the shutter button is supposed to indicates focus, and a long press means taking a picture. It did not work out very well. It might of course change when the final product is released. Another new feature is macro focus.
This will probably increase picture quality when taking close up pictures. I have not checked the quality of macro pictures on a large display, so I can't verify if this works. The two new models have also adapted many of the possible camera application settings from the S700i model. These include picture quality, night modus, picture size, self-timer, effects and lights.

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Playlist
K750i also introduces a new feature call "Playlist", also found in the W800i Walkman model. I have felt the need for this type of feature since the launch of the first MP3 playing mobile phone model. This application organizes audio and video content in lists/groups. If you for example have saved both polyphonic ringtones and MP3 files in the same directory and you want to play only mp3 files, you can create a playlist with the MP3 files. Another name for Playlist could be Favourites.

Menus
The K750i and W800i menus are similar to the one found in previous models from Sony Ericsson. Some rearrangements have been done by moving a couple sub-menus to other part of the structure. The button located right below the display will take you to a new menu called "Activity". Here you can view missed calls, new text and picture messages, task reminders, shortcuts and get quick access to favourite Internet bookmarks. It is also possible to get a direct overview of applications that are running in the background, for example the media player or the FM radio.

Conclusion
Finally I must admit that I can't see much difference between the W800i Walkman and the K750i. All comments above except the camera lens hardware applies to both the Sony Ericsson W800i and the Sony Ericsson K750i phone models. The few difference between the W800i and K750i I have seen are: W800i has Walkman icon in main menu and printed on the cover, a dedicated button that probably will take you to the media player (in this pre-release version, it took me to the activity menu). That is probably the main differences.
I don't know what kind of accessory will be enclosed, but the W800i Walkman could be shipped with better headsets. W800i will be bundled with a 512 MB Memory Stick Duo card while the K750i only will have 64MB included. Both models can support up to 1 GB memory with Memory Stick Duo Pro cards.

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