It's a shake, a rattle and a roll

ISSUED BY UNWIRED
Author: THEO BOSHOFF

Sony Ericsson W910i

Sony Ericsson's latest Walkman phone, the W910i, is one of the most masculine-looking slide phones on the market today. Guys will like that it's not that girly, especially as slide phones are now en vogue and everyone wants one. The W910i comes in Noble Black and Hearty Red. The red one is more for the ladies.

According to Sony Ericsson, this is the phone that will "redefine how people listen to music on their mobiles ing the ultimate in flexibility and personalisation". I have to agree. The W910i features a new SensMe function that allows you to organise your music according to tempo and moods. You basically choose which songs evokes which mood and tempo, group them together as fast, slow, happy or sad, and you then simply pick a mood.

With the included Media Manager PC software, for transferring songs to your phone, you can organise all of your personal media before you put it on your phone. You can also select music on your PC or from CDs and easily convert the tracks to mobile-compatible formats before you transfer the songs.

In Summary

The phone has all the usual stuff, like a camera (only 2MP, though), TrackID, PlayNow and internet access to download songs and games, etc. I think this is a rather cool, gadgety phone and people will definitely be stopping and staring when you "shake" to the music.

Maybe the biggest draw-card to the W910i is its "shake" control functionality. It is a nice and gimmicky, as well as somewhat useful, touch to the phone. Contrary to popular belief, it is not only a flick of a wrist that lets you skip through tracks or a simple back and forth shake that shuffles your playlists. You still have to hold in a button to enable this function. If you don't hold in the button, you can shake 'till you are blue in the face and nothing will happen. I guess it's a kind of safety feature, because if you carry the phone in a pocket on a brisk walk, you might just be skipping songs all together. But to me, it defeats the purpose.

The motion sensors and detection does add a new dimension to playing games on your phone. With the preloaded game Marble Madness, you just tilt the screen to steer the marble where you want it to go. The racing game did not work with the sensor controls, but I was told by Sony Ericsson that this will be supported in the next upgrade of the game. The A - B buttons on the left, when the screen is tilted horizontally to play a game, give you a more authentic gaming feel.

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