w595 Blue (Slider Open)Despite being available since around September 2008, I have only just got around to upgrading my Sony Ericsson w580i to the updated, albeit very similar looking, model that is the w595. Sony Ericsson, being my favoured manufacturer, have yet to disappoint me with a device I’ve bought from them. My first experience was with the k750i, which is probably why I fell so in love with the brand. I’ve since owned the w880i and of course the w580i I have just upgraded from. The w880i was a good move; the Walkman© phones have always had excellent quality media capabilities, although at a cost of the obvious drawback of losing the higher-end cameras etc. Sticking with the Walkman© phones, the w580i was fantastic, although like all SE phones recently, it had a few bad reviews due to certain problems with non-essential parts of the phone.

Back to the w595… As soon as I opened the box I panicked; Where was the CD-ROM and the User Guide? A little leaflet inside then instructs you that you must now download these from the Internet as they are trying to be more eco-friendly. Crisis averted (unless you have no Internet access). I removed the handset and set aside as well as removing the, now extremely familiar, charger and USB cable along with the ear-phones. The ear-phones felt a little bulky however. As I examined them, I noticed that the larger size was due to the extra port for a second pair of ear-phones. Now, this isn’t something I would regularly use, but it is still a nice feature to have and I’m sure very useful for people in some situations.

Putting it together

I then inserted my own SIM card into the phone, replaced the 2GB M2 card that came in the box with the 4GB I was already using in the w580i and turned it on. Now, again the phone has had some criticism over the “flimsy” back cover with people feeling as if it would snap (In some cases it has reportedly snapped). However, after using the w580i for so long, this back cover seems to be a dream. All it takes to remove is a simple nail into the groove and a quick pull (Speaking as a habitual nail-biter, I can testify to how easy this actually is). Pushing it back on seems to take more than a simple click though at the top and the bottom and may require the sides to be clicked back into place.

Setting up the phone

After going through the usual setup wizard you find on SE phones, I was presented with standby mode (decorated with the blue 02 theme I’m so used to seeing as a default). My first port of call with any new phone is to go straight to the settings to fix all the little annoyances (I’m quite set in my ways about how I think phones should be set up. I’ve noticed for example, that both the w580i and indeed the w595 both have the option for ending a call by closing the slider disabled by default). After doing the important settings first, I changed the theme to see which one I would be able to stand the longest. The phone introduces 3 completely new themes: Connecto, Pastelle and Splatta (which appears to be a much better variation of a theme I didn’t like very much for the w580i). After changing this, I went back to an option I had come across a moment before called “Main menu layout”.  If you have ever done any “phone modding”, the options will appear very familiar. They are the 3 options for how the main menu is displayed (Grid, Rotating and Single Icon). The days of having to access the phones file system and edit a file are over with for this phone. Whilst I was on the main menu checking out these different displays, I noticed a new option on the left soft-key (the phone essentially has 3 soft-keys including the central play/stop/ok button. This option was entitled “options”. Fairly inconspicuous to be honest, but it allows quick access to both the theme setting and the menu layout without having to go through the settings. So I quickly changed the theme to Connecto, which apart from the Electric Blue text, seemed to be the best theme. Oh my God! The menu switched to the Flash-based beauty that I have been so accustomed to. I should explain this for those of you that do not know about this:

Flash Menus explained

Quite a few of the SE phones come with what is known as a Flash menu. Yes, that’s right, Flash as in the Macromedia/Adobe product you’ve all been using to play games on the Internet at school/work. The only problem is, the operator (in my case 02) places their own icons on the menu (usually just WAP links etc) which actually breaks it and forces the phone to revert to the classic menu similar to that of the k750i. In the case if my w580i, it actually stopped the phone from using light settings (LEDs built in the phone to create little light shows when the phone was in use, one of the most attractive features.) and on other operators (AT&T for example), it was claimed that any ring-tone you set from a media file would only play for around 15-30 seconds, whereas it should have played continuously. The only way to fix the phone to work properly would be to delve once-more into the phone’s file system and “debrand” the phone. Some places offer this for a charge (although I do all mine myself) and they will usually open the phone to accept all networks at the same time. The only down-side to this is that you lose all the operator-related content, which is in most cases, never used anyway. Look out for an upcoming post on how to unlock, debrand and patch most Sony Ericsson handsets. Coming Soon…

The Main Menu

So the menu, is essentially the same as what I had on the w580i, although the icons have moved around a bit, which may take a bit of getting used to. One major part of this move around though, as any SE user would notice, is that the File Manager icon is missing. I’ve actually seen people post that they will be returning the phone, partly because of this. Which shows how long it takes people to rate a product, seeing as the menu has just been replaced as a sub-menu inside the “Organizer” menu; a logical place in my opinion… The reason for this though is to allow the shiny new icon of the “Media” menu. It kind of reminds me of the way you could access songs on older Walkman©models, except that it has a better layout, has animated backgrounds depending on the theme and also includes Music, Photos, Videos, Games, Web feeds and also has a settings option. The games option may be a bit superfluous however, as it has an icon on the main menu.

Media Player

The media player has changed slightly from the versions I’ve previously used. It is now version 3.0. I feel it is now better looking and more optimized for use on slightly larger screens (the screen is a 2.2″ rather than the 2″ of the w580i). One thing that might slightly annoy me is the fact that the ear-phones must be plugged in to change the equalizer settings. It’s nothing major as it obviously uses it’s own EQ settings when they aren’t plugged in so as to get the best performance out of the built in speaker; I do still feel however, that you may want to change the setting for the next time you do actually want to plug them in. The radio seems to have remained completely untouched, even since the release of the k750i; how much can you change something that does such a simple job so effectivley?

The Video Call Fiasco

Now for video calls, a feature I have never used in my life, but I like to exploring on my phone so I know is there. It seems a bit wrong to me. With my w880i, you had a front-facing camera near the ear-piece that you used for this purpose. You could also change it to the rear-facing camera if you so wished. I am a bit disappointed with the phone in this area. Am I supposed to turn my phone around if someone does ever decide to video-call me? Seems like a bit of an after-thought adding the video-call feature to be honest as the designer sure didn’t take it into consideration.

J2ME “Java” Applications

The phone came with a few Java applications as standard including a familiar World Clock (from w580i applications), Walk Mate (similar to another w580i fitness feature), Music Mate 5 (also available on previous phones), a converter application (which you usually have to download elsewhere, all bugs included) and a rock bobblehead (can’t see any purpose to this except to show-off the fact that it has a built in accelerometer, which we can all tell by the fact it has shake control, orientation based display (rotate phone to rotate display) and a pedometer function. It does also have a comic strip maker though, although it is essentially a 5 frame media message.

The Camera

The camera seems to be of an excellent quality, although moving targets and dark rooms are best avoided as they will blur or be much too dark (even with the night-mode enabled). The photos and videos this handset can take can be uploaded straight to a blog (although it only seemed to support Blogger when I tried it, I will try again later as there are rumours it works for a variety of networks such as Facebook). I’m not 100% about this so I can’t say it’s a fact, but the resolution is a very peculiar 2048×1536, which some may notice is exactly double that of a very common screen size. I have a feeling the 3.2 MP camera is only capable of taking pictures at 1024×768 and interpolating them to make them bigger. Also, the photo fix option just seems to make pictures too bright (I’m not a keen photographer, but I would expect that they wouldn’t be too happy with the results of this feature).

General Design

The design of the phone is stylish candybar-slider, a little on the plump side, with a bit more weight behind it. When I say plump, I mean it’s not the slimmest phone (not as slim as the w880i for example, although this is a slider), but not as big as to be called bulky. It’s like a girlfriend toning up a bit of muscles; similarly it’s a good thing. The weight is not too much either. According to Wikipedia, it is 104 grams (which seems a little high for me as my side-winder mouse feels heavier with 30 grams of weight inside). Again though it’s a good thing, it doesn’t feel delicate and you know it’s there. It’s reassuring.

The Big Picture

Overall, the phone promises to be a popular choice with me, despite some noticeable flaws in the whole design. It’s altogether a more grown up phone than it’s previous counterparts, as you would expect. Whereas the w580i felt like fun and a good phone for any teenager, the w595 has a more corporate look to it (based on my own handset; I have a silver one that appears to only be available on 02, whereas you can get a floral design or pink for the girls or jungle blue, cosmopolitan white or gold-ish for the boys). It even has grilles over the earpiece and microphone to make it more sleek. It remind me a high-performance car in the looks department looking from the top down.

Phone Information

Screen 240×320 pixels (QVGA), 2.2″, 262,144 (18-bit) color TFT LCD
Camera 3.2 megapixel
Second camera not featured
Input Keypad, Accelerometer,Motion sensor
Defaultringtone Polyphonic, Realtone (MP3/MP3/AAC)Video Ringtone (MP4/3GPP)
Memory 40 MB Internal, Memory StickMicro M2
Networks GSM 900/850/1800/1900 andUMTS and HSDPA and EDGE
Connectivity HSDPA, 3G, USB 2.0,Bluetooth 2.0
Physical size 3.9 x 1.9 x 0.6 in.
100.0 x 47.0 x 14.0 mm
Weight 3.7 oz
104.0 gr
Form factor Sliding candybar
Media Walkman 3.0