The Sony Ericsson W910 reinforced the Walkman ranks with a suave, yet strong performer. The thin and elegant slider does look the part, while HSDPA (3.6 Mbps) and Walkman 3.0 are the right features to expect in a high-end device. At first glance, the W910 brings a few brand new software and hardware solutions to the scene. Stay with us as we go beyond the disarming looks and try to determine whether Sony Ericsson W910 has what it takes to win the hearts of the customers.

Key features

HSDPA (3.6 Mbps), EDGE, Bluetooth (with A2DP)
SensMe™ and Shake control features
Slim sliding construction
Media Center, Walkman 3.0
Dedicated Call and End keys
Fast photo browser
Ample 2.4" display
Powerful loudspeaker
FM radio with RDS
1GB or 2GB M2 card included, M2 USB card reader

Main disadvantages

Comes at an overpriced price tag
Wobbly slider
2 MP camera with neither autofocus, nor flash
Only 40 MB internal memory
Video recording in QVGA resolution at 15fps
Irrelevant gaming/photo keys
No skins for the Walkman player

Sony Ericsson W910 comes in a nice compact black-and-orange box with all the necessary gear to get you started - charger, USB data cable, stereo headset, 1GB Memory Stick Micro (M2) (in our case, you may get yours with 2GB card), plus the usual papers and installation CDs. A tiny piece of hardware will make your face broaden into a grin. For the first time, a compact Sony Ericsson USB 2.0 M2 card reader with a status LED and a strap is included in the retail box. We ran a quick test on it comparing performance to a regular card reader on USB 2.0. The standard reader transferred 113 tracks totaling 492 MB in 4:30 min, while the Sony Ericsson USB 2.0 M2 card reader executed the task in almost the same time - 4:20 min. So, you get the same transfer rate and the compact dimensions are an added gain.

High-born Walkman

Refined exterior is what you would expect in a high-end device. Standing at the stunning 12.5 mm thickness and weighing 86 g, the new Walkman slider is thinner and lighter than its midrange relative W580. The greater width of the W910 is quite reasonable given the ample 2.4" display. The bodywork is dominated by straight lines and clean shapes, even the slanting bottom is a lot more subtle. The perfect hand fit and user-friendly keypad provide for great phone handling. The handset is offered in three colors: Hearty Red, Noble Black and the recently added Havana Bronze.

The large 2.4" TFT display dominates the front panel and scores high in both brightness and contrast, compared to the highly praised 2.2" TFT display of Sony Ericsson K850. The only one aspect where the W910 display lacks in comparison with K850 is reflection - W910 reflects the surrounding light to a greater extent, which leads to less dense black color reproduction. However, in general the W910 display is better than the ones of all other Sony Ericsson handsets we have reviewed - especially compared to the display of W960 flagship. Above it, a small secondary VGA camera is located, along with the earpiece. A controversial pair of keys encloses the secondary camera and earpiece. The manufacturer calls them gaming keys but they seem to have more of an imaging application. The right key starts the thumbnails, while the left one is used for opening the selected images. Alternatively, in camera mode one is used for starting Night mode and the other sets Shoot mode and Video size. Incorporating those Cyber-shot-inherent keys (we've seen such a pair in K800) in a Walkman phone with a basic 2 megapixel camera without autofocus and flash is a very odd decision, in our humble opinion. Walkman keys on the front would've been more appropriate, to launch the SensMe matrix or Shake Control for example, instead of trying to impress cameraphone aficionados.

In closed position, the handset has a neat rectangular shape. Sliding the phone open reveals the alphanumeric keys. The slide moves softly and evenly in its grooves to ensure a smooth flip open. When the handset is slid open, the top does appear slightly ajar, leading to a tactile and unpleasant wobble. We had this right from the beginning and we wonder how it will unfold with intense usage.

The Sony Ericsson W910 keypad will give you no reason to grudge. Its both parts are good enough. The highlight of the D-pad is the return of the dedicated Call and End keys, as seen in K850. Traditionally for Walkman phones, the Navigation Key also serves as player control when the Walkman is on allowing users to browse tracks, fast-forward, rewind, play and pause. The two dual buttons at the sides are home of the two soft keys, as well as the call and end key. The smaller round buttons are the Activity Menu and Clear keys. Next to the right soft key is the ambient light sensor, which controls the display backlighting. Although the light sensor looks too close to the right soft key, it's not likely to cover it with a finger while using the phone.

Sliding the phone up reveals the main alphanumeric keyboard, this time set in columns instead of rows as in the Sony Ericsson W580. The alphanumeric keyboard features the standard 12 keys. Given the slimness of the handset, the keypad is almost dead flat, but that doesn't get in the way of typing. Tactility is superb; the gentle clicking of the keys makes things even better. No reason to fear typos, despite the lack of space between the keys within a column.

Keypad backlighting is very subtle but even, and will go almost unnoticed, unless you use the phone in total darkness. The white backlighting of the navigation keys turns orange in player mode. Keypad locks automatically upon sliding the phone closed, a feature that cannot be turned off.

The right side of the handset makes up for the almost bare left. Here are the slightly elevated volume rocker, which can also be used for zooming when taking or browsing pictures, the M2 memory card slot, the flat shutter key and the lanyard eyelet.

The top part of the slider holds the On/Off key, which can also be used for fast switching between the ringing profiles. The Walkman key is much more interesting, but for the wrong reason. For the first time in the Walkman lineup the dedicated player key is controversially placed at the top. Among other things, it activates the Shake Control, but more on that later in the review.

The Sony Ericsson W910 bottom part features no keys or slots. Neat and simple, all you see is the Walkman logo. A suggestion that the microphone is placed somewhere on the inner side of the slide makes sense, as we didn't spot it elsewhere.

Rearside we find the 2-megapixel camera lens, Sony Ericson and Walkman logos and the loudspeaker grill at the foot of the battery cover. The locking mechanism of the battery cover is really intriguing. Below the cover there's a slider that either locks or unlocks it depending on its position. Once unlocked, a light push is enough to remove the cover. Under it is the 930 mAh Li-Poly (BST-39) battery. It's officially quoted at 400 hours of stand-by time and 9 h of talk time. In reality, 3 days of moderate usage is pretty much an adequate estimation, while adding extra diversions like listening to music or watching clips is sure to further reduce battery life. The SIM card holder is right above the battery bed. Removing the SIM card without the quick release mechanism is a feat.

Telephony

All the latest Sony Ericsson phones we've tested offer very good voice quality in making and receiving calls, and W910 is no exception. The quad-band handset offers great signal reception and ringing is powerful and crisp, so you certainly won't miss an incoming call even in noisy surroundings. This shouldn't surprise though, as this is a music-centered handset. The caller voice is clear and real.

Interface: old looks with a twist

The user interface in W910 has the well known Sony Ericsson feature phone style, spiced up with a few novelties. Besides the optimized Media Center and Flash Lite theme support, we have the debut of the Walkman 3.0 player with Shake control and the brand new SensMe feature. The auto rotate capability gives handling the phone extra flavor. As most previous models, the W910 comes with a dedicated Flight mode. When turning on the phone, you may opt to start it directly into Flight mode. The Sony Ericsson W910 cannot work in Flight mode unless a SIM card is inserted.
In active stand-by mode the screen displays information about the network signal, battery strength, current date and time, plus the next alarm due. Pressing the navigation key in any of the four directions can start a user-programmed feature or application. The main menu itself is a 4 x 3 grid of animated icons, each of which can be directly accessed by pressing its corresponding alphanumeric key. All sub-menus are in list view with tiny icons on the left side. Response is fast in every submenu and application.

Like Sony Ericsson K850 and T650, the W910 supports Flash Lite themes. All the preinstalled themes are Flash-based, Walkman being the default one. Flash themes are gradually gaining ground in Sony Ericsson handsets, which is a welcome effort. They are much more dynamic and attractive, with changes in the phone appearance affecting not only the color scheme and wallpaper, but also the menu icons and layout. Our favorite so far is the Under Water theme, which is the default one in T650, where home screen animations nicely overflow the keypad, changing its lighting in a very intriguing way. We installed it on W910 but again, as in K850, we found no keypad effects so this must be a feature reserved to T650 only. Flash theme support most probably has some limitations from one handset to the other. This is a minor issue, but a more fluent adoption of flash themes would be a benefit.

Back to W910, the themes take advantage of the handset's integrated accelerometer and the patterns and objects on the display react to every change of the position the phone.

The well-known Activity menu (with a dedicated shortcut on the D-pad) offers quick access to selected functions. The Running Apps tab inside it is in charge of multi-tasking. A feature we first saw in K850, allows minimizing the dialog window when you receive files via Bluetooth and opening the window on demand through the Running Apps tab. This is really convenient, as the phone is fully usable in the meantime, as opposed to other Sony Ericsson models, where you have to wait for the transfer to complete. Strangely, this is not the case if you're sending files to another Bluetooth device. The two available options are Cancel and Back, and both result in interrupting the file transfer. The Activity menu also offers quick access to recent events, the web menu and the My Shortcuts tab, which is a user-configurable list of favorite features.

Phonebook: thank you soft keys, again

The phonebook can store up to 1000 entries with a total of 7000 phone numbers available (as opposed to K850 with its capacity of 5000 numbers). The phonebook interface makes good use of the three-soft-key layout, as seen in K850. In contacts you can directly open any contact with the middle soft key. The old More key is renamed Options and is now on the left side, while in old models, it was inevitably stuck in the right. The third soft key corresponds to "back". Another practical use of the middle soft key is the Send Message option, available when a contact is open and a number is highlighted. A good feature is the Smart Search, which lists all available contacts in the phonebook starting with the digits typed in the standby screen. The search engine looks up both letter combinations in names and phone numbers that start with the digits entered. Here in W910 it can also be switched off if not needed. Also present is the Send All Contacts option that transfers the entire phonebook to another compatible Sony Ericsson device. Now, apart from sending the phonebook via Bluetooth, it is supposedly possible to transfer "as text message", "as picture", and "as email" too.

As usual, you can choose whether the SIM contacts or the phone contacts should be default for the phonebook. Displaying both lists simultaneously is impossible. On a different note, a nice option allows you to auto save to SIM any new contacts that you're saving in the phone memory. Contacts can be ordered by First or Last name. They are searched by gradual typing of the desired name.
When adding a new contact, there are several phone number fields available: Mobile, Mobile (private), Mobile (work), Home, Work, Fax and Other. This is the first tab of fields for the new contact. The second one is for email and web addresses. The third is for assigning a picture, a custom ringtone and a voice command. The fourth goes for Title, Company, Street, City, State, ZIP, Country information. The last, fifth tab, is for additional information and birth date. When you add the birth date, the phone prompts adding it to the calendar and setting a reminder, which we found to be a handy feature.

Call management

The Calls log is divided into four different tabs. They are: All, Answered (Received), Dialed and Missed. The maximum number of records is 30 altogether, shared between the separate tabs. When there are several calls made to a single contact, only the last call gets displayed. It's high time Sony Ericsson updated the call log to allow at least 60 records. People with a couple of dozens of calls a day will find 30 records quite insufficient, especially if they receive multiple calls from contacts not in the address book, which they would like to save.

Messaging

Along with the standard messaging functionality, Sony Ericsson W910 offers the Manage Messages and Manage Email features, plenty of settings for accounts, and the option to assign categories to messages. These features are embedded in the standard Sony Ericsson interface and will become standard for each new release. All messages, except emails, use one Inbox. No matter what kind of message has been received, it goes to the shared Inbox. Only email messages have their own dedicated Inbox. When composing a message, the character counter will alert you when you're 20 symbols short of the 160-character limit. The T9 dictionary goes without saying.

Users may opt to sort messages by category list, if a specific category has been defined for a message. Six of them come predefined: Business, Favorites, Follow Up, Fun, Holiday, Important, but categories are fully customizable as well. You can also delete all messages in a given category. Furthermore, messages in categories can have their own sorting with Contact, Date, and size the available filters to choose from. Much like in K850, in the general inbox there is no indication if a message has been assigned a category. The same holds true for messages that are opened.

The Manage Messages application consists of three tabs: All Items, On Card and In Phone, each having Drafts, Inbox, Outbox, Saved messages, and Sent messages folders. The options menu allows messages to be moved to memory card or phone memory, arranged by categories, date, size, and contact. Generally, Manage Messages, together with Categories, offers rich customization and improved message handling.

With the recently launched GSMArena.com RSS feed we tested the W910 reader located in the messaging menu. When new content is available, a pop-up indication appears on the home screen, prompting to read the issue.

The email client in W910 supports dozens of settings and all types of encodings, inherent to more advanced messaging devices. W910 can save attachments, no matter if they are supported or unknown file formats. Office documents as word, excel and PDF cannot be opened, of course. E-mail messages can be sorted by size, date and time. Viewing a message in fullscreen mode and changing the font size (small, medium, large) are handy options. There is a separate Manage email application, with the same structure and features as the one for SMS.

Multimedia: good, better … best

The high-end Sony Ericsson W910 features the Walkman 3.0 player with Shake control and SensMe feature. The player supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, E-AAC +, WAV, WMA, M4A and MIDI file formats and sports the MegaBass equalizer preset. The player can naturally be set to run in the background. If you are not willing to use the media player step-by-step interface, you can directly play a file through the file manager with its classic flat structure. It's a shame Sony Ericsson W910 doesn't offer additional player skins. On one hand, they are developing lovely flash themes, a few new ones found in each new release with revamped menus and effects, and on the other, the player doesn't get a single spare Walkman outfit for the weekends. And all that in a music-oriented phone.

With Shake control on, you can skip or forward a track with a flick of the hand. Tilting the handset right or left will take you to the next or the previous track. Shake it back and forth and it shuffles your playlist. Shake control also contributes to mobile gaming thanks to the integrated orientation sensor. If you are tired of using the dedicated gaming buttons, tilt the W910 left, right, up and down to make your move. It's gaming control without pressing keys. More and more sensors are likely to take phone handing to a completely new level in the future. With Sony Ericsson devices to come users will be able to reject a call by simply running a hand over the handset. However, at this stage Shake control is not that smooth and trouble-free. Dealing with tracks you will sometimes need to really jerk your phone to do the stuff. It's quite OK for the fun of it, but afterwards all that shaking and spinning may become a burden. Anyway, it's a feature that will be more widely appreciated as it gets polished up and implemented in more and more devices (it was introduced not so long ago with W580). After all, it signposts the way users will interact with their devices in the future. Other than that, the walkman key is so recessed into the surrounding surface that it's hard to press with one hand. Not to mention its unusual, to put it mildly, location at the top of the handset.
SensMe is a completely new way of browsing music, which debuts in Sony Ericsson W910. Searching collections and creating playlists based on tempo and mood is the focus, instead of the well known artist or album filters. The interface is original and visually appealing, tracks appearing as dots in a dual plane, placed along a horizontal and vertical axis. This way you can circle a group of tracks that match your mood to create a playlist, or simply select individual tunes if you prefer. You are also able to broaden or shrink the selection of tracks with the navigation key. An alternative for the phone's more conventional music catalogue, SensMe is the way to discover music that matches your current mood. If music on the W910 is uploaded via the Media Manager PC software, mood is directly assigned to each track. You are not able to assign it yourself. Furthermore, if you simply copy tracks trough the regular file browser, they will remain "unseen" for the SensMe matrix, so you are obliged to use the Media Manager to get the mood stuff. Another shortcoming is that managing music with Media Manager requires the phone to be set to Transfer mode, in which the phone is off for calls. The Media Manager transfers tracks too slowly - a 5 MB track usually takes 10 seconds - and that's another drawback. The 113 tracks (492 MB), which took 4:30 min to transfer with a regular card reader, will take about 20 minutes to get uploaded with the Media Manager.

The Media center menu lists the Photo, Music, Video, and Settings icons. The current pick is highlighted and the count of included files is displayed. The Media center is also accessible through the sixth icon in the main menu. The settings menu is simple - you may opt for portrait, landscape or auto rotate screen orientation, thanks to the integrated motion sensor. In Media center you are able to sort music by even more filters including the explained SensMe, the year, as well as the well known genre, albums, tracks, playlists, podcasts, etc.

If you are willing to find a particular song, but know just a part of its name, don't worry, just type it in track list and the phone will automatically find and display it. If you're not using some of the music options, you can disable them in the options menu.

Audio quality test

Being able to listen to your favorite tracks is one thing but playing them properly is completely different. Our audio quality test showed that the sweet spot for listening to music on the Sony Ericsson W910 is 2 steps below the maximum volume. Listening to music at the maximum volume boosts the total harmonic distortion and the intermodulation distortion, while using lower volume levels leads to huge deviations of the frequency response curve as well as enormous distortion as visible from the graphs. So we suggest using your W910 at exactly two steps below the maximum volume for best results. And there go our findings, so you can see for yourselves.

The video player, previously found in the entertainment sector, is now accommodated in the media center as well. It supports fast-forwarding and rewinding as well as playing clips in slow motion. The interface is simple but stylish, although it fails to impress from a functional point of view. The built-in motion sensor comes of use again, allowing the video player to auto rotate. Again, the video files are accessible via the file manager, but there you cannot opt to auto rotate the file according to the screen orientation, which we found a bit odd.

Image Gallery outscores the camera

The Photo browsing functionality in Sony Ericsson W910 is far better than the integrated camera, which produces passable pictures with a maximum resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels resolution and lacks autofocus. So, first things first.
The Photo gallery is accessible through the Media center, it's the third application in the list and has the following submenu items: Latest Photo, Camera Album, Photo Tags, and Pictures. Latest Photo provides quick access to most recent photos. Camera Album is a thumb list for each month of the year. When a month is open, it reveals a 4 x 3 grid of thumbs of photos. Scrolling down shows all the photos taken in the respective month. The highlighted photo is a bit larger for better browsing experience. The Pictures section opens again as a 4 x 3 grid of thumbs with non-camera images, like the preinstalled wallpapers. When exiting the full screen view of a picture, it smoothly zooms out to thumb view.

Generally, the Photo gallery is a convenient tool for managing a vast collection of camera photos with great customization capabilities. Photo Tags is a feature for displaying previously marked favorite photos. Pressing Up on the navigation key offers quick access to sending options like: send as Picture Msg, send as email, send to blog, and send via Bluetooth. Other than that, you can set a photo as wallpaper, screen saver, startup image, and contact picture straight from the gallery. Here is the Pan and Zoom option and the slideshow function, revealed when you further scroll down the submenu. Slideshows in W910 are just fine - before they start you are asked to pick a mood and the handset plays the animated slide shows with background music to suit the chosen mood. The transition style of the slideshow also varies according to the mood.

Accordingly, picture browsing via the classic file manager is still possible, only missing timeline view.
Editing a photo in PhotoDJ is just the same nice experience with the rich available options.
Sepia and negative are some of the available effects in the PhotoDJ.
You can zoom in to the actual size of the picture or even beyond. Extreme zooming in won't really reveal more details. All you'd get are smudged spots as a result of the extrapolation. We were pleased to find that viewing images one by one didn't involve any lags at all and browsing is even faster than in K850. We firstly thought this was due to the smaller 2 megapixel images, but after uploading original 5 megapixel images from K850 speed and smoothness were still at the same level. Pictures loaded immediately and continuous browsing didn't cause any lags.

Camera of passable performance

The Sony Ericsson W910 has a 2 megapixel camera with no autofocus, nor flash. It's quite inconsistent with the high-end status of the phone and its overvalued price. The user interface is Cyber-shot SE v2.0, which slightly tilts the scales in favor of the otherwise middling camera. The major benefits are the pop-up sub-menus enhanced with icons and the Multi Menu packing all the available settings.

The camera has a toolbar with options, including shooting mode, picture size, night mode, self-timer, white balance, effects, and settings Multi Menu. The Settings multi menu looks pretty much the same as in standard digicam menus. All the camera settings are displayed in two menu columns: the left displays the features and the right shows which setting is in use. Pressing OK on the navigation key lists all options of a certain feature. The settings on the menu are: Picture Quality, Review, Save to, Auto rotate, Shutter sound and Reset counter. Stabilizer, ISO settings and BestPic are not present here.

The camera is not worth admirations for sure. It will do the job for basic imaging and showing where you have been and nothing more. Its fixed focus does OK at about a meter, but still photos lack details. Loss of detail is an underlying drawback, still colors come out well.

Low light shooting forces the camera to boost the ISO level and achieve a minimum shutter speed to prevent motion blur. This normally leads to noisy images, but with W910, like with most of the non Cyber-shot Sony Ericsson phones, it goes the other way – heavy noise suppression routine kicks in and masks the noise together with most of the fine detail. You can see the resulting watercolor look on some of our sample images.
The Sony Ericsson W910 comes with a Photo Fix application that provides quick remedy for some defects in the pictures. It is integrated into the camera interface, so a picture can be fixed right after it was taken.
The videos taken with W910 are in QVGA resolution at 15fps. The miserly resolution is not worth much discussion and is definitely out of place in a high end device. As a contrast, the video interface is nice and comfortable.

The functionality of the secondary videocall camera is adequate. The other party's video feed is viewed in a large frame in the middle of the screen, while you view your own image in a small frame in the lower left corner. You can also have your image in mirror-like view, which is much more natural. 2x digital zoom on your image is also available, as well as the option to replace your live video feed with a picture of your preference. You can also do that during an actual video call, and it's handy when, for example, you want to show the other party an interesting picture you've taken. The options don't end here. You can further control the exposure compensation of the camera or even switch it into night mode. There are 3 different video quality modes: picture quality, standard, and motion quality.

Browsing and applications

Besides HSDPA (3.6 Mbps), EDGE and GPRS for fast data transfers, video calls and content-streaming, the handset offers the usual connectivity capabilities such as USB and Bluetooth with A2DP support. Sony Ericsson lacks WiFi and infrared connectivity.
Sony Ericsson uses the traditional Access NetFront HTML browser. It does more than an all-right job and has plenty of options - you can view the pages fullscreen with no menus showing and you can even browse your Web pages in landscape mode. It has WAP and picture modes. It supports content created for HTML 4.01, xHTML 1.0, CSS and Java script, WAP 2.0. The supported security protocols are SSL/TLS. You can also browse sites in pan & zoom view mode, and it works much like zooming photos. There's a connectivity sub-menu added, where you can set the preferred connection, default page, or local connection. The NetFront web browser offers an RSS-feed reader, accessible through the Messaging menu. Still the NetFront 3.4 web browser of the Samsung G600 is better and features more options such as a virtual mouse pointer.

Generally, the Smart-fit function of the browser does well fitting the web content onto the screen, but you may not find it so cool if you prefer to browse sites in a standard way. Scrolling is fast once the page has loaded completely.

The Sony Ericsson W910 supports Bluetooth 2.0 with the Human Interface Device (HID) profile, which allows the phone to be used as a remote control for PC and other Bluetooth-enabled devices. Furthermore, the phone could be used as a Bluetooth modem for accessing the Internet on a PC or notebook computer. Bluetooth support also includes the A2DP profile, allowing listening to music on a stereo Bluetooth headset. The W910 supports local and remote synchronization of contacts and calendar events. The local one is with Outlook and a PC, while the remote synchronization works with remote servers. The USB connectivity of the phone has three modes - one for file transfers and one for USB Internet - to put it simply, the second one is for using the phone as a modem. The media transfer profile is present too, which directly connects to the Windows media player, and gives full access to tracks placed on your phone for synchronization, play or sorting in playlists.

Tasks & more

The Sony Ericsson W910 offers many time-management features. There is an Organizer icon in the main menu and it contains several applications: File manager, Alarms, Applications, Video call, Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Synchronization, Timer, Stopwatch, Calculator, and Code memo. The Calendar offers monthly, weekly and daily views. When you add a birth date in the phonebook, the phone prompts adding it to the calendar. Tasks can be two types: simple Tasks and Phone calls. Notes are written similar to messages; T9 dictionary can be used here as well. The Alarms are part of the main menu. There are five alarm slots available. Each one offers a lot of options - you can choose to repeat the alarm on chosen days of the week or everyday. Text and a picture can be added to the alarm. Furthermore, the alarm's behavior can be defined in case the time it is due to go off comes while the phone is in silent mode.

The Voice recorder has no limit to recording length, making the free memory available the only restriction. The Calculator is the regular Sony Ericsson application. It offers the basic functions, no bells and whistles. The stopwatch and countdown timer are also the well known basic applications.

Some other applications in the Entertainment menu include the MusicDJ, VideoDJ, TrackID and voice recorder. VideoDJ is for making your own video clips by mixing already existing ones with still pictures, text and a variety of effects or for making basic cuts using special transitions and adding background music. This can be a very entertaining, indeed. MusicDJ is a very simple application for creating custom polyphonic melodies.

As for additional applications, the Sony Ericsson W910 comes with Audible and Music Mate 4 preinstalled. Audible player allows for playback of content transferred from a PC or downloaded via AudibleAir. The Audible site offers paid audio content, recorded in the download-optimized .aa format. The second application is the Music Mate 4, a musician helper application which makes good use of the motion sensor. The Shake control lets you manage and play on the instruments.

Gaming

There are three games preinstalled in Sony Ericsson W910 - Lumines, Marble Madness 3D and V-Rally 3D. Lumines is a Tetris inspired game, the Marble Madness 3D is a motion sensor based game with a ball and the V-Rally 3D is probably the most interesting one, a classic car racing game, though far behind the N-gage racers.

Conclusion

Sony Ericsson W910 is the top dog in the Walkman series when it comes to feature phones, the smarty W960 being a class of its own in the company's music portfolio. Some of W910 features are true high-end stuff: the quality display, elaborate music features, exquisite design, fast performance and 3G capabilities. Those however coexist with painfully familiar features and applications we've been getting in downright midrange handsets. Too much compromise to put up with in this price range and the tag on W910 is likely to get even the brand loyals a bit reserved. Nokia and Samsung seem to prepare a handful of cool music offerings in this price range too, while their non-music oriented handsets too have good music players. Despite the rich sales package, including a 1GB M2 card and the cool M2 USB reader, the W910 will be under pressure, as price is the ultimate decisive factor in this increasingly competitive market.