Words: Jason Round

Now, sure, we’ve had some pretty classy Sony Ericsson phones to review over these last few months, but honestly, nothing comes close to the W880i. It is just awesome incarnate – in a 103x46.5x9.5mm shell.
And that’s the beauty of this phone – it’s just so damn compact, Olsen-twin flat if you will, and the sheer engineering it would have taken to squeeze everything into that tiny casing (including two cameras) really does boggle the mind. So, apart from a slim figure, what else is the 880i packin’? Plenty, my friend…
Firstly, a 1GB Memory Stick Micro is provided, allowing users to store up to 900 full-length tracks, which can be played through a variety of in-phone applications, including Walkman Player 2.0 and highly intuitive Disc2Phone.

In fact, we found the latter program making-bald-Britney-jokes easy, with streaming tracks from your PC straight to the phone a proverbial piece of P. Of course, there’s also Bluetooth audio streaming, which allows music to be pumped from your phone wirelessly to your home or car stereo – crazy.
The new PlayNow service operates as per iTunes, now with album-art support, though we were much more taken aback by the illusion show that is TrackID.

Basically, TrackID records a few seconds of a song through the external mic, sends it to a music database and the title, album and artist name are sent back to you. Frankly, we have FA idea how it works, and talks of musical monkeys trawling through giant warehouses of CDs looking for your track did come to mind… It’s a very cool feature.

Musical quality is good, with clear treble and solid bass, with Sony’s Mega Bass and a five-band equaliser for those into a bit of fine-tuning.

Unfortunately, you won’t be tuning into your fave radio station, because there is no FM-radio function, but really, who cares when you’ll got all these other features to blister your fingers over?
Sony quotes 6.5 hours of talk time (GSM), around three hours on 3G and 425 hours standby, which was more or less accurate, though we did find ourselves recharging the phone every few days.
For those who are actually buying a phone to call people (boo!), the W880i has provision for video conferencing, hands-free speakerphone, adding calls, holding and so forth, and it also allows you to record a conversation, which is no doubt a feature that may come in handy for those looking for some incriminating evidence.

Camera-wise, the front VGA camera is used primarily for video calls and can’t take pics, while the rear camera includes a 2.5x zoom function, though no flash or focus. It did, however, work well, as does most of the SE range thanks to Sony’s CyberShot engineering. In that respect, amateur photogs should relish in the many functions, including 10sec self-timer, sepia, negative effects, white-balance adjustment and panorama shooting amongst others.

Of course, you get the always fun for killing time VideoDJ, PhotoDJ and MusicDJ software, and there’s also USB connectivity to link up to Sony’s PC Suite software. Emos, there’s a blog function for you, too.
In brushed steel, the thing looks absolutely sexual, though we did find the raised buttons a little hard to depress, especially with certain fat, stubby fingers. Nonetheless, ergonomics are A-class and most features easily accessible.

At a lofty $899 RRP, it ain’t for everyone, but those that do manage to snare the 880i will truly be buying much more than a phone. They’ll be buying sex in a 9mm-thick case.

Check out www.sonyericsson.com.au for more info.