Sales package: * Handset
* 950 mAh Li-Pol battery
* Charger
* Stereo-headset with two 3.5 mm audio jacks
* 2 Gb M2 memory card
* USB data cable
* Software CD
* User Guide
Positioning
To be frank the W595's market position hasn't seen any major market shift compared with its predecessor, the W580. Sony Ericsson are still banking on 15 to 24 year olds with an emphasis on socializing rather than design. With that said, the inclusion of a stereo-headset carrying two 3.5 mm audio sockets onboard starts making some sense. I'm most positive you have seen many young people in buses or trains who share one pair of earphones - naturally this also means they are cutting their audio experience in half, but this method still lets two people enjoy the same music track at one time, so the social function is definitely there. While many of the W595's users don't actually carry a spare pair of headphones around, the presence of an extra earphone jack is a welcome feature, make no mistake about that, especially for couples.
Over the past year, the segment of music-minded slider phones has changed dramatically - whereas last summer the Sony Ericsson W580 didn't really face any challenges on the market, its update has to cope with the Nokia 5610 XpressMusic, targeted at the same audience. Going for the latter is its early release, meaning that it has already gone though a number of price cuts and now looks like better value for money. We will put them up against each other later in this review, but for now let us put in a note that the presence of the Nokia 5610 makes the W595's future seem somewhat less optimistic. Being forced to stay in a quite narrow niche, Sony Ericsson haven't equipped their offering with any significant competitive advantage that would help it outshine the 5610 XpressMusic. As a result the success of either handset will result in the failure of the other and the fact that Nokia were first to market will be a decisive factor. At the same time, the W595 has got a couple of trumps up its sleeve that can well win over younger consumers.
Design, Size, Controls
Originally the W595 will come only in Active Blue, but expect to see more trims down the line, such as Cosmopolitan White, Jungle Grey, Ruby Black and Lava Black.
Sony Ericsson has got another edition of the W595 in stock, though - the W595s designed exclusively for Orange that comes clad in an original color scheme, with different loudspeaker grills and front fascia. On top of that, both the menu style and preinstalled themes are very much in tune with Orange's trademark colors. Other than these skin-deep touches, the W595s is no different from the original phone.
All images above are the property of semcblog.com
At 100x47x14.1 mm and 104 grams, the W595 doesn't break the mould, but it does feel heavy enough in the hand (and therefore more robust), unlike other plasticky phones around, especially the Sony Ericsson W580. On the other hand, the W595 turns out to be a mixed bag when it comes to its materials mix - while the back and sides come with pleasant soft-touch accents, the front fascia is clad into cheap matte plastic. The chromed frame goes very well with the phone's design, but we are still not certain how long they will last (although so far it has taken all everyday abuse pretty well). As far as build quality goes, the W595 feels very solid and sturdy in the hand, however we have got some complaints about its spring loaded mechanism - it could've been a tad lighter and the opening sound isn't all that ear-pleasing.
Display
The W595’s display shows up to 262 K colors in the 240x320 pixel resolution (2.2 inch diagonal, 34x46 mm, TFT). This screen size allows it to accommodate up to 9 text and 3 service lines in most modes (plus it’s possible to cram in more information when browsing Web or handling Email). All in all, the display is superb – we were very pleased by its color reproduction and how it performed under sunlight.
Connectivity
USB
On USB-connection you are forced to pick connection type - specifically whether you will be accessing data stored on the memory card to just keep managing the phone or activate Print mode. For the first mode we mentioned above the handset goes off and you gain access to the contents of both the memory card and the phone internal memory. Despite the maker claiming it to be USB 2.0, data transfer speed doesn't exceed 500 Kb/s. If you just want your W595 to turn into a modem, then pick the second option, when you will have a chance to play around with various USB settings for going online.
Bluetooth
The handset comes with EDR-enabled Bluetooth 2.0, the menu enables you to turn on enhanced power saving mode. There is also A2DP support, which allows employing wireless headsets with the W595.
* A2DP
* Basic Imaging Profile
* Basic Printing Profile
* Dial-Up Networking Profile
* File Transfer Profile
* Generic Access Profile
* Generic Object Exchange Profile
* Handsfree Profile
* Headset Profile
* HID
* JSR-82 Java API
* Object Push Profile
* Personal Area Network Profile
* Serial Port Profile
* Service Discovery Application Profile
* Synchronization Profile
* SyncML OBEX binding
Camera
The device is equipped with a 3.2 MP camera with a CMOS matrix without auto-focus. The device supports three possible resolutions - 2048x1536, 1632x1224, 1280x960, 640x480 pixels. Two types of data compression (Normal and Fine) are at your disposal. The majority of the sample photos were taken with "Fine" quality settings. The camera’s interface is laid out vertically; since there is no side-mounted shutter key, its functions are performed by "OK" button.
The camera settings look the following way:
* Shutter sound. You can choose one of the three shutter sounds, but will not be able to turn the sound off.
* White balance. A possibility to choose between an auto-mode, Incandescent, Fluorescent, Daylight.
* Effects. Several effects may be applied to the photos. These are Negative, Solarize, Sepia, Black & White.
* Timer is activated for a certain time period for self shooting.
* Night mode is for shooting in the dark. Noises raise on a photo, exposure time gets increased (you shouldn't move the device in order not to get a blurry photo).
* Shooting mode. Normal mode that takes ordinary photos. Multishot-mode (Burst 4) allows taking four photos in a series. Landscape is a very interesting mode that allows taking rather fetching photos; the market hasn’t seen anything similar to date yet. The last mode is taking photos with frames, photo resolution is decreased automatically.
SensMe. In addition to its default Walkman 3rd edition pack of goods, the Sony Ericsson W595 comes with the SensMe functionalit - it's sort of a playlist that maps all tracks stored in your music library and offers ready-to-use playlists with coherent tunes in them. You won't even need to tag all songs, as Sony Ericsson have created a very handy application for these purposes - Sony Media Manager. The advantage of this Media Manager is that it handles memory cards as well, so you don’t necessarily need a handset connected to your PC - it took us around 20 minutes to go through 1.5 Gb of music with it. On top of all that it can convert photos and video for your handset.
Is this SensMe functionality of any interest? Definitely yes. The tunes map features dots (your music tracks) showing you how particulars song stand on either of the two scales. You can move between these dots and every time you hover over one, it gets highlighted and played back right away. However the scope covers a couple of a dots (or songs, if you like), so by hitting the OK button you will compose a playlist with some mood- and speed-keyed tracks on it. You will really appreciate the phone’s ability to pick the most fitting music when you have another mood swing
However you need to understand that this feature will really make the difference only if you have various music genres stored on your phone and you do have loads of tunes as well. And in case you feel content with a couple of albums from one artist you are very likely to find them residing in one of the quarters of the tunes map, so SensMe won’t make sense any more (pun intended). Also, we highly recommend 2 Gb memory cards and larger – playlists get really different only when your music library is this big
Shake Control. There is nothing tricky to it – you tap and hold the Walkman key and then start shaking the phone – shake it forward to get it to jump to the next track, and pulling it backward will move you to the previous song. And if you just shake it around, the W595 will take it as a command to turn the shuffle mode on. Every time you shake it, you get some tactile feedback as well – the handset vibrates a little.
Apparently, this feature won’t be widely adopted. It is more likely to be appreciated by those who are into running or other sport-related activities, so they would love to jump between tracks on the fly. The youth might only want to play around with it for some time, but that’s it. The remote is a much better option for controlling music playback.
As for a couple of new filters available with the W595, we can’t overlook the Time Machine that picks only tracks released in some particular year. More conventional categories include the lists of the most and the least popular songs.
Walkman 3.0 rundown. Among the fundamental improvements over Walkman 2.0, the new version sports DRM 2.0 support as well as support for MTP, which makes for direct music transfers with Windows Media Player.
The handset locates all files and folders on the memory card, and then gets the necessary data from ID3-tags. Supported audio formats - MP3, AAC, AAC+, E-AAC+, WAV, WMA and m4a. There are no limitations on bit rates; you can also upload files with VBR. The company recommends using files with 192 Kbit/s bit rate.
In the music library, all saved tracks are classified by the following parameters:
* Artists – the application displays general list of artists in alphabetical order, you can carry out a fast search here;
* Albums – sorts by albums’ titles, search function is available as well;
* Tracks –general list of all tracks, sorting is conducted by tracks’ titles or ID3 tags;
* Genre – sorting, which uses various music styles, like Hip Hop, Jazz, Blues as criteria;
* My playlists – these are playlists, made up by user, that can be created both on the device and on PC, while viewing contents of the flash memory in USB Mass Storage mode; the handset also locates them when updating the library.
Unlike the second version of the player, while all transitions are still horizontal, they are designed in a slightly different matter, which won’t bother you, however. You won’t need to hit the buttons too many times to move about the player.
You can take advantage of the Repeat (one/all) playback mode. The W595 also features a progressive fast forward with customizable steps. You can’t pick any visualization (an animation instead of the album art) here.
If your phone is playing music and you are at the standby screen, bringing up the Media section will lead you straight to the music player interface.
The audio quality hasn't changed a bit compared to otherWalkman-branded offerings. With the seven-brand equalizer you can create some settings of your own; the option of stereo widening is also available with the W595. The equalizer settings become available only once you have plugged in a pair of earphones.
Audio quality. The phone ships with an excellent pair of headphones, one of Sony Ericsson’s finest offerings to date. On top of that the W595 turned out to be a pretty loud phone, personally I found that it fared better than other handsets from this maker, specifically the W910i.
