Detailed Review

Design:

Sony Ericsson’s Live With Walkman, as the name suggests, is a smart phone with focus on music. The handset is compact and fits best in your hand. The handset dimension is 106 mm, 56.5 mm and 14.2 mm in height, width and depth and is 115 gm in weight. The phone has 3.2 inches scratch-resistant TFT touch screen with 16 million colours and 320 x 480 pixels resolution. It is available in only Black and white colours. On the top it has a 3.5 mm earjack with a dedicated Walkman key on its right with a lock/power key to its left. The right side has a USB charger and PC connecting port whereas, the left side of the phone gives you volume/camera key on the upper side with a dedicated camera key below it. Over the screen is front facing camera with proximity sensors along with. Below the screen is a physical home key with back and menu key along its sides. On the back of the device you have a 5 megapixels camera and with LED flash light and two speakers both on upper and below portion. Overall, the phone is handy with a different and attractive look but it has small screen.

         

Interface/OS:

The Sony Ericsson Live With Walkman primarily runs on Google Android 2.3 gingerbread operating system and is easily upgradeable to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system. This phone is power backed by 1GHz Qualcomm MSM 8255 processor and 512 MB of RAM. When tested, the mobile functioned smoother and easier but, delayed in multitasking and swapping applications because of its slower 512 MB of RAM.

Camera:

The Live with Walkman comes with a 5 megapixels main camera and LED flash light. It also has a VGA front facing camera for video calls. The camera has all smart features like, Geo-tagging, image stabilization, smile and face detection and touch focus. The camera gives you HD video recording with 720 pixels resolution. It has in-built photo light, 3D sweep panorama and auto focus functions enabled with 8X digital zoom. The image playback supported formats are BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WBMP and the image captured supported format is JPEG. When tested, the outdoor images were clear and rich with colours whereas, the indoor shots were clear with flash support but the colours were dull. The camera captures the picture fast and the overall camera performance is good.

                                           

Memory:

Sony Ericsson’s Live With Walkman gives you in-built 320 MB user accessible memory with 512 MB of RAM. It allows you to extend it up to 32 GB through micro SD extension slot.

Battery:

Live With Walkman comes with a standard Li-Ion 1200 mAh battery which has done justice with this device to an extent. It delivers the stand by time of up to 400 hours on 2G and up to 350 hours on 3G. The music playback time for this music centric phone is up to 17 hours and the Talk Time from the battery is up to 13 hours on 2G and up to 6.5 hours when on 3G. The overall battery performance when tested was great with average daily use but it discharges early with more browsing and 3G use.

Audio/Video/Walkman:

The Walkman music app in Live With Walkman is amazing but it's not exclusive to this particular phone infact it is available on other Xperia models as well. The dedicated Walkman key on the top of this phone takes you directly to the music player, which is simple to operate and superb in sound quality. This phone has a FM radio with RDS player and it supports MP3, 3GPP, MP4, SMF, WAV, OTA and Ogg vorbis audio playback supported formats. This phone has Sony’s audio filter technology “xLOUD” which enhances the music loud and keep its clarity to the same level. Track ID music recognition is in-built in the device and 3GPP, MP4 and AMR are audio recording supported formats. It comes with two speakers and the sound quality is what Sony is famous for. The video quality of the phone, when tested, was good and it really delivers 720 pixels HD video recording. The video playback and recording formats are 3GPP and MP4. When tested, the front facing camera for video calls performed average with its video quality. The receiver was able to see me clear when I was stable but not that clear with movements. However, the audio quality on a video call was brilliant.

Features:

Live With Walkman from Sony is in-built with all basic Android smart phone features and applications. And with upgradeable Android 4.0 version you can get or download latest android applications to your phone. In-built it has many social and other apps integrated like, Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Sony entertainment Network and 3D gaming. The list of pre-loaded application include: Google Voice Search, Google Talk video chat, Google Mail, Google Calendar, Google Gallery 3D and Google Maps with Street View. For connectivity and communication you have multiple options like USB High speed 2.0 and Micro USB support with Native USB tethering. As well as WiFi and WiFi Hotspot functionality with DLNA Certified you can connect/access to internet. Synchronization via Exchange ActiveSync, Google Sync and Facebook is possible. aGPS is in-built in the device and you have a WebKit web browser with Pan and zoom functions in it. Bluetooth technology helps you pair with other devices and share data with them.

Conclusion:

The Sony Ericsson Live With Walkman is truly a compact smart phone in Sony’s Xperia series. It has its own fixed target audience but this phone is much better than others in this price range. The walkman feature is not that exclusive in this Sony phone. Its 1 GHz processor, 5 megapixels camera with LED flash and Android 2.3 gingerbread, which is upgradeable to Android 4.0 version easily are its main key features that give it edge over its competitors. But its week 512 MB RAM, small screen size and front facing VGA camera may not impress you much. So, we give this phone three star rating.

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