Thursday, September 30, 2021

phone 30 – sony ericsson w980


this is just another loan collateral, which i will eventually own. but, got this in 2021 – the first phone i acquired in 2021. sort of. this was released in 2008. that is about 13 years, this 2021.

the previous owner (soon to be) admitted that the phone is a refurbished one. needless to say, the phone really looks refurbished and that the parts were not meticulously made. for instance, the paint job at the back missed some spots.

charging is quite average with almost 3 hours. what is underwhelming is the battery life. it only manages to have 17 hours in total. only 4 hours screen on time. this phone is a feature phone and has low resolution display, so i doubt the display drains much power. likewise, during inactive testing, the battery still drains. it made me believe that most smartphones, especially lately, are already good at optimizing battery life. low battery capacity might also be responsible for the noticeable battery drain during inactive testing of this phone.

battery score card


choosing this phone over millions of other collectible phones, means you are looking for a music centric phone. not that, this is the only one or the best of yesteryears. but the phone screams – walkman! but not today. music experience is just okay. the loudspeaker is not that loud, nor it has excellent quality. since i did not have the phone years ago and this one is a refurbished one, i am not sure if the original w980 really sounds like what this phone sounds. put on a wireless earphones, then music will sound better. that is how good wireless audio nowadays, earphones can make it up for the phone. however, wired audio on the phone is noticeably better than the wireless audio. bluetooth version of the phone might not be enough to support upscaling. the bad thing is, w980 has no 3.5mm audio port. sony ericsson uses proprietary port on this phone, like most of their phones during those times. in a way, usb type c to 3.5mm audio port dongle is better than the connector needed by this phone, as you need to align the pins on the proprietary port. the previous owner included an adaptor, so i was able to test the wired audio. if you get pass that inconvenience, you will enjoy music better. i even tried a bluetooth speaker which has also a 3.5mm audio port. and it really does have noticeable difference. wireless audio seem to mute other frequencies (again, this might be because of early versions of bluetooth audio on this phone), while the wired audio produces better volume of different frequencies. this phone also has some gimmick on music play, on the visual side. it has a set of led like that of xperia sp. but this w980 only has two colors – orange and white, unlike the rgb on xperia sp. while testing, music player uses the orange, white for everything else.

i failed to test web browsing since i cannot figure out which is the problem. i was not able to successfully connect, despite having a working network. sms and calls worked though. i guess the connection instructions on the phone is already outdated that the network cannot understand. so for the entire timeslot of testing web browsing, i spend it for trying to connect. unlike the sony ericsson satio which still lets me do a google search.

games. you got some mix – soduko, racing and blocks (sort of tetris). among these, racing is the only game that uses a sensor that is not quite popular those days, i think – gyroscope. there is the traditional way of playing it – pressing the buttons. but the use of gyroscope does improved the experience on it. not as enjoyable as the modern smartphones since the display is small, the graphics are old (obviously), and the form factor is not “race friendly”, but it is fun.

photo shoots and video recording are also possible on the phone. the camera placement is just quite off. usually my finger covers it. it is a perfect spot for my finger when handling the phone. as for the resulting photos and videos, i am not disappointed. there is even a nightmode. of course it is not as good as the nightmode in 2021, but it is good enough for a scene with some lightings. same with videos, but is too slow to be saved.

video play is not ideal too. it can play videos, but the small display affects the experience. it is good enough to review the videos taken with the phone, which is i guess same with most phones during its time, where media consumption is not yet widespread on a phone – or at least phones just satisfy the “it can do” level of experience. but the colors are good.

this is another phone that can still be used as back up in 2021. a nice phone when you want to go off the world wide web, too.

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