A white-and-orange specimen, finally in my hands!

Yesterday I managed to find a W800i, brand new, for more than 300 ringgit less than its current selling price. I have a tendency towards smartphones because of my love of tech stuff/gadgets, a market dominated by Nokia Series 60 phones, but I like Sony Ericsson phones a lot as well. The first "cool" phone I had was an SE T610, and I was very impressed with its camera, menu, screen, size and battery life (outstanding at more than 5 days on standby). I eventually graduated to using Series 60 smartphones from Nokia, which, in some small amount are created by other companies as well, but they don't quite have the execution right yet. My girlfriend just moved to a smartphone as well, a Nokia 6680 - its shining star being 3G and two cameras for video calls. We actually got to try out video calling, and man, I must say it is FUCKING cool. There's no lag or slowdown like with webcams, and its as simple as "normally" calling someone. Eventually, I plan on pushing everyone I care about to have one of these. The last phone I was using was an O2 XDA II Mini, a quite popular phone amongst the trendy-tech and business crowds. The smallest available PDA-phone, it runs Windows Mobile 2nd Edition w/ Media Player 10. Its cool and all, but I lost my wi-fi card, and there's something about having tactile button feedback rather than entering stuff in with a stylus. Plus, I wanted a device that had built-in wi-fi, 3G, a front camera, a very nice rear camera and some more stuff. I looked around, and it turns out what I want isn't available yet. Basically what i want is spot on with the new Sony Ericsson P990i, as well as many new Nokia N-series and E-series phones, all of which will be available or at a reasonable price 5 months down the road. So I was gonna get an N90 as I wrote earlier, but didn't like it all that much, and decided to get a W800i. The phone comes in this awesome packaging, its shown in the pic (the first one from the left). Its kinda tubular-elliptical clear, thick plastic. Its transparent through the center with orange caps at the top and bottom with imprinted "Walkman" logos. Inside, I was expecting a good-looking phone, but man ... this phone turned out incredible looking! I love its ivory and orange color scheme! The orange bits look totally like metal, and the white is smooth and creamy. This phone just screams youth, which I think is what Sony wanted to achieve with the Walkman-branded phones. I was expecting a phone with a 512 mb memory stick and headphones included, but this phone is more of a music player than that. Much to my surprise, they included a standard 3.5 mm jack. As soon as I discovered this, I plugged in my huge studio headphones and started chilling to the sounds of "Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me" by U2. Wicked! And the place where you put the 3.5mm jack into, has an included microphone so you can receive or make calls as well(the voice of my chapat real estate agent in bassy stereo studio headphones is a little startling). Combined with the metallic finish of the piece and the wicked-looking Walkman logo, this cemented the deal for me. The phone itself is very sturdy and of solid construction typical of Sony Ericssons. The thing I like most about SEs is the quality of their materials. They're the only ones in the market who know how to make plastic look EXACTLY like real metal. Other than that, the buttons are well-spaced have excellent tactile feedback, and the screen, though not record-shattering on paper, holds its own in real life. I thought it would be the same as the K700i screen, with the 220x176 resolution, the added brightness of the backlight and 262k colours vs. 65k colours really do make a difference. After seeing the display first hand, I'd give it a 9/10, only because better screens do exist (the Samsung D600, SE S700i and W900i, and on top the N90). The phone is reported to have good battery life, supposedly you can talk for just under 12 hours non-stop. I haven't had the phone long enough to comment on this. Oh, and I forgot the other juicy part of this phone: It has the best camera on the market! YUP! A 2 megapixel, AUTO-FOCUS camera with a wicked bright flash adorns the back of my lovely new W800i, and snaps photos better than the Carl Zeiss-equipped N90. Strangely, the N90 performed well below everyone's expectations for a phone with such a "designer" lens. I too am a fan of Carl Zeiss lenses, hell, the company even designs lenses for space telescopes and shit, but in the N90 something didn't go as planned. Maybe it was the inferior CMOS censor behind the lens, but the N90 has started to shake Carl Zeiss' reputation. In any case, Sony's CMOS-equipped 2MP camera in the W800i, K750i and P990i with autofocus is currently the best on the market.