iTuneMyWalkman
Well well after over 3 years I finally needed to ditch my old cellphone that couldnīt accept any calls anymore nor could dial and get a new one. This time around I thought that getting music for on the way would be a good thing. Beeing not that much of an iPod fan and only having about 1 gig of free music on my computer (mostly dj recordings etc) I thought I would go for one of the new Sony/Ericsson Walkman handies - the W800. It comes with 512 MB exchangable memory stick and can read MP3s is connectable to a USB One bus on my trusty TitaniumPowerbook (which is a real problem with the new iPods you know). The size about in the middle of a full blown iPod an a Nano and it has a good interface comes with very good earphones and has a 2Megapixel Camera that is much better then I ever thought a camera in a phone could be - with enough light it does actually make usable photos and for taking that quick snapshot of a surface to be used as a 3d texture its brilliant - because always when I see things that I could use I never had a camera with me - so yes its useful. The video on the otherhand is a little gimmik and absolutely substandard to any full blown camera on the market - the mp4 is so blocky you would rather paint the video by hand but its a handy so I forgive.
Someone also thought about the interfaces. The MP3 player and Camera funktionality are pretty hidden from normal phone use - but accessible with only a button or opening the camera lens, using the phone just for phone purposes is actually better then the last two phones I possessed and about as intuitive as phones were when they were phones and not all-in-one-gadgets. Getting connected to the net is a little too easy - a function I really really do not need - I took out all the connection data from the setup so now no calling home anymore.
Today then I stumbled across an article on macnews.de that pointed me to some very useful utilities to be used with the phone. Yes its easy to copy over MP3 right into the memory card via the usb cable but its even nicer to do it the iPod style through iTunes. The software "iTuneMyWalkman" does just that and you think you have an iPod connected to your comp - not a competitors product. Also if you crave to watch shitty compressed video on the W800 (or similar SonyEricsson phones) you can get two automator plugins that compress video to MP4 and upload them via bluetooth. Good way to use that Automator Program for once.... All in all I am a happy camper can listen to music on the bike now and take photos in that extreme conditions and the phone functionality is simple and easy. Oh yes the sync of contacts and calendars was fast and easy as well but I wouldnīt have expected less as the older phone was already doing it pretty good. Oh and it has a good functioning FM radio as well - something Apple doesnīt believe in - I do with the radio saturation in Berlin being so high there actually is something informative going on from time to time.