Buying the Sony Ericsson W890i? List of flaws:

I'm a hard man to please. For gadgets, at least. In doing research before you buy one, it helps more if you have a list of flaws associated with it than just a lengthy review examining its features.

So, for the benefit of those of you who are considering buying the Sony Ericsson W890i mobile phone, I'll do my bit to help you decide.


First I should tell you that this is the first SE phone I've ever had. I've owned a N6630 (for 2 yrs), then a Motorola ROKR E6 (1 yr), before replacing it for this. I've had this mobile for exactly one month now. So far, it's given me GREAT service!
I can easily see why there are so many SE patrons. It's easily the best of the three phones I've used.


It does not come without its share of drawbacks, though.


Problems with SE W890i:

1. Cannot use without sim. (wtf... Nowadays even the Rs. 4k phones have this feature)

2. You need to restart phone to put the phone in flight mode. Unlike the Nokias in which you can go 'Offline' and Motorolas that can 'Switch off Antenna' from the main screen itself, in my Sony Ericsson I need to first enable the Flight Mode option in Settings. Then I have to restart the phone to get the option of choosing Flight Mode. (Totally sux)

3. No option of taking pics with the front camera. At first I thought a java app would be able to do this, but no, the front cam cannot be pulled up using java. In India where 3G networks are non existent, this part of the phone is completely useless.

4. The Select key, Call Pickup key and Call Hang Up key are plated with a gold coloring on the silver phone; this coloring is easily scratched.

5. There is an LED near the camera button which is supposed to work as a status light (blink when you have missed calls etc.) but doesn't work at all!

6. You cannot use any phone functions when you connect the phone in File Transfer mode. My Motorola didn't have this problem.

7. There is a certain limit for the length of the notes you can store in the 'Notes' application. Even in my ancient N6630, I could store whole books in the 'Notes' app.

8. The same file plays softer during music playback than while ringing, through the external speakers. (This seems to have been fixed in a firmware upgrade)

9. You can't modify the smileys for texting.

10. You can't change the shortcut functions for the left and right softkeys, only for the arrow keys.

11. There's no digital zoom available in the camera when using 3MP.

12. There's 3G and HSDPA (which are useless in India) but no Wi-Fi. :(

13. Recordings from sound recorder etc. show up in your music library. You have to manually move them to the 'Ringtones' folder to avoid this.

14. The built-in email feature doesn't work with gmail.


Needless to say, the good points outnumber the bad by a large margin. The above is just to let you know what annoyances you should expect from this cell phone, before you buy it.


NOTE: This post will be updated as and when I think of more faults. If you are planning to buy the W890 and have questions, please add them as comments and I will try to answer.