The Sony Ericsson W900i had been the talk of the Internet for the past several weeks being the Walkman phone that can do 3G. Having been first spotted around February 2006 in the Philippines, the W900i is now commercially available for a whopping P35,000.00. Steep eh? Well there’s the rub ladies and gentlemen.

The design of the W900i hails from the old S700 “balisong design” that proved to be a unique getaway from regular clamshell and candybar portfolios. Because it bears the mark of the “W,” it essentially packs itself with multimedia features. The Sony Ericsson W900i is essentially three things. First, it is the premier 3G phone of the SE group sporting dual cameras. Second, it is a 2MP autofocus digicam, marketed as an able camera because of the way it mirrors a Cybershot. Third, it is a Walkman music player with really good in-ear plugs.

“This side up”
For those of you who’ve owned an S700, you’d be familiar with the 180 degree swivel body that quite frankly, can be detrimental to the phone’s hardware because of frequent flipping. Furthermore, this type of design presents a few hangups such as trying to reorient the phone’s screen when changing from closed to open mode (thanks Adel for pointing this out).

The real estate is composed of two main parts - the “top” of the phone houses the screen, directional pad and seven(!) buttons which include a deidicated Internet button, a 3G video call button and a shortcut menu button that displays calendar events and bookmarks as well. The second half of the phone holds the keypad, the power button, the Walkman and camera mode buttons, the memory stick duo slot, and the phone lock mechanism that doubles as the flash button when the camera is turned on.

Stay tuned for thte full review in the upcoming issue of Mobile Philippines!