I keep reading about bluetooth headphones and general opinion is that people are desperate for them.

I can't see what all the fuss is about; if you take away the wires you pretty much have to have the larger style headphones which, for my money are more of a pain than a thin wire. Also if you don't want to listen to music for a while, instead of simply wrapping your headphones around your player you have to carry a massive pair of headphones around with you. On top of that you have to have a bluetooth plug in for your player which takes up further space and drains battery. Not to mention any possible interference you may experience, which would be particularly unwelcome at high volumes. Essentially then, something which is meant to reduce clutter and streamline proceedings actually has the opposite effect and seems to offer no advantage.

So can anybody tell me why bluetooth headphones <i>are</i> a good idea?

I can attempt to. For indoor use surely you can see the benefit, particularly over older infa-red headphones. Bluetooth headphones would be perfect for watching tv/films late at night hence being considerate to ther house mates/family memebers/neighbours.

At this stage I wouldn't particularly recoomend them for on the go. As you say it is annoying that you have to have a bluetooth plug to allow the use with most players, however, with the growth the mobile phone music player(which nearly all have bluetooth) standalone players will have to add compatibility to stay at the top of their game. This eliminates one problem. The second problem is of the inconvinience and size of the headphones and this is something that I'm sure will be addressed. You could quite feasably have bluetooth headphones in the style of the mdr ex81's:

http://www.psp411.com/show/product/282/0/Sony_Fontopia_Earphones_MDR_EX81.html

I'm sure you'd agree these are not an eyesore and would be quite secure in the ear.

Still though the thing that worries me is interference, from many sources including other people close to you, e.g. on a train, also wearing bluetooth heaphones. Would this be a problem or not?

I'm looking forward to them being sized down to a reasonable bulk...

I've got a Sony Ericsson K750i with nearly 500mb of MP3s on it. It has replaced my MP3 player but the headphones on it are Sony Ericsson and because they're Sony, they're useless if you're not a fan of over the top bass!

What size memory stick duo do you have Karl, 512mb? How much did that cost? You see I'm due an upgrade tomorrow and want the w800 but it's still gonna set me back £50, whereas the k750 would be free. Therefore I'd be interested to see if I could just buy a memory card for the k750 for less.

If you'd like to connect a different pair of headphones to the k750 you could buy one of these little beauty's. Then you can hook up any headphones with a 3.5mm jack. This equipment also comes with the w800 so maybe by the time I bought a memory card as well I'd have exceeded the £50 the w800 costs?

I have the 1mb memory stick i brought for about £75 from emartbuy.com. 512mb for £40...

So those HPM-70s allow you to connect your own (i.e. my sennheisers)headphones in. I thought they were just the in-ear versions of the ones i've got! i.e. a bit more comfortable but still nothing but bass coming through (as all Sony headphones seem to be)!

Cheers for the quick reply Karl, hmmmm think I'll probably be better off just getting the w800 then.

The HPM-70s do come with in ear headphones, howver you can see that they are changable. You can see in the picture the silver tube which acts a a microphone also has a 3.5 jack for any headphones. So not only do you get to use you headphones but they also become your hands free kit!

That's what i was looking for. Saw a few adaptors on ebay, but i'd want to have the microphone as well just in case i need to use it...

£25 is a bit much though seeing as a i won't be using their actual headphones!!!!

It is pretty steep and don't think you'll be able to get them any cheaper as they've only just been released.

Beginning to think i should have waited for the W800 myself now! Oh well... C'est La Vie!

The w800 is a nice looking phone and I have to admit I'm pretty excited about getting it(sad I know!). But the k750 still looks good, more executive than the w800. Other than the outside appearance the w800 is exactly the same phone, only with a different firmware. The difference that firmware makes is just a different music player and the inclusion of a 'flight' mode. There are a few places that can flash the updated firmware on to your k750 if you wanted, though its probably not worth it.

I just recieved a phone call from my local Orange store to tell me that they recieved w800's today and that they'll save me one to pick up tomorrow :0)

So can you turn the mobile phone function off with the W800 so it's just a media player?

That would help cut down on annoyance in the gym...

Any other improvements you know about?

I've got Simpsons, Futurama and Tom & Jerry episodes I ripped onto the phone for tube journeys, boring times at work, etc.. But the media player is quite limited as in play, pause, stop!!!

I'd seen you can upgrade the firmware, but have struggled to try to find out what the changes are and whether they're worth it!

Yeah when you turn the phone on you have the choice of full mode or just the player mode. However, I'm not sure if its full media player or just the music but it probably is both. Have a look at mobileburn.com they summarise the difference between the 2 phones here.

How did you rip the simpsons to the phone? I definately want to do that! How much space does an episode take up? I'd really appreciate if you could give me a step by step guide to doing this.

Ok I got my w800 on saturday and I've bearly put it down since.! While not strictly AV it does have walkman branding and video playback so I'm gonna give you my impresssions of the phone in a mini review. To make things easier I'll look at the phone's capabilities in a few sub-sections:

Design
Phone
Camera
Walkman

Design:

The w800 has a very distinct design with metallic orange sides and a cream coloured front and back and yes it does look alot better than it sounds! Despite it's simple 'candybar' style shape it is ergonomically pleasing with subtle design features that leave it comfortable in hand. The camera on the back has an active lens shutter for protection. The buttons are firm and allow for ultra fast texting.

Phone:

The phone itself is very capable and the menu system is pretty much unchanged from previous sonyericsson models. The phonebook is well designed and easy to navigate. The ringtones are sufficiently loud and does allow the use of mp3 ringtones(if you don't find that tacky!) finally you can customise the text alert, a feature missing from SE phones for YEARS. Navigation of the menus is fast and fluid even when other applications are running. Also worth a mention is the screen, not the biggest but excellent resolution with 262,144 colours all looking crystal clear.

Camera:

The 2mp camera on this phone is outstanding, particularly in daylight conditions. By sliding the lens cover open the camera application automatically starts. The screen is in landscape view, making the phone feel more like a camera, and the menu is basically the same as those found in Sony's Cybershot range. There is a macro mode for taking photo's close up, this is possibly the best feature of the camera some of the photo's I took in this mode were unbelievable.

While there is still no 'proper' flash but there are two high powered led's above the lens which can do the job. Using these there is a certain degree of noise apparent but the results are still impressive. When viewing the photo's on the phone it is possible to zoom in up 32x. There is also a video mode but the quality is not great and I think is designed merely with mms messages in mind.

This camera is one of the first on a mobile phone that isn't just taped on to the back, it really is a fully capable camera in it's own right and for a casual camera user such as myself it WILL replace the need for a seperate camera.

Walkman:

The walkman feature is the selling point of this phone from a marketing perspective and is certainly the best music player I've encountered on a mobile phone. The walkman option can be accesesed by pressing it's dedicated button at any time, from there you have the choice to choose from Artist Track or Playlist. Selecting what you want to play is very straight forward and intuitive. Options such as shuffle and loop are of course present. There is an equaliser with a number of preloaded settings- bass, mega bass, treble, voice etc - I found bass to be the most effective with mega bass just a bit overbearing. In general I found the sound quality to be on par with most mp3 players I've used. However, the walkman is limited by a lack of external controls; you can only adjust volume and play/pause, the inclusion of ff, rw and shuffle really would have made a big difference.

The phone vomes bundled with disc2phone software which is very straight forward to use. However, it[the program] does not recognise m4a as a music file which much of my music is encoded in, fortunately the phone does, so I was able to eliminate the problem by simply dragging and dropping rather than using disc2phone. Maybe this problem will be fixed in later versions of the software.

The headphones bundled are based upon Sony's own MDR Ex71's and do perform well. They look and feel a bit cheaper, more plasticy than the Ex71's but deliver great bass and good mid and treble. They are certainly the best headphones bundled with a phone or mp3 player. Howver, if you don't like them you can use any standard 3.5mm jack headphones.

There is also the ability to play back video and I have downloaded a couple of simpsons and family guy episodes. The quality isn't great but it's more than acceptable, they can be watched full screen, widescreen(landscape). I also have the whole of For a Fist Full of Dollars on there, though I doubt I could look at a screen that small for the duration of the film!



All in all the best phone available at the moment by a long way.

I like it

Don't know whether this helps Brucie, but on my K750i when i'm using the media player, holding down the volume buttons acts as track skip forward/back.

If i remember rightly, hold reduce volume down to skip to the next track and hold increase volume down to rewind to the previous track!

Cheers Karl, I'd already come across that by accident myself, thanks all the same. Speaking of shortcut keys, are you aware that keys 1, 4, 7, and * operate various functions when in camera mode?

No... Just found out now.

Another time-saving device! Quite good little shortcuts for a great little phone(s)!