Walkman v2.0

The most prominent thing about the W850i is the updated Walkman Player v2.0. The v2.0 player has seen a lot of controversy; as even after it has been introduced we still have Walkman phones releasing with the older version. The new version has a nice black theme rather than the stringent orange color.

The Walkman Player now supports Album Art and Visualizations along with Artist, Album, and Track information. The screen of the player shows a lot of details than in the previous version. Track No., Total number of tracks, playback status, and song length are displayed in the first half of the screen. Beside all of these is the Visualization box. This is where the support for Album Art and Visualizations comes in, so now you can have the Album Art showing in a small box on the screen or in that very same box you can have visualizations playing. Hopefully someday we'll be able to add to the default visualizations for now you just have two options.

Then below comes the progress bar of the song and at the end immediately below the progress bar there are symbols displaying shuffle, loop, and the equalizer preset icons. Then with some space below the progress bar, the Artist name, Track Name, Album Name and then the signs of what the D-Pad has now changed into are displayed. The W850i is the only Walkman phone which has beat detection. The beat detection helps in the unique feature of Light Effects. The lights blink according to the beat of the music. A similar feature was noticed in the Nokia 3220, which used to blink when the phone rang.

The sorting of music also is different from the standard Walkman phones. There is a Music folder on your memory card where you place your music. There is no need to place it in two levels of folders like in the previous version; so, you can transfer your music to the card even more easily without too much of a trouble.