Sony Ericsson Zylo - Review

“Music addicts will love Zylo’s top-notch audio features. But beware Zylo’s lack of a 3.5mm headphone port and missing wi-fi support”

Walkman mobile phone

Zylo is designed for music on-the-go

The cheap and cheerful Sony Ericsson Zylo is ideal for music buffs because it sports features from Sony’s famous Walkman range of portable music devices.

Zylo is actually the first Walkman mobile phone to support the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) - a type of music file specially formatted to offer higher quality sound than standard MP3 or AAC music files.

I listened to FLAC and MP3 tracks on Zylo and didn’t notice any difference in sound quality. But I believe a true audio connoisseur would definitely hear those richer FLAC tones.

Sony Ericsson’s decision to leave a 3.5mm headphone jack off Zylo is a major oversight, though.

Anyone buying Zylo for its FLAC capabilities would surely want to use their own headphones and the lack of a 3.5mm jack forces you to use the supplied headphones.

Moving music onto the phone from my PC was trouble free, and thanks to Zylo’s slot for Micro SD cards of up to 16GB, music storage space was never an issue.

Zylo also displays cool moving images onscreen while playing music. My favourite was an old-fashioned cassette tape, the reels of which actually spun as the track was played.

Slider phone with mobile internet

Large keys make typing easy

A basic 3.2Mp camera lurks on Zylo’s rear, capturing pictures decent enough to post onto social networking websites.

Pictures can be geo-tagged with the physical location they were snapped in - a handy feature for the forgetful.

And a user-friendly “photo fix” tool also let me adjust the light balance and contrast of my snaps.

Navigating between Zylo’s features was child’s play. A useful app shortcut bar gave me fast access to my favourite apps, including Facebook, and a dedicated play button on the phone’s front took me straight into the music player.

The phone’s construction is sound. From below the decently-sized screen slides a spacious physical keypad that’s ideal for writing text messages and emails.

Speaking of emails, Zylo is set-up for basic mobile internet access. By “basic” I mean the phone will load web-connected applications, including Facebook and Twitter, and webpages from Google.

Unfortunately, webpages don’t display as neatly as on your PC. The phone lacks wi-fi support, so connections were often slow in areas where network coverage was poor.

Social networking apps

Camera pictures were reasonable quality

Lack of wi-fi also means heavy mobile internet users could see their mobile internet allowance used up quickly by frequent 3G use.

Sony Ericsson states that Zylo’s battery life for music playback is 26 hours. This was accurate, in my opinion, though simultaneously using Zylo’s other features did use up the battery power faster - as would be expected.

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