Sony Ericsson Live with Walkman, the best Android under Rs15K?

Budget Android phones of today have comes a long way since the days of cheap and tacky bodies with resistive screens. These days, Tier I companies are finally opening up to the idea of budget friendly Android phones that can hold a candle to the higher-end counterparts.

Sony Ericsson has stated in the past that it plans to do away with feature phones altogether and go the smartphone route, all the way across their lineup and their new Live with Walkman is the a step in that direction. Priced below Rs15,000, it looks like formidable on paper and gives every other phone in this range a run for their money, so let’s see what it’s like to live with.

Carrying forth the legacy of the ‘Walkman’ brand, the WT19i has a very chic look, especially in white, which will certainly fly well with the ladies. The phone is very well built and curvaceous all around so no sharp edges. It’s also quite light at 115 gram. Other than the row of shortcut buttons at the bottom, we have a volume rocker and camera shutter button on the right. The sleep/wake button and dedicated music shortcut button finds its way around the 3.5mm headphone jack on the top.

The 3.2-inch screen may be a little small if you have chubby fingers and the resolution is a tad low but not a deal breaker. The screen does not get the Bravia Engine treatment since like the other Xperia phones but the display is bright and glass is scratch-resistant. You get a 5 megapixel auto-focus snapper in the back and VGA front camera. The main cam is capable of 720p video recording which is good. Still photos are good during the day, however indoor and night shots quite a bit of noise. The LED flash helps a bit but isn’t too powerful for distant shots.

The phone is super quick and Android Gingerbread is fluid with hardly any lag. This is thanks to the 1GHz CPU onboard and ample RAM onboard. Other than quad-band, it supports 3G, Wi-Fi with DLNA and Bluetooth, so connectivity is pretty much sorted.

The main feature of the WT19i is the audio and being a ‘Walkman’ branded phone, you get Sony’s xLOUD enhancement which makes the audio a lot richer, louder and the bass punchier. The effect is easily felt through headphone and the speaker. Battery Life is slightly disappointing here and although it will last you an entire day of heavy usage, we expected it to do better. The Live with walkman goes for a street price of Rs.14,500 and for this, you really can’t ask for a better phone. What’s more? You get a 4GB card, a free pair of headphones (other than the headset) and a promise for and Ice Cream Sandwich update down the road. So in a nutshell, this is ‘the’ best Android phone for this price and we give it two thumbs up!

Spec sheet
Live with Walkman
OS: Android Gingerbread
CPU: 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8255
Screen: 3.2-inch ,
320 x 480 resolution
Storage: 320MB onboard, expandable to 32GB (4GB bundled)
Connectivity: 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth
Camera :
5MP auto-focus,
720p video