AT&T gave Sony Ericsson fans a two-part surprise in July when the carrier introduced the Cyber-shot C905a and Walkman W518a. Sporting a familiar design and a music-friendly feature set, the W518a doesn't have the C905's high-end shooter, but it has its attractions. Music quality is respectable and you get a strong range of features, like stereo Bluetooth, GPS and third-party apps. On the downside, call quality was a mixed bag, the phone is sluggish, and the navigation controls and keypad are overly stylized. In short, this is a phone that you should test before buying. You can get it for just $49.99 with a two-year contract and a $50 mail-in rebate.
Design The Sony Ericsson W518a bears a striking resemblance to the unlocked Sony Ericsson W980 . Both have a black skin, a flip phone design, and circular music controls below the external display. Yet, the W518a does show its own unique touches. To begin with, the external display is smaller and it comes in a monochrome resolution only. That means that while it still shows most essential information--the time, battery life, signal strength, and numeric caller ID--you don't get photo caller ID or the date and it won't work as a viewfinder for the external display. Also, the text size, which is not changeable, may be too small for some users.
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The Work of Art in the Age of Outsourced Reproduction
On a recent trip to Montreal, the hotel room my wife and I booked was described as a “loft” and was likewise decorated with the requisite modern furniture and exposed brick walls. An offshoot of a very fine hotel located a few blocks away, our “loft” unit was comfortable and rather tastefully decorated. There were even original oil paintings on the walls, or so we initially thought.
After a few days in the room, something about the “artwork” didn’t sit quite right. It was all too homogeneous- the paintings in the bathroom (yes, above the toilet in a bathroom with no fan) and the ones above the bed and the desk all looked a bit too similar. We initially imagined that they had bought artwork from a local artist of limited creativity. My curiosity finally got the best of me, and I took one of the paintings off the wall and saw this:
Made in China hotel art, Model E-002
Upon taking both the paintings in the bathroom off the wall, we discovered that they both held the same model number and were both “Made in China.” There was no artist’s signature, and they were clearly painted on a larger piece of canvas that was cut up and stretched over various wooden supports to create a number of smaller “artworks.”
The "Artwork"
I should not have been shocked. It’s not that I expect hotel rooms to have great art- they usually have some sort of sailboat or flower themed art above the beds that blends into the wallpaper. I think the shock in this particular example comes from the very fact that the hotel went to such great lengths to brand itself as hip, modern, and urban. By putting abstract oil paintings on thick stretcher bars in each room, it conveys the idea that it is some sort of “artist’s loft” that we had the good fortune to stay at for the week.
The Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Is Packed With FeaturesPR-inside.com (press release)A composer is even included for the production of custom ringtones. A speakerphone is included for hands free communication and a 3.5mm audio jack and more »
