Living with Sony Walkman F806

Plenty of people told me I was loaded for buying this thing. I looked at the negative balance on my credit card and smiled without saying a word. Us poor bastards always pay for what we buy — some sell the kidney they’ve got now, some sell the kidney they’ll have in the future. The difference is the first one’s gone for good, the second at least has a chance of being bought back.

Walking the line between selling a kidney and selling myself, I keep buying the things I want one after another. Looking at the E505, S703, and S754 I’ve used before, I get the feeling I’m deeply hooked on Sony — to the point where if you sit me down with one of those fruit-brand players I just can’t adjust. Too flat. I’ve already been trained into a heavy taste.

#Why the F806

Honestly, the F806 didn’t feel all that great at first. I originally wanted the XK — the build quality is insane, they even put granite on it. No idea what it’s for, but it sure looks impressive, and apparently it’s an anniversary model. All selling points. Holding one feels like it’s worth something, right? But after I organized my music, I realized I had new needs.

I’ve got a bit of a collecting habit when it comes to music. I’m half a tin ear, sure, but I still try to keep some standards for sound quality. Back when I used the S754, I’d find a song in APE or some other lossless format, convert it to AAC with NeroAAC at Q1.0, then transfer it over. As you’d guess, for a while there I was lazy — I’d grab a song, do a sloppy conversion, and dump it on the MP3 player. Some files even had garbled tags. Some had cover art, some didn’t. Some artists were in traditional Chinese, some in simplified. It made searching a pain in the ass… never mind building any kind of music library.

Eventually I decided to clean up my music properly. At first I figured I’d organize the APEs while converting the lossless stuff to AAC for storage, but someone set me straight: “Why keep two copies? Just convert everything to FLAC and fill in the tags and cover art.”

Thought about it, and it made sense. But that meant I needed a player that supports FLAC. Right around then I saw the intro for the F800 series — first Walkman to add FLAC support — and I made up my mind. You. Though later word got out that the ZK was getting a 4.0 update with FLAC too, but who cares — by the time that update lands it’ll be the Year of the Monkey.

#Basic Impressions

The F806 went on sale September 20th. I pre-ordered early, but the seller didn’t actually ship until the 23rd. To do my part in the boycott of Japanese goods, I bought the Chinese domestic version. Ahem.

The packaging and looks I can’t be bothered to describe — search online and you’ll find plenty. The seller told me the Sony F806 comes with a screen protector pre-installed and I didn’t need to buy one. Got the thing, took a look — where’s the protector? In the end, just to be safe, I went and got a 3-yuan film and stuck it on.

Anyway, since this is basic impressions, let’s talk about the Android system on this thing. It’s Android 4.0.4, lightly customized by Sony. ICS, not JB. For an MP3 player it really doesn’t matter whether it’s JB or not — as long as it supports FLAC… Though the F800 series is the first Walkman to support FLAC, I feel like it’s really thanks to Android 4.0… after all, Android 4.0 announced native FLAC support.

When I say lightly customized, I mean that to cater to the Chinese market, most of Google’s stuff has been chopped. No Google Play, no Google input method — it’s Baidu input instead. It also comes with Sina Weibo and Discord and the like pre-installed. Can’t uninstall, only disable. Fortunately I only use it to run the music player, no interest in the rest. Do whatever integration you want, I don’t care.

Also, I want to ask… is there a European or American firmware I can flash on this thing? I really don’t want those pre-installed Chinese apps.

#Storage and Transfer

With older Walkmans, transferring songs was a bit of a pain compared to your average Chinese MP3 player — you needed transfer software like MediaGo or SonicStage. The F800 series seems to have eased that a lot: plug it into a computer, it shows up as a USB drive, just copy the songs into the music folder, disconnect, and the media library scans and recognizes them on its own. You can listen. Of course you can still use MediaGo if you want.

Worth mentioning: I bought the 32GB version. Actual usable space is 1GB + 26.74GB. The first 1GB is for installing apps, the rest for storing music.

#Music Playback

Since it’s a Walkman, you’ve got to use Sony’s custom player to get the most out of it. But compared to the S754 and such that I’ve used before, this player feels dumbed down… uh, I mean in terms of search ability.

The old S754 at least had letter-based search. On the F800 series, you can only browse by album art, artist, playlists, and folders — and it requires the touchscreen. No search function either, which makes finding stuff really inconvenient.

SensMe is the same as always — still needs to analyze your songs. But if you want to run a detailed analysis, you’d better think twice when you see the remaining time. The cover view is a feature that looks nice but is useless. It shows your album art in 3D… you can drag, you can tap… I want to ask, how is this different from sorting by album earlier?

Also, in the music player settings you can see three Sony features: DSEE, Clear Stereo, and xLOUD. DSEE — I don’t feel much use for it when listening to FLAC… probably it says right there it’s for compressed formats. I guess it has no effect on lossless? Clear Stereo is the same as on the S754 — a slight difference, but not much. xLOUD is for the external speaker. Tested it, sound quality improved a bit, but I doubt many people use the speaker on this thing…

After Walkman went Android, the biggest complaint is the loss of hardware track buttons. Sony did think of this, though it’s not exactly polished.

In any situation — locked or standby — press the Walkman button on the right side and a track-skipping interface appears. This interface can be expanded; I recommend making it bigger, then you can swipe your finger across the area to go to the next or previous track… You can even do it through the cloth case, and pressing the Walkman button gives a beep. Not as precise as physical buttons, but at least there’s a way.

#Sound Impression

I’m half a tin ear, so I can’t describe sound quality too clearly. I tried comparing with the TF10 I bought alongside the F806 and the CKM55 I’d been using for over half a year, plus the stock earbuds that came with the F806. Everything I played was FLAC. I didn’t do any specific tests; I can only talk about how it felt listening out and about over the past week or so.

I’d listened to the ZK at a Sony store before, and the difference between the F806 and ZK didn’t feel big. The obvious difference was it sounded a bit emptier — probably what they call a wider soundstage. I didn’t focus on resolution when I heard the ZK, since the store’s songs are what they are and it was rushed. The F806 is clearly better than the old S754 in resolution — even with the CKM55 you can hear plenty of detail, let alone the TF10. Some four-person chorus tracks on the TF10 let you clearly pick out each person’s position. As for other bass and treble, all I can say is it’s as familiar as Walkman products I’ve heard before. Maybe some differences in detail, but hard to really pin down.

#Battery Life

One reason I bought Walkmans before was battery life. This time the F800’s battery life is so-so. With airplane mode on, I get about 5 days, listening 3 hours a day of FLAC. 15 hours compared to the official 20 hours is acceptable — after all, the official figure comes from 128Kbps audio.