Sony Ericsson W960i Review
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Sony Ericsson has launched a new handset from the walkman range
which runs on Symbian/UIQ.The new phone has a memory of 8GB and
a touch screen display and many new features for the walkman range.The
handset comes in only one color scheme and that is Vinyl Black.
The sales package is pretty rich and it contains :Handset,Battery
(BST-33),Stereo Bluetooth-headset (HBH-DS220),Wired stereo headset
(HPM-70),USB data cable,Charger,User Guide and Carrying pouch
The W960i has a nice design and the quality of the materials
used is decent , but they still give the impression of a cheap phone.The
W960i's plastic stylus makes this impression even stronger - in
fact, it would do for, well, toy phones, but decidedly not for a
top of the line model.
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The phone measures 109x55x16 mm and it weighs 119 grams. The right-hand
side now features two volume control keys and the dedicated camera button.
The top end hosts the power key, and at the bottom end, you will find
the service indicator, which isn't the best possible place for it, except
for when the phone is on a table in front of you. The SIM-card slot is
beneath the battery.Above the display sits the forward-facing VGA camera
for video calls in 3G networks.
The W960i and the P1i have the same display type.It is a QVGA
resolution (240x320 pixels) display measuring 2,6 inches (39x53 mm),and
it can display up to 262 000 colors.
The screen can show up to 14 text and 3 service lines. Information is
fairly legible; fonts can be adjusted to your liking. The W960i does well
in the sun and indoors it outputs a crisp and color-saturated picture.
The W960i comes with a conventional number pad ,and there is the
dedicated Walkman key for starting up the player, and right above the
number pad there are three touch-sensitive keys just like on the W950i.
All buttons are lit in pretty dim white, which is enough for most environments.
The handset has the BST-33 battery (Li-Pol, 950 mAh) which isn't
much different from other smartphones from the company. The maker claims
that the battery life is 5-9 hours for talk and up to 330 hours for standby.
In the most intensive usage mode, the charge on the battery lasts for
1 day - during this time span not only can you listen to music without
taking a break, but also check mail and browse Internet pages on a regular
basis. Taking into consideration that the majority of users don't employ
capabilities of the device to this extent, the battery life will average
two days or so, but it depends on every given case. Those, who don't aim
at listening to music or using other functions too often, the device will
offer 2-3 days of online time. Files can be transferred onto the W960i
via USB-connection 2.0.Upon connection to a PC the smartphone is displayed
as a USB Mass Storage, which allows the user to see all sections, saving
for system folders. Another way to pair up the W960i with your PC via
USB is Modem mode, when the smartphone starts acting as a wireless modem.
The W960i comes equipped with EDR-enabled Bluetooth 2.0 and allows
for up to 16 devices on the list. The device supports all important profiles
including A2DP.The data speed on Bluetooth connection makes 50-60 Kbit/s.The
handset shows off support for 802.11b (11 mbps), enabling you to connect
to two access points and has nothing against pairing up with hotspots.
Going online through WiFi allows all preinstalled applications that have
something to do with Internet connections to start up and operate properly.
The phone comes with 256 Mb of flash memory with 128 Mb being user-manageable
(Disk C or the internal memory). And Disk D is a flash-powered 8 Gb storage
drive, identified as removable drive in the USB Mass Storage mode.
As it has always been the case for UIQ devices, you can
upload extra language packs from PC so as to change the menu language.
Unlike the previous models, now you can choose the default display view
- either the standard Today or the Walkman edition. In the latter case
two extra icons for accessing the menu and the shortcuts beneath pop up,
while the main area of the screen is occupied by info on artist, current
album and the Album Art. This same zone is also used for information on
your current radio station.
Text in all pre-installed applications can be zoomed in/out - by default
they employ Medium font size. Making fonts smaller doesn't result in illegible
text - on the contrary, it is still quite easy to read, yet the W960i
manages to squeeze some more lines into the display The same goes for
the increased size, however here we expected to see a more substantial
growth; anyway the font becomes even more recognizable, though it doesn't
differ too much from the standard size.
The handset is equipped with Walkman 3.x Touch player for
UIQ 3.0. Curiously, the stylus-less navigation works out perfectly when
you have only a handful of albums (5-6), so they all fit on one page.
But should you music library be of greater size, it gets much more awkward
to handle.Supported audio formats - MP3, AAC, AAC+, E-AAC+, WAV and m4a.
No limits on the bitrate of mp3-files should be observed, you can also
upload VBR-tracks.The handset comes packaged with HPM-70 headphones, which
employ the Fast Port slot. On the plus side, it supports A2DP-profile
for Bluetooth, which provides for connectivity between the phone and a
wireless headset. Set in this mode, the W960i keeps itself up and running
for about 6,5-7 hours straight (loop playback, no other tasks or applications
running).Apart from the Artist, Genre, Album and Playlist filters, the
W960i offers a bunch of new settings, specifically mood-dependant playback,
which is some sort of a rating, that you can set up manually for every
song. Another new filter is called Time Machine, which allows you to playback
tracks of some specific year. Other categories are: Most player, Latest
Additions, Top Rated. The amenities you get with the player include the
bookmarks, meaning that you can bookmark any place within a track, which
will come in handy for audio-books fans.
There are four visual effects available with the W960i's player,
which have been embedded just for the sake of it, being of no real use.
The player also can turn itself off automatically.The W960i comes with
11 equalizers, which do make the difference in the way your music will
sound, but the sonic experience here is what you would normally expect
from UIQ-smartphones, so nothing to shout about.
This version of the Walkman player is one of the best we've seen,
but at the same time, it delivers no breakthrough in terms of sonic experience.FM-radio
will start up only with a headset plugged in ,this radio enjoys stereo
sound technology.The user can store up to 20 stations in the handset's
memory, opt for auto-tuning, or take advantage of RDS. Now the radio comes
with the auto turn-off feature. Also you can pick some visualization effects,
and unlike those available for the player, here you can select their colors
as well.TrackID. Allows recording a short clip of a track and then retrieve
the artist and song title via the TrackID service - it has been around
on the previous offerings from the company, now it is available with the
W960i as well.
The phone comes preinstalled with one or two entertainment applications,
by default these are NightClub Empire and QuadraPop.
Camera
The model doesn't belong to the CyberShot camp, nevertheless comes in
packing a 3,2 Mpix camera.This camera boasts auto-focus ability as well
as the LED flash, and speaking of the interface, it is a standard UIQ 3.0
fare, matching that of the Sony Ericsson P990i. Snaps can be taken in
the following resolutions:
* QXGA (2048x1536)
* UXGA (1600x1200)
* SXGA (1280x960)
* VGA (640x480)
The handset doesn't pack the BestPic feature, which normally characterizes
the CyberShot series.
Below you can see a couple of photos taken with Sony Ericsson W960i:
Video.
The video recording quality lives up to the brand yet lags behind some
Nokia-branded offerings. If you are after a decent video department, this
is not the right way to go.
Office applications. This section holds all office applications; by default
there are four of them (except for the organizer, which is a standard
program). The first item on the menu features Notes, which can be either
text (typed with any method you like, txt extension is also supported)
or scribbled.
The second application is going by the name of PDF+, and as its title
implies, it servers as a PDF reader. You can view these documents either
in portrait or landscape mode. Actually, this application has been available
for various versions of OS, including platform 60, for several years now.
Nokia has also installed this program on a number of its devices. On the
whole PDF+ works pretty fast, and seamlessly deals with files both in
English and documents, written in various encodings (though as applied
to pdf, the very word of "encoding" feels somewhat out of place).
This app also retails separately for around 25 USD.
QuickOffice - another third-party application, which has been selected by
UIQ as a default app for the third edition and comes along with the standard
package (there is a version for the previous UIQ editions available, retails
for 50 USD). The program itself is an editor, which recognizes is and capable
of opening and editing MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint documents.
Voice - A sound recorder, which allows making voice notes
(only when in standby mode), you are also at liberty to choose the format,
which all recordings will be made in. This application offers a very intuitive
and straightforward interface. A recording's length is limited by nothing
but the volume of free memory left on the handset.
Picture gallery - the application displays thumbnails of
pictures and allows you to toggle into the full-screen mode. No visible
changes have occurred in this program, though now you can send an MMS-message
containing the image you are currently browsing.
MusicDJ - a default application for Sony Ericsson has finally made its
way to the smartphones - this app lets you mix a number of tracks into
one.
Themes are one of the major parts of the new UIQ -not only do they modify
the appearance of windows and colors, but also shape-change particular menus
and icons, so this allows making up totally refined looks of the interface.
Further more, you can adjust not only graphics, but also sounds of screen
taps and various events.
The handset comes equipped with Opera 8 as its default web-browser.
These days this is the best browser you can possibly find for this device
type, the only counterpart is S60's browser version two. It can work both
in portrait and landscape modes, supports cookies, and scales pages to
fit them into the display size. I won't describe all features of this
application here, as there will be a dedicated write-up on this application.
File manager allows viewing user's folders.
It supports multi-selection of files or folders, as well as deletion and
copying; also you can send a number of files to other devices via Bluetooth.
The manager's capabilities are quite conventional.
Conclusions
The developers have put too much effort into morphing a touch-screen based
smartphone into a feature phone, but somewhere along the way they forgot
to cut its price. So they have boosted it with a couple of accessories,
but even on this front it is not all sunshine and rainbows. This way,
the Sony Ericsson W960i will retail for roughly 765 USD.And in Europe
it will come in with a price tag of 500-550 Euro, which isn't the best
offer out there either. In fact, you can get some more capable S60-powered
solutions by Nokia for the same money right now.
Source: www.mobile-review.com
