Sony Ericsson W950i Walkman

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Features
The most asked questions among mobile users are whether a phone has a camera, Wi-Fi, 3G, how much memory it offers, etc. Well, the answer is yes and no for the W950i. Connectivity options on this Sony Ericsson include 3G, Bluetooth (with A2DP support), infrared and a proprietary port to connect a charger, portable handsfree, USB cable and other accessories. If we had our way, we would have preferred wireless LAN as a feature on the W950i as well. Look elsewhere, too, if you want a built-in digicam for the occasional snaps.

Sony Ericsson's main pitch for the W950i is its onboard 4GB memory, which roughly stores 1,000 songs (of 4MB each). This, together with an additional 60MB for user data, rivals many of the portable music players in the market today in terms of storage capacity. That's all sweet on paper until you realize there's no memory expansion slot for easy sharing of files and documents with devices. There's Bluetooth and infrared, but they still can't beat the convenience of removing a memory card and slotting it into another host device to transfer data.

The W950i is a bundle of joy when it comes to music entertainment. Massive storage capacity aside, this Sony Ericsson also has FM radio with radio data support (the handsfree headset is required to act as an antenna). If you hear an unfamiliar song over the air, record a few seconds of it and TrackID will reply via a text message to your phone. The bundled handsfree kit allows you to skip or go back to the previous track and adjust volume, but unfortunately there's no Hold button on the wired remote to prevent users from accidentally hitting the keys during use.

Like most music players, there are options to build your own song playlists, rewind and fast forward and shuffle tracks, and an audio equalizer for various tempo and beats. Add a star (up to five) for your favorite songs and assign different color moods to go with each of them. Supported audio formats generously include 3GPP, AAC+, MIDI, MP3, MP4, WAV, WMA and Real Audio. As with other Sony Ericsson Walkman phones, switching between the music player and phone is seamless. The music stops when there's an incoming call and continues where it left off after you hang up. Flight mode turns off your cellular network, but you can still fiddle with your tunes and other features on the unit.

If you want to get more creative, you can also compose your own melodies with MusicDJ to use as ringtones. Alternatively, there's an onboard player for video playback or you can sing into the recorder for listening later.

Sony Ericsson bundles the Disc2Phone software to drag-and-drop songs from your music CDs to the phone, as well as the PC Suite synchronization software with the W950i. The handset runs on Symbian OS version 9.1 and we could get our PC and Microsoft Outlook to sync with the phone quite effortlessly. The uncluttered user interface on this candy bar is easy on the eyes with options to display the user menu either as icons or a dropdown list. On the Home screen, a row of five default icons brings you to the Walkman, FM Radio, Web, Messaging and main menu. More onscreen shortcuts can be found on the top corners of the LCD panel, one of which sends you to the Task Manager. You'll find this useful if you want to close applications running in the background in order to speed up operations on the handheld.

Entertainment goodies aside, the W950i also comes with an Opera Web browser, an RSS feed reader, SMS, MMS, Push email, handwriting recognition, flight mode, conference call capability and 3D games.