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Features

Sony Ericsson's W960i claim to fame other than its touchscreen LCD and its announcement during the iPhone launch hype is its 8GB of shared media drive. In addition, the phone also has a separate 260MB of memory, of which 96MB is reserved for the operating system and the remaining 160MB for storing data. There's no expansion card slot on the W960i, for obvious reasons.

Like we mentioned earlier, the W960i has near identical physical dimensions as the P1i, but the similarity doesn't end there. The two also share the same 208MHz processor and 128MB of RAM. More on the performance later.

The handset's menu is very similar to some of the touchscreen models we've seen like the M600i and P1i. The default user theme shows the Walkman player on the screen. That can be turned off if desired. Menu options that appear on the bottom of the 2.6-inch screen change according to the different settings. While we managed to get away with using our finger or thumb on the panel most of the time, typing a text message via the onscreen keyboard still requires a stylus. The latter is stowed away on the top left corner. Speaking of which, we wondered if Sony Ericsson could have bundled a more solid (metallic) stylus instead of a plastic one that looks like a steal at a bargain store.

Because there's no directional keypad or joystick on the W960i, navigating the Walkman interface requires the use of the jog dial. The menu icons are lined in a column with the usual sorting by artists, albums, compilations, tracks and playlists. There's also a Moods option where songs can be tagged to the different tempo of the music, for example, happy, sad, energetic or chilled. This lets us pick one that suits our mood for the day.

The W960i promises a lot as a music player, but unfortunately, isn't quite the complete package as we thought it could be. It doesn't have a built-in 2.5/3.5mm audio port. Perhaps we are used to having such an option, especially on some of the Nokia Nseries sets. We thought it's about time Sony Ericsson does some justice to its Walkman phones as well. That said, our review set comes with a 3.5mm adapter. We just didn't like the hassle of dealing with the extra length of cable.

Although it's from the Walkman series, the W960i isn't a minion when it comes to digital imaging. It has a 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera with a pair of LED photolights. Pictures can go up to a maximum resolution of 2,048 x 1,536 pixels and videos in QVGA at 15fps. The video part was a bit of a disappointment since there are smart phones on the market that are capable of shooting motion images in VGA resolution at 30fps. There's also a secondary front-facing camera for 3G video calls.

On the connectivity front, the triband W960i is 3G-enabled (UMTS 2100) and equipped with Bluetooth with A2DP support and Wi-Fi. Other features on this Symbian UIQ Walkman include FM radio with RDS, an Opera Web browser, support for RSS feeds, TrackID and organizer functions.

« Design | Performance And Conclusion »

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