Sony Ericsson W950i Walkman Phone

Permalink: Sony Ericsson W950i Walkman Phone by Franz Bicar

The Sony Ericsson W950i has been mentioned at the beginning of the year and SE fans have been patiently waiting for it and for the things - though some are definitely not new - that it can do. Well, the phone has finally been released and now is the time to look and see if all the delays and all the anticipation was worth it.

What we are going to look at here is whether the phone is all worth it. It’s main selling point is, no doubt, the 4GB internal memory. It is impressive for a phone this size, but is it enough? As a walkman phone, this handset will probably have excellent music playback and a functional MP3 player for most people.

The Sony Ericsson W950i comes in at about 15mm thick. Some SE haters would like to say that it is just an MP3 players that you can make calls from. Well, that is no surprise as the phone does not even have a camera built-into it. All in all, it has room just for music. The large 2.6” touch screen is a nice addition though, it even comes in with a stylus to make browsing even easier. The music player also supports album art which is displayed fully through the 262k color screen.

Another feature that could probably attract users is its 3G capabilities. Aside from making calls, web browsing and surfing the internet could probably be labeled as the second most useful feature in a handset such as this. With the W950i, Web browsing is fast and painless thanks to the inclusion of the Opera 8.0 browser and the ability to download RSS feeds, however there are no video calling facilities on the W950i. Because of this, the handset is a fantastic size. The full dimensions are 106 x 54 x 15 mm and it weighs only 112g – making this a very light handset indeed.

The phones battery life is also impressive. It has 7.5 hours of talktime, and up to 340 hours standby. As a music phone, this means you can listen to your songs for quite a while.

The Sony Ericsson W950i also included business users in designing this phone. It has a Symbian operating system, enabling users to download new applications to their phones, and has all the features of a smartphone, including a calendar, to-do list and the ability to make conference calls. Handwriting recognition is also present, so you can actually write out memos and the phone translates them into text, however like all devices with this feature it means developing crystal clear handwriting to get full use out of this feature. For the rest of us the phone includes 3D Java games, Bluetooth and an FM radio.

The Walkman side of the phone comes with the standard features, including the recent addition of TrackID which was added to the W850i. TrackID enables users to record a few seconds of a song from the radio, upload it to the server, then receive all information relating to the song, such as artist, album, song name and the year it was released. 3G makes all this instantaneous, meaning that that previously unknown song is only a few clicks away.

Song browsing has been made even easier by Sony. Instead of pressing a button to move down song by song, the W950i has a jog wheel on the side which is easy to use and enables you to scroll down lists at twice the speed. This is a welcome addition to any handset in my opinion and, seeing as there is room for 4000 tracks on the handset, means that the days of scrolling track by track are long gone.

Sources:
http://www.mobile-review.com
http://asia.cnet.com
http://www.techradar.com