Today we are looking at Sony Ericsson's flagship Walkman phone, W950. It's interesting to see that the W950 uses the Symbian 9.1 OS and UIQ 3.0, as previous SE Walkman handset's did not, making the W950 part Walkman, part smartphone, giving users access to a vast library of Symbian applications. How useful it will be as a smartphone remains to be seen, lacking a QWERTY thumb keyboard could pose real issues for some users. Another feature that makes the W950 unique to the Walkman lineup is it' s touchscreen capability, which will undoubtedly come in handy for convenient web browsing at 3G speed. The storage space of 4GB in the W950 seems decent compared to dedicated MP3 players, but when compared to competing cellphones, it's quite amazing, very few competitors can match this, with the exception of a few, such as the Nokia N91.

Observations
The W950 comes in one color scheme, black and orange, or should I say, mystic purple and orange. Mystic purple is a fancy way of saying black, nice try Sony Ericsson. I'm not a huge fan of orange, but I believe it was used in a tasteful manner in this case. The purpose of this handset is made clear by it's Walkman Logo under the screen and the dedicated Walkman button on the left side. The W950 is much wider than previous SE Walkman handsets, in order to facilitate one-handed operation. The seamless design gives the W950 a nice feel to it, it gives the handset a stylish look.

The keypads are only visible by their labels, it appears that the buttons are covered by the W950's skin, there is small bumps to help users locate keys. I wasn't too happy with the keypad myself, I felt a sense of confusion as I tried to input text, normally keys are easily differentiated by the gaps between keys. Perhaps overtime I could grow used to the keypad, but those were my initial impressions.

People accustomed to previous Sony Ericsson handset's have probably already noticed the two missing soft keys usually found directly under the display. The soft keys have been replaced with music controls under the Walkman logo, it's barely visible in this photo, the music controls light up when the Walkman application is active. As pointed out earlier the dedicated Walkman key is located on the left and the delete key, represented by the C, located on the right.

The power button is joined with the infrared port and the stylus holder can be found on the top.

The JogDial is 3-way, meaning it can scrolls up/down and pressed as a button. Next to the JogDial is the back key, this key will return you to the previous menu screen and if held down will return you to the network service provider screen.

On the right side is a play/stop button for music, this button works with either Walkman or FM Radio, depending on what you used last. The volume button can be found below the play/stop button, which is also used to display basic handset information.

On the bottom is the microphone and multipurpose port. The multipurpose port can be used to charge the phone through a power outlet, USB file transfers and headphone adapter. I'm just as down as you guys are about the lack of headphone jack. It's a real drag carrying around additional wires, I'd like to see Sony Ericsson implement a solution similar to the PSP. The PSP uses a normal headphone jack with a data slot beside it, so if one wishes to use a wired headset for calling, that would be possible still and people that don't care for wired headset calling can carry just the headphones they want to use. None of this may matter in the near future, it seems the industry is moving towards Bluetooth stereo headphones anyhow, so the missing headphone jack wouldn't pose much of an issue.

Display
The touchscreen display is TFT QVGA (320x240) resolution and 2.6 inch in size, which makes for comfortable use and viewing. The color range is 262K, I'm glad more and more handsets are opting to support 262K colors. There is a noticeable difference between 65K and 262K displays, in images where there is a gradual change in color, the tiling effect begins to appear, which happens when the display does not have enough colors to describe the gradual change. The TFT display is becoming more and more common, it's easy to forget the benefits of using a TFT (Thin-Film Transistor) over the older display technology STN. STN displays are still in use today, so it's good to keep in mind what type of display you want and how it will impact your device. TFT displays have a higher refreshrate, this is made possible by placing the transistors directly on the display itself, which STN does not. alternatively, STN suffers from the ghosting effect, where the previous screen is still barely visible. STN displays still have their uses, TFT displays can drain your battery like no tomorrow, where as STN displays are more energy efficient. STN displays are mostly used on the outside of flip phones as status indicators, where visual quality isn't important and can also be found on lower end cellular handsets. I was able to watch videos on the W950 for about 4 to 5 hours which isn't bad for a 2.6¡² TFT display.

Battery Life
The sim card is inserted in a different manner with this handset, instead of sliding it into place under the battery, the sim card is now inserted into a slot found in the top left compartment of the battery, removing the sim card can be tricky if you didn't read the manual. To remove the sim card pull down the metal piece by the ridge to slide the sim card out.

The battery is lithium-polymeric based with a capacity of 900 mAh (BST-33). These numbers are jibberish to me too, don't worry if those numbers mean nothing to you. What matters is the real world numbers, how long did it last doing this or that.

• Day-to-Day use battery life
• Stand-by Mode = 2.5 Days
• Talk Time = 6.6 Hours
• Music Playback = 12.9 Hours (Max Volume, Default Headphones)
• Recharge Time = 2-2.5 Hours

I wasn't able to test the battery life with a UMTS network, since I'm located in the US. I was impressed with the battery life while playing music, it's comparable to dedicated mp3 players. We should keep in mind the W950 is also using energy to stay connected to the GSM network, so if we were to set the W950 into airplane mode, we could expect a significant improvement in battery life.

Accessories

The headphone adapter wire has a remote on it for easy access to musical controls, on the end of the wire is the adapter for regular headphones, take note of the silver button, this is to accept incoming calls. The stock headphones are designed to block sound, by using a rubbery material that is inserted into your ear canal, effectively acting as an ear plug. I've used these headphones on a daily basis with my Sony Ericsson W810, I found the headphones to be an inconvenience during my workouts, frequently falling out during my runs on the treadmill.

The W950 comes with a cloth case, the material is very soft, but does not stretch. The stylus is secure when placed in the stylus holder, I shook it a few times to try to make it drop, but to no avail, another stylus has passed the Iron Cook's Shake of Death test.

Size Comparison
From the W950 press photos, I was under the impression it was much larger and thicker than previous Sony Ericsson handsets, which concerned me, but my worries were unfounded. The size/shape of the W950 was comfortable to use from my experience.

Menus
The network service provider screen has all the basics one should expect. Normally shortcuts are activated by the joystick, but since there is no joystick in this model, they have shortcut icons near the bottom of the screen, not a bad compromise. The "Today" menu item expands to display any new organizer information such as appointments, task, emails and sms.

This menu item is handy for quick note taking or communication, I found this to be a great timer saver, rather than navigating the menus for specific applications. Although I did notice the menus were not as responsive as I'd like, you can see what I mean by this in the video later in this review.

The menu hasn't changed much, it's still the standard 3¡Ñ3 icon setup seen in most Sony Ericsson handsets. The menu setup is definitely not bad though, Sony Ericsson recently won an award for excellent user interface design, so I wouldn't be in such a hurry to make drastic changes if I were them.

Another note I'd like to point out is the user interface is UIQ 3.0 and the OS is Symbian as mentioned earlier. The Symbian OS is quite dominate throughout the world holding over 70% of the mobile OS market. With this greater popularity users of the Symbian OS enjoy a larger library of applications to choose from. The W950 also supports java based applications, J2ME MIDP 2.0.

Radio
The FM radio requires the headset to be plugged in, since the headset wire acts as the antenna. The radio was easy to use, just select auto search and the FM radio application will find up to 20 radio stations and save them for you. The FM radio also supports RDS (Radio Data System), which provides listeners with the radio station ID. The sound quality was excellent, I remember having much trouble with earlier FM radio cell phones, they were filled with static and could barely get a signal, especially in-doors. Hopefully in the future this sort of FM radio performance becomes the norm, rather than the exception.

Walkman
The Walkman application allows for users to organize their music by Artist, Albums, Track Title and Moods. The option to organize by moods was a great addition, it's nice to just select the mood type and get a random song that matches that mood, of course you have to set the mood for each song yourself ahead of time.

The Walkman play screen is rich in features, song details are displayed such as photo album, song title, artist, album title. Further more, you can give song ratings to help further organize your musical collection. The mood function I talked about earlier is found in the bottom right corner, each color stands for a specific mood. When selecting different moods for a song, the background animation will change movement speed and color, depending on which mood you choose. You could further customize the mood settings by changing the type of particles or animations used during music playback.

The Walkman application also has a bookmark feature, which is great for longer tracks, for example, a trance mix that last 60 minutes, or an audio book and you wish to save where you left off.

Overall the sound quality seems improved, I can't really pinpoint what is different, it just sounds better than the previous Sony Ericsson Walkman W810. It's definitely something you'd have to listen to for yourself, but it is quite noticeable. I did hear some distoration in the sound during playback over the loud speaker, this only occurred when using maximum volume setting. The 4GB storage seems like a good size for most music lovers, but there is no memory stick slot, so users cannot upgrade their memory capacity, this may be an issue for some users that demand more space.

The software provided with the W950 made it simple to rip my audio CD collection and transfer them to the W950. I would like to see something similar to the iTunes Store available for future Sony Ericsson Walkman handsets. The W950 can stand toe to toe with any of the dedicated MP3 players currently on the market, it just needs an easier way to purchase music, which seems to be the main crutch for all music players currently out on the market, excluding iPod of course.

Internet Browser
The default browser in W950 is Opera 8, this web browser is considered by many as the best browser for Symbian based smartphones, perhaps even Windows Mobile based phones. Normally this application would cost 20-30 dollars if purchased separately. The browser can adjust web pages to fit nicely on the 2.6¡² screen. Additionally, landscape mode is also supported, which I'm quite fond of. I wasn't able to fully test the Opera Browser since I am located in the US, the speeds were much slower, since I was on a GPRS connection, so I can't really say much in terms of how quickly Opera 8 can render web pages. RSS feeds are a great way to save time and money when mobile web browsing, especially if using a limited data plan, this keeps data cost low by allowing users to see what each site is offering before actually visiting.

Connectivity

• POP3
• IMAP
• SMTP
• MIME
• MHTML
• Push mail

The touch screen keyboard is definitely a welcomed feature for easier text input, although T9 text prediction is great, I'd rather use the touch screen keyboard, too bad this model doesn't have a QWERTY thumb keyboard, but that's just my personal gripe. There is other Symbian based offerings from Sony Ericsson that does have QWERTY thumb keyboards, such as P990 and M600. There is also handwriting recognition as the third method of text input, for the most part it works well, but some letters are somewhat tricky, for example, trying to write "i" requires one to lose contact momentarily with the display to make the dot on the "i", if not done fast enough the program assumes you wrote a lower case "L".

Call Quality
The W950 uses GSM 900/1800/1900(MHz) frequencies, these frequency bands are geared towards world wide use rather than in the US. The only band that is US friendly out of the 3 bands is 1900Mhz. For T-Mobile USA users this won't be much of an issue, due to the fact that the majority of T-Mobile's GSM networks operate on 1900Mhz band. As for Cingular customers things get a little tricky, it really depends on your location in the US, for the most part Cingular is prodominately a 850Mhz networks, which is the missing band in W950. I'd definitely recommend researching what frequencies are used in your area if you live in the US and wish to purchase this handset. In my case I was lucky enough to have decent 1900Mhz coverage, it was spotty at best, but I was still able to test and make calls.

The call quality was clear, I didn't notice any distortions in the sound, I didn't get any dropped calls except on the bus, but I suspect it was a coverage gap on the network's behalf, since Cingular uses a mix of both 850Mhz and 1900Mhz depending on location. The speaker phone and call volume is adequate, I'd like the volume to be increased, it was little difficult to hear in plubic areas such as crowded restaurants, where there is a lot of people talking. I guess I'm a little spoiled by past Motorola handsets, I've found those handsets to be excellent in terms of volume.

Conclusion
I thoroughly enjoyed using the W950, the ergonomics were right on and the GUI was pleasant to navigate. I didn't run into any problems with the web browser and the W950 played music as well as any other dedicated MP3 player, which raises the question, why pay $700 dollars, when I could just spend $100-$200 on a device that will do the same thing? The thought has crossed my mind, I think this device is only suitable for consumers that wish to reduce the number of devices they carry in their pocket by joining their PDA, cell phone and musical player, into one. Most high end PDA's cost around $400-$500, so we can't forget the value of the PDA aspect of the W950. I wasn't too surprised by the lack of camera since this device is aimed at music lovers, besides Sony Ericsson already has a camera centric line of handsets under the brand name of Cybershot. For people that wish to utilize all 3 aspects (PDA/Phone/Music) of the W950, I think it would be a worthwhile investment, you'd be hard pressed to find another convergence device that does what the W950 is capable of.

• Tags : Sony Ericsson W950i