On paper, the W960 is a highly-promising handset, with 8GB of storage on board for music, videos and applications; and a none-too-shabby 3.2 megapixel camera... But how does it hold up in everyday use?
The first task was to transfer contacts from my trusty old W800; this turned out to be deceptively straightforward: once I'd found a spare sim card to allow both phones to be turned on at once, it was as simple as selecting 'send all contacts via bluetooth' from the contacts menu, then importing them from the message which appeared in the inbox of the W960 - however, due to difference in contact formatting between the phones, all of the contact names were reversed (eg "Smith, John" would become "John, Smith," - the only quick way to resolve this was to manually edit the affected contacts; but this wasn't so much of a chore as it gave me a chance to practice the handwriting recognition functionality of the W960.
The Write Stuff...
I was able to quickly familiarize myself with the basics of the handwriting recognition system and now tend to use it for all text input (though some characters, notably 'K', are annoyingly difficult to execute correctly, effectively forcing you to re-learn to write) - I doubt it speeds my text-writing up at all (in fact I suspect it slows it down considerably) but the handset is slightly cumbersome to hold AND to use the stylus AND to enter text via the keypad all at once, and writing messages in this way gives me a perverse sense of achievement.
Music, maestro!
Adding music to the phone was surprisingly easy; by connecting it via the usb cable provided, Windows picked it up as a mass storage device, and from then it was simply a case of dragging and dropping music into the right directory. You can then ask the Walkman software to scan for new media files, which it will then catalogue by artist/album/genre/year/etc. However...
If you have an album on MP3 where the artist name in the ID3 tags varies throughout the album (for example the classic "Rust Never Sleeps" by Neil Young, where some songs are listed as "Neil Young", whilst some are by "Neil Young & Crazy Horse") then if you list albums by artist (the way you'll access your music 99% of the time), half the album will be in one artist submenu, whilst half will be in an entirely different submenu - regardless of whether they're contained within the same folder. A workaround to this is the 'Compilations' submenu which does reunite these severed albums.
Worse however is in store if the album name varies between tracks on an album, or if no ID3 track information exists at all - there is no way to play an album in its original form if this happens, short of editing the song details on a PC or creating your own playlist. Its a minor quibble, but a simple 'play contents of folder' function is conspicuous by its absence.
Wired for Sound...
Whilst the Walkman software may be a little 'quirky', the audio quality you get from the bundled (wired) headphones is thoroughly impressive, with a multitude of equaliser options to play with; and the small built-in speaker has no right in pumping out such a 'full' sound.
The bundled (wired) headset is the same HPM-70 that has been available since the W800 - fortunately its an excellent headset. The lack of a bundled A2DP stereo bluetooth headset would seem to be something of a missed opportunity, though I have since picked up a HBH-DS970 bluetooth headset, which performs well though lacks the ability to connect your own choice of headphones.
Snap-happy...
Camera functionality is the main reason I have waited since the days of the trusty W800 to upgrade again. Currently the only Walkman phone boasting an autofocus and LED flash in addition to its 3.2 megapixel resolution - whilst it may not be top-of-the-range these days, its certainly no slouch.
If there is a grumble with the camera, its that the flash can be a bit bright if you're too close to the object you're trying to shoot (eg for dimly-lit macro shots), leaving the end result as a whited-out mess. Generally though, picture quality is good enough for my needs, and its more convenient for everyday use than carrying around a dedicated camera - it is after all an mp3 phone with a camera attached rather than the other way round.
Casting a web...
Internet access is available through either the GPRS or UMTS/3G (though for some reason, not HSDPA) mobile connections, or through its 802.11b wi-fi connection. Regardless of the lack of HSDPA support, mobile internet browsing is quick enough for general use, and although the wifi can be tricky to get set up, once enabled is no more difficult to use than any other type of connection.
The web interface is a version of Opera, which is fairly user-friendly. One feature it has is to convert standard html pages on-the-fly to text-only wap pages; the success of the implementation of this depends greatly on the website you happen to be visiting - Be prepared to skip through a lot of meaningless pages if the original HTML is formatted to put the main body of the page below a lot of menus and headers.
We've got the power...
Battery life is good, if not great - if you're going to be listening to a lot of music or using wifi frequently, then expect to recharge the W960 once every 2-3 days at least. This may not be as good as the W800, but then the features packed in to the W960 are far in excess of its older brother.
Round-Up:
Whilst not the all-singing, all-dancing behemoth that it could have been, the Sony Ericsson W960i is still a solid all-rounder worthy to take up the mantle held for so long by the W800i. If you're going to be listening to music more than you're going to be taking photos then the W960i has a lot to recommend it over more camera-oriented phones such as the K850i
The first task was to transfer contacts from my trusty old W800; this turned out to be deceptively straightforward: once I'd found a spare sim card to allow both phones to be turned on at once, it was as simple as selecting 'send all contacts via bluetooth' from the contacts menu, then importing them from the message which appeared in the inbox of the W960 - however, due to difference in contact formatting between the phones, all of the contact names were reversed (eg "Smith, John" would become "John, Smith," - the only quick way to resolve this was to manually edit the affected contacts; but this wasn't so much of a chore as it gave me a chance to practice the handwriting recognition functionality of the W960.
The Write Stuff...
I was able to quickly familiarize myself with the basics of the handwriting recognition system and now tend to use it for all text input (though some characters, notably 'K', are annoyingly difficult to execute correctly, effectively forcing you to re-learn to write) - I doubt it speeds my text-writing up at all (in fact I suspect it slows it down considerably) but the handset is slightly cumbersome to hold AND to use the stylus AND to enter text via the keypad all at once, and writing messages in this way gives me a perverse sense of achievement.
Music, maestro!
Adding music to the phone was surprisingly easy; by connecting it via the usb cable provided, Windows picked it up as a mass storage device, and from then it was simply a case of dragging and dropping music into the right directory. You can then ask the Walkman software to scan for new media files, which it will then catalogue by artist/album/genre/year/etc. However...
If you have an album on MP3 where the artist name in the ID3 tags varies throughout the album (for example the classic "Rust Never Sleeps" by Neil Young, where some songs are listed as "Neil Young", whilst some are by "Neil Young & Crazy Horse") then if you list albums by artist (the way you'll access your music 99% of the time), half the album will be in one artist submenu, whilst half will be in an entirely different submenu - regardless of whether they're contained within the same folder. A workaround to this is the 'Compilations' submenu which does reunite these severed albums.
Worse however is in store if the album name varies between tracks on an album, or if no ID3 track information exists at all - there is no way to play an album in its original form if this happens, short of editing the song details on a PC or creating your own playlist. Its a minor quibble, but a simple 'play contents of folder' function is conspicuous by its absence.
Wired for Sound...
Whilst the Walkman software may be a little 'quirky', the audio quality you get from the bundled (wired) headphones is thoroughly impressive, with a multitude of equaliser options to play with; and the small built-in speaker has no right in pumping out such a 'full' sound.
The bundled (wired) headset is the same HPM-70 that has been available since the W800 - fortunately its an excellent headset. The lack of a bundled A2DP stereo bluetooth headset would seem to be something of a missed opportunity, though I have since picked up a HBH-DS970 bluetooth headset, which performs well though lacks the ability to connect your own choice of headphones.
Snap-happy...
Camera functionality is the main reason I have waited since the days of the trusty W800 to upgrade again. Currently the only Walkman phone boasting an autofocus and LED flash in addition to its 3.2 megapixel resolution - whilst it may not be top-of-the-range these days, its certainly no slouch.
If there is a grumble with the camera, its that the flash can be a bit bright if you're too close to the object you're trying to shoot (eg for dimly-lit macro shots), leaving the end result as a whited-out mess. Generally though, picture quality is good enough for my needs, and its more convenient for everyday use than carrying around a dedicated camera - it is after all an mp3 phone with a camera attached rather than the other way round.
Casting a web...
Internet access is available through either the GPRS or UMTS/3G (though for some reason, not HSDPA) mobile connections, or through its 802.11b wi-fi connection. Regardless of the lack of HSDPA support, mobile internet browsing is quick enough for general use, and although the wifi can be tricky to get set up, once enabled is no more difficult to use than any other type of connection.
The web interface is a version of Opera, which is fairly user-friendly. One feature it has is to convert standard html pages on-the-fly to text-only wap pages; the success of the implementation of this depends greatly on the website you happen to be visiting - Be prepared to skip through a lot of meaningless pages if the original HTML is formatted to put the main body of the page below a lot of menus and headers.
We've got the power...
Battery life is good, if not great - if you're going to be listening to a lot of music or using wifi frequently, then expect to recharge the W960 once every 2-3 days at least. This may not be as good as the W800, but then the features packed in to the W960 are far in excess of its older brother.
Round-Up:
Whilst not the all-singing, all-dancing behemoth that it could have been, the Sony Ericsson W960i is still a solid all-rounder worthy to take up the mantle held for so long by the W800i. If you're going to be listening to music more than you're going to be taking photos then the W960i has a lot to recommend it over more camera-oriented phones such as the K850i
By Matt Hubbard.
