Sony Ericsson W950i Review | Trusted Reviews

In the middle of last year I reviewed the M600i, Sony Ericsson’s attempt to take the UIQ platform out of its clunky “P” series smartphone shell and into something for a wider audience.

Now I have the tri-band, 3G W950i in my hands. Like the M600i, this is a slimline phone. It’s 106mm high, 54mm wide, 15mm thick and weighs 112g and packs quite well in your pocket. Its deep purple finish, which Sony Ericsson calls Mystic Purple, looks brown under certain conditions. It’s distinctive, although I’m not sure I like it.

Again it’s an attempt to widen the audience for UIQ, this time for music lovers, and its standout feature alongside the Walkman branding and music playback capability is that it offers no less than 4GB of flash memory.

That’s a lot of storage for a phone, and as much as you get on the mid-range iPod nano. Unusually for a mobile phone, however, there is no option to expand the internal memory with flash memory cards. If you’re using Sony Ericsson’s included Disc2Phone software or simple file transfer to transfer tracks to the handset, then that’s good for you. But in my world neither is as convenient as using memory cards to put music on a phone.

Battery life is very important for a phone that doubles as a music player. The M600i did fairly well here, delivering more than ten hours of music from its own speaker, forcing the screen to stay on.

Unfortunately, the W950i fared less well, giving me a minute less than seven hours of music, again with the screen on. That’s disappointing compared to what you get from standalone players.

Volume and quality through the speaker were also quite good and loud. You can view album art and assign a “mood” to tunes. The choices are happy, sad, energetic, relaxed, and no mood. I like this idea a lot. There’s an FM radio that can set its twenty presets automatically, or you can set them manually.

The headset comes in two parts. The part that connects to the phone contains the FM radio antenna, microphone for voice calls, and a diamond with controls for playback and system volume. In addition, there is a 3.5mm jack that allows you to plug in the included earphones or your own headphones.

Unfortunately, the bottom part uses the same slot on the phone as the power jack. So you can’t listen to music while charging the battery.

I said right at the start of this review that the W950i is 3G, so you might expect video calls to be part of the deal. Not correct. There is no front camera and by the way there is also none on the back. No video calls, no still image capture. At least 3G users will find the web browser capable. I particularly like the fact that you can switch to widescreen to see webpages better.

Overall the screen is very good. It measures 2.6 inches from corner to corner, delivers 240 x 320 pixels and 262,000 colors. It’s bright, clear and alive. It is touch sensitive as UIQ demands.

UIQ itself is a solid and capable smartphone platform. Diary and to-do list management with PC synchronization, notes, mobile email, sound recorder, the aforementioned web browser and RSS reader are all included. They sit alongside features like a stopwatch, calculator, unit converter, and timer. In addition, there are more entertainment-focused things like TrackID. This captures snippets of songs from the radio or other source and compares them to the Gracenote database, which tells you what you’re listening to in a text message.

There’s certainly plenty to lure, but the day-to-day use ergonomics aren’t the best. The W950i has a flat number pad. Small knobs in the middle of each “button” area make it easier to use than some, but it’s not as comfortable or as quick to use as real buttons. Texting was certainly a slower business than usual. On-screen handwriting recognition and a typable keyboard help a little, but you’ll need to use the W950i with two hands to reap these benefits and work with the included stylus. Both are not as quick to use as a good number pad.

When you use the music player, three orange control buttons light up between the number pad and the screen. One plays and pauses tracks, one lets you skip forward between tracks or within tracks if you hold it down, the third does the same job of going backwards. These disappear when you exit the music player. There’s also a dedicated Walkman “button” that’s always visible and launches the Walkman software, and another play/pause button – a real one this time – on the right edge of the case, next to a volume rocker.

A wheel on the left edge of the case offers vertical scrolling and pressing to select a function. Movement through on-screen lists (e.g. lists of options or applications) registered a little later than expected, and there’s an irritating aspect of freewheeling, so when scrolling the wheel quickly it kept rattling after a list item or two after I it had stopped moving it. Slow scrolling was the only way around this, and it took a bit of self-discipline to accomplish the otherwise simple task of making the right choice from a menu every time.

Below the scroll wheel is an excellent back button. Short presses scroll back through the screens, long presses take you straight back to the home screen.

Icons that can be tapped on the screen are often simply too small for your finger to hit them accurately. Just one example are the three buttons for quick access to the repeat, shuffle and equalizer functions on the music player’s main screen. You’ll need fingernail precision or the included stylus to get them spot on. The real annoyance is that there’s room in the screen design to make all three much larger.

Some icons are tucked so far into the corners of the screen that I almost wonder if Sony Ericsson is joking at my expense or, less paranoid, if they’ve done a lot of usability testing.

I haven’t come across a phone that can replace my Sansa e280 (Gordon has reviewed the very similar but lower spec e260) and was wondering if the W950i could be it. It is not.

I also don’t think it will appeal to existing fans of Sony Ericsson’s Walkman phones. This leaves smartphone fans who want good music playback as a possible target. Smartphone fans can be demanding customers, and the difficult user interface, poor battery life for music playback, and fiddly number pad can’t do the W950i any favors to meet their needs.

It’s all a bit unfortunate. I am sure that UIQ is a strong operating system. If you’re willing to put in the effort and learn how all the little tricks work, then the W950i is a capable, competent, and ultimately useful phone. However, there are a lot of irritations and I just don’t think many people will be willing to bother.

“‘Verdict”‘

The W950i’s 4GB hard drive is a decoy, but it’s overly complicated by a poor user interface that won’t satisfy either music or smartphone fans.

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Used as our main phone during the period

Verified against respected industry benchmarks and real-world tests

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Tested with phone calls, games and popular apps

points in detail

• Ease of use 6

• value 7

• functions 8

General

battery

camp