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.

Physical Aspects

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 SE handsets 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 scroll 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.

Table of Contents:

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: AccessoriesPage 3: InterfacePage 4: Conclusion

Filed under: Sony Ericsson, W950