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

Interface

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 3×3 icon setup seen in most SE handsets. The menu setup is definitely not bad though, SE 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 SE 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 SE 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.

Table of Contents:

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

Filed under: Sony Ericsson, W950