Jul
02
The Sony Ericsson W960 is a decently sized handset, measuring in at 109mm x 55mm x 16mm (4.3″ x 2.2″ x 0.6″). The black candybar handset is trim and fits nicely in one hand. However, it’s no lightweight, at 119g (4.2oz), this is one handset you’re definitely aware you’re holding. Built like a rock, the W960 doesn’t have any annoying creaks or moans when using it, though the keypad makes little clicking noises when in use.
The W960 offers a bevy of hardware buttons, though not the ones you would normally expect from a smartphone. The front of the device features a regular numeric keypad, with a back button, Walkman button, and ‘c’, or clear button taking up the top row. Between the screen and the keypad are three dedicated media playback keys. These are touch-sensitive and are only active when you have the Walkman application open. The right side of the W960 houses the volume up/down buttons, as well as the camera shutter key. There is an extremely handy scroll wheel on the left side of the handset, which you can press in to select items. The power button is on top, and there is a proprietary Sony Ericsson plug at the bottom of the handset.
The display is a sizable 2.6″ QVGA touchscreen, which I found to be rather mushy, making it awkward to use the stylus or my finger. However, the display is very bright, but impossible to read in direct sunlight. A front-facing VGA resolution camera is located to the top left of the display, for video calling, where supported. The main 3.2 megapixel camera is located on the back of the device, along with the dual-LED flash. The loud speaker is also located on the back of the device, slightly below the camera. The stylus’ hiding spot is located along the edge, near the speaker. The stylus is extremely cheap feeling, like those flimsy plastic toothpicks that come with a Swiss Army knife.The W960’s 3.2 megapixel camera features autofocus and a dual-LED flash, in addition to decent video recording capabilities. The camera shutter button on the side of the device is two-stage, allowing a slight press to focus, and a full press to activate the shutter. From the home screen, the camera was ready to take a shot in 3-4 seconds, which is manageable for a smartphone. Most impressive, however, is the shutter lag, and time between taking a picture and being ready to take the next one - it’s nearly instantaneous. I was amazed at how quickly I’m able to manually snap pictures in succession with this handset.
Unfortunately, with the camera, that’s where the amazement stopped. Given that the W960 is a touchscreen device, one would think that, to toggle the various settings in the camera, such as flash, resolution, etc, you could merely touch the icon on the screen. Not so, as the UIQ interface forces you to touch the ’settings’ button and navigate to the various settings. I found this to be extremely frustrating. Also, the flash is either on, or it is off. There is also no ‘auto’ setting, which makes things ever more frustrating, as it takes a minimum of 6 clicks to toggle the flash on or off.
One of the key features of the W960 is the Walkman music player interface, 8GB of internal storage, and dedicated, touch-sensitive media playback keys. Given that, I found it odd that the handset requires an additional adapter to use 3.5mm headphones. The Walkman music player application is certainly full of eye candy, and offers the ability to browse through your music by artist, album, playlists (created on the PC or device), and mood. I was very dissappointed to not see the ‘genre’ option listed, as that’s how I typically listen to my music.
Sony Ericsson offers a Media Suite application for your desktop that allows you to organize your music, and sync it over to your device, including playlists, ratings, and user-labeled moods. However, this interface was disturbingly slow, over USB it took 16.5 hours to transfer 7GB of music to the handset’s internal memory. That works out to 123kbps, in which case it would have been quicker to have downloaded each song over WiFi.
The Now Playing screen of the Walkman music player is the best I’ve seen on a mobile device, though, with the option of different visualizations running in the background adding a nice ambiance. Album art is shown, and finally in UIQ you’re able to tap on any of the onscreen icons to shuffle or repeat the music, or set the rating or mood of the track. There is a graphic equalizer with nearly a dozen presets, in addition to the ability to set your own. Music is played through the speaker in the back of the handset, and comes through loud and clear, despite the inconvenient placement.
The W960’s organizer/PIM applications are partially organized in the Control Panel, and partially in the Organizer submenu. The Control Panel is where you’ll find the calculator, stopwatch, and timer, while the Organizer holds the calendar, notes, and business card scanner. Also, QuickOffice and PDF+ are both preinstalled, making it possible to manage Office documents directly on the device. Gaming on the W960 is possible, as well, with Vijay Singh Pro Golf 3D and SSX 3 snowboarding preinstalled. The graphics on SSX 3 are impressive, but without a proper d-pad, the controls are wonky at best.
Web browsing is a disappointing experience, as well, with the default UIQ browser. The browser is optimized for mobile sites, and will attempt full HTML, only to crash and report an error the majority of the time. However, it’s possible to select text within a webpage, and the browser features a download manager and landscape view, as well. Opera Mini would be an improvement over the default web browser.
The Sony Ericsson W960 uses the Symbian operating system, with the UIQ user interface. The main display offers the standard row of status indicators up top, all of which you can tap and interact with. There is a user-defined shortcuts area, which shows 4 applications, and can be expanded to offer 14 shortcuts to different applications, tasks, or settings. The Active Standby can either show the Walkman application or be set to ‘business’, which offers upcoming calendar entries and other PIM-related information.
There are three on-screen ’softkeys’ along the bottom of the display, and these change, depending upon the application currently in use. The onscreen softkey to the far right is usually the ‘more’ button, which brings up a comprehensive submenu, at the bottom of which is a link to the task manager, which reports the current open applications, as well as the most recently used programs. Themes are supported and change the wallpaper, menu backgrounds, and ringing tone.
With UIQ and the Symbian operating system, the W960 supports native applications, which are available primarily through Sony Ericsson’s directory on the web browser’s home page. There are also numerous places online where you can find 3rd party applications that can add functionality to the handset, much like programs for your computer.
Conclusion
The Sony Ericsson W960 is a great looking smartphone with plenty of top-notch features to offer. However, the user interface and touch implementation make it difficult to get around, and frustrating to use. The Walkman music player and 8GB of internal storage are certainly tempting, but the dreadfully slow USB data transfers and lack of Genre support in the music player are hard to overlook. Also, while the camera application is zippy, the flash and other settings are extremely inconvenient to change, meaning it’s only really good for point-and-shoot. Overall, I give the Sony Ericsson W960 a Not Recommended rating. There are plenty of other music-oriented smartphones with good cameras that don’t give you a headache to use.
You’ll find a gallery of sample photos shot with the W960’s 3.2 megapixel camera on the following page.
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