The Sony Ericsson W960i is a Symbian-powered music phone, sporting the UIQ user interface. With its touchscreen interface and 8GB of built-in storage, I put the W960i through the gauntlet of a media phone, to see how it holds up.

Multimedia / Applications

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.

Physical Aspects

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.

Core Functions

The Sony Ericsson W960 rocks tri-band GSM (900/1800/1900MHz) and WCDMA (2100MHz). Data options include UMTS or WiFi, though I was unable to convince the W960 that my 2Wire router even existed. I found this to be a big drawback, as I have no issues using this router with any laptops, or my Nokia N810 or N95. My hotspot simply never showed up on the W960’s WiFi searches. I found the GSM reception to be rather strong, despite missing the GSM 850MHz band. I was able to use a T-Mobile SIM card and found that even with 2-3 bars of service, the sound quality through the earpiece was good. The W960’s microphone does a great job of picking up voices and slightly reducing background noise. The speakerphone is very loud and clear, and was easy to use, though oddly located on the back of the device.

User Interface

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.

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.

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