"It's Normal!" Steve Reviews the Sony Ericsson Walkman W960

[Ewan]

Are you siting comfortably? Steve quite likes the W960. The latest UIQ3 device, Sony Ericsson's second UIQ Walkman phone, with regular keypad, regular styling, flush screen and a practical 128MB of RAM, has made an impression. His thoughts on the W960 from the point of view of a smartphone user are here. I'll be looking at the Walkman components for the audiophiles next week.

Read on in the full article.

[ares]

Nice review Steve! I did not know the W960 could play h264 videos without problems...that is really good news, and i hope it will be also on the next P1 firmware

[cirrus]

Nice review Steve!

I've been using a W960 and think the camera quality is pretty good despite not having fancy optics. I have some macro examples on Flickr: a shot of an 8210 and one of some ice (btw, pressing the "4" key in the camera app lets you quickly toggle between focus modes).

I'm really loving the W960i. One comment on the review - the walkman touch buttons do work outside the walkman app. You need to touch the walkman section in the screen and they enable. Not entirely obvious! :-)

[Dogmann]

Hi Steve

The only problem i would say with the fixable via Firmware upgrades is just how long SE likes to take to release these you could be waiting 6 months for the niggles to be ironed out. Unlike something like the N95 8GB that got two within months of release and that actually greatly added functionality and weren't just fixes. It's also hard to understand why SE are unable to fix these minor niggles prior to release, well lets hope 2008 and some new devcies change that.

Marc

[malerocks]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I'm really loving the W960i. One comment on the review - the walkman touch buttons do work outside the walkman app. You need to touch the walkman section in the screen and they enable. Not entirely obvious! :-)

You didnt understand. What Steve meant was that since there are dedicated physical buttons available, they should work everywhere when the walkman app is on. Even while browsing through other apps like the calendar, phone book, the gallery, etc. I dont think it currently does that, does it?

[slitchfield]

I don't understand. On my W960, the play icons are completely disabled and unlit when not actually playing music in the foreground. The ONLY places they work are in the Walkman player and on the standby screen with the Walkman pane highlighted. 8-(

hello, I´m using an E90 with 8GB micro sdhc and my w960i, the Nokia is perfect for my business usages and has all and everything I need, even docx office documents with some updates. It can also be used as mp3 player with this storage amount an a Nokia Bluetooth Stereo headset. But the W960i is my favorite music device. I earlier had the Nokia N95 and the 8gb version but if it comes to playback and battery power, the Nokias can hide behind the Sony. For me I found the perfect "business" and "media" device.
kr

[malerocks]

A phone that has tempted Steve to give up his n95. Hmmm... definitely worth checking out...

I don't want to be too pedantic...BUT...I really miss the fact that my old W800i would wake me up in the morning!! This device ( because it has Symbian - according to Sony tech support) cannot 'wake' itself up from being OFF. What's the point of an alarm fucntion that requires the device to be left ON all night? I hope some bright spark could maybe write an App that could do this oneday (fingers crossed)

Sometimes technology goes forward without fully appreciating that it's the little everyday things that make a 'good' machine 'great'. A device like this should be the sum of all that's gone before it, plus a little extra. Also I really thought the Light ON OFF function was VERY practical and was used often.

This is a beautifully featured phone and I really want to like it but I need preacticality too,
Lee

[slitchfield]

Unregistered - I really don't understand. How can a device wake you with an alarm if it's turned off? Would your PC perform any action if you left it off? A smartphone is a full computer in disguise. Just put it in flight mode overnight rather than turning it off. The other advantage is that all your apps will stay running and it'll be a lot faster to use in the morning.

[tonyn]

This was a handy feature on my old Nokia 6310 and I think it had been standard in Series 40 for a long time before. It has been in all the Series 60 / S60 devices I've looked at.

It allows me to turn off my phone at night so that I don't get calls whilst I'm sleeping, and still have a wake up alarm from the phone in the morning.

[ares]

as mentioned before, by putting your phone on flight mode (all smartphone now have it) you also wont get any calls, spent a negligible amount of battery life, and let your smartphone apps work as they should all the time, without any valid reason to turn the phone off. On other hand, i should mention all SE dumbphones alarms work with the phone turned off - but they arent smartphones, so...

[cirrus]

I suspect that Unregistered is referring to the capability of some phones to turn themselves on (battery power permitting, of course) to sound an alarm that the user has set. This means you get woken up even if you turned off your phone the night before.
AFAIK all Nokia S60 phones can do this for alarms set in the Clock application (not in the Calendar though).

[Rafe]

My understanding that it is something only supported in the later version of the Symbian OS (feel free to correct me someone). S60 FP1 onwards allows this, but as cirrus says I think its only alarms in the clock application.