Sony Ericsson W960

Sony Ericsson W960 takes a Walkman series to a completely new level and offers a wide range of exciting new features. W960 was announced by Sony Ericsson some time back amidst much fanfare and it generated a lot of hype but its launch came only recently. A big display with touchscreen support, Symbian OS, WiFi,8GB space, you will find all these under one roof : Sony Ericsson W960!

Sony Ericsson W960 specifications :

• Dimensions : 109 x 55 x 16 mm
• Weight : 119 g
• Display : 2.6″ TFT with 240 x 320 resolution
• Storage capacity : 8GB
• 128MB RAM
• 3.15 Megapixel camera with autofocus
• GPRS and 3G enabled
• WiFi 802.11b
• Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• Symbian OS 9.1, UIQ 3.0
• Approx. Price : $650

The specifications sheet of the W960 is truly amazing and it features almost every feature except for EDGE which is a bit of disappointment. The W960 has many characteristics found in Sony Ericsson P1i such as same processor, same amount of RAM etc. but it is essentially a successor to Sony Ericsson W950 which did not gain much popularity.

Design and Display

The W960 has got good looks and its dimensions also also small. The weight stands at a relatively low 119 g almost same as its predecessor. On the front panel you will find only the standard keys along with the big 2.6″ touchscreen display. The front camera and earpiece are above the display. But the fun starts when you get to know that there are a bunch of touch sensitive keys below the display which activate when Music Player is opened. The Jog dial is on the left side along with stylus holder. The right side is pretty much standard with the volume keys and the camera shutter key. The back panel hold the 3.2 megapixel camera which comes with dual flash and Sony has provided nice finishing to the setup.

The display on the W960 is a 2.6″ TFT touch sensitive screen having a resolution of 240 x 320. The display supports 262K colors and has good visibility under sunlight. The contrast and saturation levels are although not upto the mark and do not bring out the crispness in the display clarity. The keypad is very ergonomic and comfortable to use and the backlighting complements the phone color nicely.

Symbian OS and Web Browser

The W960 comes loaded with Symbian OS 9.1 which is base of the UIQ 3.0 interface. It offers a whole lot of customisation options and also gives you the liberty to install 3rd party softwares apart from Java. The home screen itself brings the fact to life that this phone is a Walkman phone as you see a shortcut of Music player right is middle of the screen!

Apart from regulars like clock,battery,signal, the home screen offers you with a shortcut bar on which you can stuff upto 15 shortcuts. The home screen also is capable to displaying the visualisations associated with a music track which you would find only accessible through music player.

You find two pop-ups on the home screen for navigating you through the menus. The more softkey offers you the various connectivity options ,task manager, ring volume and other such stuff. The other triangular softkey gives access to more important tasks such as call management, contact management, organiser stuff etc. The options have been neatly organised and it is an ease to browse through them.

Opera Mobile 8.0 is the bundled browser with the phone. It is certainly one of the best you will find in mobile devices. It renders pages perfectly and is fast. It has support ranging from HTML,XHTML,CSS to Javascript,CSS,TSL and SSL. It has got all the armours in its kitty to make it a successful browser. Naturally the browsing experience is good on the phone!

Music Player and Camera

Music Player is a strong point of the phone which comes as no surprise. The touch sensitive multimedia keys on the display come in handy while operating the player. The interface on the player is very user-friendly and a fun to work with. Apart from custom playlists, the player hold the ability to create autoplaylists based on genre,latest addition,year,most played etc which is useful more often than not. The background visualisation really mesmerize you and you would keep gazing at them!

The speaker sound quality is soft but soothing. The bass is present but is limited. Overall the speaker is good only for casual listening while alone in a quite room. But Sony has compensated for that by providing a stereo Bluetooth headset which makes use of A2DP feature of the phone. You can plug in your own earphones too in it!

The Sony Ericsson W960 is equipped with a 3.2 megapixel camera compared to no camera in the W950. Landscape mode is the default mode for capturing pictures and videos. The toolbar at the bottom contains all the settings options for the camera. You get a dedicated macro mode in the autofocus settings. Some other manual settings include fixed focus, exposure control, white balance and the preset modes to choose from.

The camera quality of the W960 is very good and the pictures turn out pretty. The contrast and sharpness are upto the mark and the unit produces images better than Sony Ericsson P1i. The video quality is also good but is limited to 15fps at QVGA resolution. 30fps at QCIF resolution isn’t worth mentioning for its quality.

Pros :

• Touch sensitive display
• Excellent music player
• Great camera
• Symbian OS
• 8GB storage space
• WiFi enabled

Cons :

• Slows down when 8GB filled up
• No EDGE support
• No VGA video recording

Final Thoughts

The Sony Ericsson W960 is an excellent offering from Sony Ericsson and is surely bound to make some Nokia users turn its way. It offers unmatched features when compared to other Sony Ericsson phones. The excellent music player coupled with great camera is what will draw most users towards it. It you want a touchscreen phone will all the features then get this one.

My Rating : 4.25/5