Sony Mobile Evangelist

Had a chance to play with the Sony Ericsson W960 yesterday and as promised, here's my review..(Am afraid I didn't have the time to take pics though)

Design:

First impressions are excellent and you really feel you're holding something exclusive in your hands...the combination of a black casing and white edging along its sides looks pretty good.
The glossy front is nice though it looks like it might be prone to fingertips.The back is rubberised so as to provide a good grip.It also houses a mono speaker.A stylish looking ring of metal encircles the 3.2 megapixel camera lens.
But what really catches your eye is the large 2.6 inch screen, and unlike previous UIQ smartphones, it is completely flush thereby enabling finger touch input.The stylus looks cheap though, not something you'd expect in a high-end flagship.


Usability:

The W960 does the basic functions pretty well so I didn't spend much time on that.I've used previous UIQ phones before and I was surprised at first to find that the back button has been moved to the front of the phone. However I was pretty happy to find that this did not hamper the usability of the phone in any manner. The keypad looked strange at first, but I found it to be pretty comfortable to use. Around 60-70% of the features can be accessed by your fingertips( its helpful if you have small fingers :)), so I was pretty happy to work without taking out the stylus.
Multitasking has been taken to new levels on the W960(also P1) mostly due to the large amount of RAM, 128Mb to precise( arond 70 mb on fresh boot). I had comfortably opened 20+ apps and the phone was still functioning smoothly.
The office applications(quickoffice) are good enough, though 'documents to go' is a better alternative.The handwriting recognition is excellent really, so no complaints on that front.Didn't have the time to check out the virtual keyboard though.Overall I found the menu system to be pretty good.
The phone takes a long time to boot up, and it is a bit laggy, not deal-breaking though..the lag is basically due to the slow 220mhz processor, but if you look at the positive side, it does help in improving battery life:) Opening apps for the first time is slow but much faster subsequently once they're loaded onto RAM.
The calendar, notes, stopwatch apps etc are pretty much the same standard apps we've seen on other UIQ 3 handsets.One thing worth mentioning is the business card scanner which is pretty awesome and works like a charm.
The phone has 8GB of internal memory which is large enough to hold your music so you'll not miss a memory card slot.


Camera:

Finally a Walkman phone with a good camera! The W960 has a 3.2 megapixel camera with Auto Focus which means that you can be assured of pretty good detailed pictures.I won't comment on the focussing speed though...the handset I was using was running on the older firmware(I've heard its pretty fast on the new firmware).You have the usual options of macro mode, night mode and other settings and also a dual led flash for bad light conditions. Image stabilizer and BestPic features seen in cybershot handsets are missing though.The camera interface is similar to the P1 and very easy to get used to. Using your finger here isn't too easy though, the jogdial and the stylus are much better options.

Music:

The W960 features the Walkman player 3.0 touch player which in my opinion is really a class apart from the music players seen in other phones today. Once in the player, the dedicated touch sensitive music buttons below the screen are activated. Besides the standard artist and album sorting, you can sort music on the basis of your rating, by year and even mood! You can also browse through tracks with the jog dial which is a pretty helpful feature to create your own playlists. While the music is playing, you also have full screen visualizations in the background which really are stunning. Now this is why you should get this phone! I mean just a look at those small animated particles flying around kept me staring at the player in awe for some time :)

The sound quality is excellent really....it beats the ipod comfortably in my opinion. The bundled HPM-70 headset with the in-ear design are one of the best headsets you'll find in the market.
The external speaker is by no means crappy and provides a nice listening experience, its pretty loud too but don't expect it to act as a replacement to a dedicated speaker accessory or your car stereo :)
Another handy feature is the ability of the player to turn off automatically after a user-defined period.
The W960 also has a FM Radio with RDS. I found the Radio be as good as any other SE phone while the ability to have visualizations here too is an added bonus.

Connectivity:

I didn't have time to test the USB data transfer rate but I've heard its blazing fast. Bluetooth works fine as well, it also support A2DP so you can use any stereo bluetooth headset to listen to your music. The opera browser worked fine using GPRS, though I couldn't test the 3G due to lack of network support but it should work fine as well.
The inbuilt Wi-Fi worked like a charm though and I could browse the net without any qualms whatsoever.

Conclusion:

The W960 is really the best SE phone I've ever used. The UIQ interface here is much enhanced and I had no difficulty in navigating through the various menus. And as I pointed out before, the flush touchscreen is a big plus over previous phones as it enables you to use your finger more often. There are still a few places which necessitate the use of the stylus but it is a big step up from previous UIQ 3 smartphones. The lack of EDGE or HSDPA is what that restrains the W960 on the connectivity front. The Call quality is excellent and the music part is of course brilliant.
All these features in a thin 16mm form factor is what that makes the W960 a phone to crave for!