Sony Ericsson W950i - 4gb of goodness

Sony Ericsson’s W950i is the current star of their walkman branded phone lineup; a Symbian 9.1 smartphone loosely based on the business orientated M600 with 4gb of onboard memory.

The menu hierarchy and UI are similar to the business orientated P990i, although with a nod towards a little more simplicity of operation – it’s well thought out, works well with the keypad, jog-dial, and touch screen, and there are generally a number of different ways of accomplishing a given task, making it suitable for most users (for instance, there are three different methods of typing text: hand writing recognition via the touch screen, an onscreen keyboard you can prod with the stylus, or standard text via the keypad as found on most phones. I found the onscreen keyboard the most intuitive personally, but all methods are useable)

The music player is very good indeed; intuitive quick, and offering a wealth of features, including sorting and filtering by artist, genre, album, song, mood, and custom play lists. It will play mp3, AAC(+), E-AAC+, Wav, and m4a, and also supports unlimited bitrates (including variable)
After using it for a while it becomes apparent that this is now a mature bit of software and the W950’s hardware matches it perfectly – sound quality is excellent (to these ears bettering every phone I’ve used except maybe the N91), and there are  wealth of equalization options to suit most tastes. The bundled HPM-70 ear pieces are very good indeed, far better than most included with other phones and mp3 players – although still not quite good enough to tempt me away from my seinheissers. The W950i also supports a2dp, so stereo Bluetooth headsets are an option.

The W950i is also a fully featured smartphone compatibile with most symbian applications (including tomtom with a suitable external gps receiver)

Perhaps the most controversial decision SE made witth the W950i was abandoning the camera entirely – this is the first phone I’ve used in a long time that has been without one, and it is a little disconcerting. SE’s reasoning is that many people do not actually use these cameras much after the first week of having a phone, and adding one would have ment increased in size, and cost – so they decided to concentrate on making the best smartphone/mp3 player combination they could. It seems to have paid off – the W950 is a great mp3 player, a decent phone, and a nice piece of equipment to own. It’s one of the few phones we’ve used for a prolonged period of time that hasn’t ended up revealing more and more niggles as time goes on, and for that reason alone we find it hard not to recommend if you have no use for a camera.