It has room for a thousand songs, 3G network and touchscreen. But it also has one big fault.

Sony Ericsson surprised many when they launched their W950i. This Walkman phone has 4 gigabyte built in memory and is a beautiful smartmobile. Actually, we are talking about the twin brother of M600i. It is pretty wide, but not very thick. Even though W950i does weigh a bit, it doesn't feel like it. The front is dominated by a large touchscreen and a completely flat keypad. Build quality feels good. It does not have many movable part, so it is free of slack and squeak. The keypad is not touch sensitive. Regular keys are hidden beneath the flat surface. However, this does not make the keypad any easier to use. It is to easy to hit the wrong button. If you are not blessed with small fingers, you must be prepared to use your fingernails to hit the correct buttons. The keypad is a good example of design has come before functionality. The shortcut keys does work well. We really appreciated the scrollweel on the side of the phone. This makes it easy to scroll through menues. Besides being touch sensitive, the screen is clear an bright. It is working good for viewing images, games, applications and other tasks. Unfortunately it can be a difficult to use in sunlight since you will get finger marks on the screen.

Smart Menus

W950i is a Symbian based smarthpone with UIQ3 menusystem. This is the same menus that we find in P990i and M600i. For first time users, this menusystem can feel a bit overwhelming. But after you have learned to use the scrollwheel and the touchscreen it coming together. The main menu consists of three by three icons, while the submenues are listbased. In standby W950i has a set of customizable shortcuts. On top of that you have access to e-mail, calender and missed calls. The phone does not have regular navigation keys beneath the screen. Since the W950i is equipped with touchscreen you simply press directly on the screen. This way of using the phone can be a bit difficult at first, but once you get a hang of it, there are no problems.

Good Performance

W950i is a good candidate if you are looking for a phone to play games on. In the most modern of performance tests, the phone places itself among the best. The 3D performance is one of the best we have seen. You can safely install heavier games on the phone. Because of this, we were really surprised about the low Java MIDP1.0 (“regular java”) performance. We suspect the high resolution screen can take some of the blame for this. However, during the testperiod, the phone installed and ran everything without any problems.

The talk time is good when using the GSM network. Unfortunately, the story is not the same in 3G-mode. Tests shows talk time to be just below three hours, which is not impressive. When using the MP3 player, we needed to charge the phone every other day. There is nothing bad to say about the sound quality. We never experienced a call with noise or bad sound quality. W950i does not have a camera, and there is no support for video phone. There is not support for memory card either, but since it has 4 GB built in memory, you will not miss this.

What you get

The has 3G, which provide you with fast Internet connection as long as you have 3G coverage. You also get Bluetooth and infrared transfer. With W950i you can also use wireless Bluetooth headset. But almost more important is what you do not get. There is no Wi-Fi which allow you to use high speed Internet connection and IP-telephone both home and at work. EDGE support is also missing. This would have provided you with acceptable Internet connection whenever you do not have 3G network available. Besides this, the phone has most of what you need. A good email program, RSS reader and posibility to synchronize phonelist and calendar over Internet with SyncML. The Internet browser supplied by Opera is really good. It shrinks the pages to a format that fits the screen. W950i does not only give you a MP3 player, you also get a small movable office. But the phone is missing some key features that are normally installed on other Smartphones, i.e support for Microsft Office files and Adobe PDF documents.

Nice MP3 player, but ...

Multimedia is the main focus of W950i. And it is noticable. We dare say that the mp3-player is among the very best, compared both to mobile players, and dedicated mp3-players. W950i combines the best from previous walkman models with a touchscreen. The phone can sort the music by artist, album, track or playlists. Additionally, you can add moods to the music, so you get happy music when you are in good mood, or when you are feeling down for that matters. The walkman phone impresses on every point except maybe the most important, the sound. Compared to W850i it is hard to believe the difference in sound quality. W950i gives a flat, raspy sound. It sound like the sound has been compressed, especially in parts with lots of bass. If you turn on the “Mega bass” function, the sound is completely destroyed. This is not good enough!