Sony Ericsson Phones Reviews

So as to make this review as user-friendly as possible, we feel it's best to say this now than wait for later, so everyone who thinks that this feature is essential to living with a phone can just stop reading and go onto the next one. Here we go; the Sony Ericsson W950i does not have a digital camera built in. There, we said it and how strange it sounds. It's been sometime that any model aside from the cheapest of the cheap didn't come with a camera, so there's no denying that this is a brave move on Sony Ericsson's part and the rest of the W950i had better be good, otherwise 'no camera' will be written on its gravestone.

From the second you pick it up things look good, it's thin at just 15mm and at 112 grams it's pleasingly weighty in your hand. Neither of these stats stand out from its peers until you realise that this is a 3G Smartphone running Symbian software, a fact that usually means the phone will be a bit of a bloater. Then, once the phone has started up, you can play with the stylus controlled touch screen and excellent side-mounted jog dial. Or, if you prefer, it even has handwriting recognition for generating emails and messages.

Once you have got to grips with both the stylus and jog dial, using them in conjunction will have you shooting round the menus like a pro, well, as fast as the Symbian software let's you anyway. Major functions can be accessed by a selection of icons on the bottom of the screen, or via the regular 12-icon Sony Ericsson menu which can be altered to become a simple list if you prefer. If you have ever used a PDA, then you will pick this up quickly and also figure out that the more applications that you leave running in the background, the slower the phone goes.

Add in a file viewer, the Opera web browser and push email and you have what seems like a well-spec'd business phone. Then you get to the Walkman function. Sony Ericsson's Walkman branded music players are still the best on the mobile market and the W950i makes full use of it. You have the Mega-Bass enhancement, a graphic equalizer, a dedicated button controlling just the player, a flight mode and a huge 4GB of Flash memory. All of this, plus the fact is sounds great, makes it one of the only true iPod or similar replacements available. If you run out of music then there is an RDS enabled FM radio too.

At first, this mixture of business and pleasure seems a little mis-matched, but if you think about it, makes perfect sense. No-one wants to carry two or even three different devices around with them all day and a music player is arguably more useful on a regular basis than a camera, so why not incorporate that, a phone and a PDA into one competitively priced unit? Provided you can live without the camera and the ridiculous 60-second plus start-up from the temperamental Symbian software, this is one of the best practical solutions available today.

Sony Ericsson W950i specs and features
Tri-band
MP3 player & 4GB internal memory
Symbian OS v9.1, UIQ 3.0
3G
GPRS
Large TFT touchscreen, 256K colors
Stereo FM Radio
XHTML browser
Dimensions: 106 x 54 x 15 mm
Weight: 112 grams