Sony Ericsson W960i review

The W960i is definitely a smartphone. There’s just no escaping the fact. But it's also a Walkman-branded mobile with 8GB of built-in memory. So in theory at least it should be able to meet the needs of those wanting information everywhere and some music to boot.

It can meet those needs in practice, but it suffers from one key problem – an overly complicated and potentially tough-to-master user interface. This is a great shame, because on paper the W960i should be a real crowd-pleaser.

As a 3G handset with video calling, the W960i is up there with the most capable of smartphones. There is Wi-Fi too, and hopping on and off wireless networks is very easy indeed. We had no trouble using the Wi-Fi during testing.

The features list reads like a smartphone user’s dream. We have PC synchronisation for your diary, tasks and contacts, a very neat implementation of the Opera Web browser, RSS feeds, mobile email, business card scanning and a PDF reader, for example.

When it comes to data entry there might only be a number pad rather than a full-blown Qwerty keyboard, but the touch-screen caters for handwriting recognition. Going slowly enough and trying to write clearly, we found this to be pretty reasonable.

For music fans, that 8GB of built-in memory, good quality music playback and Bluetooth stereo are alluring, while the FM radio adds to the punch, and the two-piece headset means you can substitute your favourite old comfortable headphones for Sony Ericsson’s in-ear buds if you want to. Oh, and you can classify tunes as happy, sad, energetic or chilled, then play sets according to their theme and your mood.

There's no escaping the fact that this is a fairly large mobile phone, and it won’t sit neatly in a small jeans pocket. The 109x55x16mm form factor and 119g of weight are the price you pay for a numeric keypad that is large enough to use comfortably and at speed, and a screen that measures 2.6 inches corner to corner.

The build quality is good. The phone is plastic all round, but that doesn’t stop it feeling robust in the hand. We like the shiny finish and the basic black and white colour scheme.

So far, so good, and we found during testing that if you are prepared to put the time into learning to use this phone well, there are plenty of rewards to be had. But there is something overwhelming about the phone’s software that is a real turn-off.

The W960i runs UIQ, an operating system that makes use of a touchscreen. As we have seen with phones like the iPhone and LG KU990 Viewty, touchscreens - when done well - are fine things.

By logical extension, when done badly touchscreens can be a nightmare. The UIQ interface suffers from a fairly basic irritation in that some of the touch icons are very small, and hitting them accurately with a fingertip can be a challenge.

For example, there's a neat little touch button that sits on the top left corner of the main screen. Hit it and a drop-down menu offers you the chance to create an SMS or email, add a contact, task, appointment or note, or make a recording. It is a great way into some key features of the W960i.

But the touch button is small, and to hit it accurately you may need to pull out the flimsy stylus rather than use a fingertip, which adds an irritating extra step to moving quickly with this mobile.

Another example. When listening to music you can, as is quite normal, shuffle or repeat tracks. You set these features by tapping icons mid-screen. The icons are tiny and easily missed.

This is doubly annoying as Sony Ericsson gets some things very right indeed with the W960i. A scroll wheel on the left edge of the casing is particularly useful when you're listening to music. Wheel it up or down to move through a playlist; press and the selected tune plays.

When you play a tune, three touch-sensitive buttons light up under the screen. These remain lit while you're listening to music, and whatever other application is running on the top of the screen the buttons remain available for you to play and pause and skip back and forth between tracks. We’d have liked tactile feedback on these buttons, but even without that they are handy.

The W960i can ‘multi-task’. When you run an application it sits there in the background waiting for you to switch over to it. There's a task manager accessible from the main screen (via one of those tiny tappable icons, unfortunately), and you can use this to switch between opened applications, closing any you don’t need any more.

This is great, but what's not so great is that some applications are slow to start up the first time, and the phone itself takes an age to switch on. If you are the kind of person who likes to turn their mobile off overnight to save battery power, the long morning startup could irritate.

Now, what about the camera? You can get more detail by checking out our separate W960i camera review for the full gen, but suffice it to say here that the camera is adequate, if not hugely capable. The 3.2-megapixel lens is a fair way behind the top end these days, but there is autofocus and a macro mode, while a reasonably good double-strength photo light helps things along.

UIQ has been around for a while, and we’ve never really been sure about it. It is capable, there is no denying that. But it's fiddly to get to grips with, and maybe just a little bit too complex for its own good. If Sony Ericsson could tweak the user interface we might be a lot happier with it, but there never seem to be really fundamental changes made as time goes by.

Even the lure of 8GB of memory isn’t enough to tempt us towards this mobile long term, as other handsets can match the quota, and without any Memory Stick support, you're stuck with the 8GB limit.