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(More customer reviews)Subject - iphone killer? Let's see
My previous phone was a W810i. That phone had a host of features and amazing interface, great camera, great earphones and an overall excellent value for money. I was sold to Sony Ericsson then and thought no Nokia for me again. I even picked this phone over the Iphone. I have always been the guy who goes for the mid-expensive phones because I lead a mid-expensive life and I know that doesn't make sense so I'll cut it but some of you might get the picture. But something changed and I wanted a phone which would knock dead the usual. I didn't go for the iphone because it's just too popular and everyone in the world is soon going to have it. After 40 days of poking around, I decided to go with my gut instinct and got this little fellow. The W960i stands out because noone has the phone. Not many people know about it and there are little or no advertising. The only place I could find sufficient info on this was C_net and U_tube.
Features -
1. Touch screen enabled device
2. WLAN (upto 384 kbps)
3. 8GB inbuilt hard drive
4. Supposedly adequate RAM or memory for the phone
5. Bundled earphones, various schemes for playlists such as moods, most played, highest rated,etc.
6. Outstanding record/log of calls made in the last 50 days
7. Unlimited number of messages
8. Decent keypad with good text prediction/well tuned software
9. PDF/Card Reader Scanner/Mediocre flash
Pros
1. The touch screen doesn't take much time to get used to. It took me roughly five days to major it and now everytime I hold a non-touchscreen phone or cordless phone, I feel a little strange.
2. Impressive call-logging data. The phone actually managed to maintain records of the last fifty days worth of entry. However it does get difficult to store phone numbers from new callers because that's when the 960i shows it's moodswings
3. Very good sound when listening to it without earphones. Just aptly loud even though the interface is generally sluggish.
4. There is 1 + 1 stylus that come with the phone. Don't play too much hockey with the stylus though. After a while your fingers will be just right to move around and you won't need the stylus except when you're using complex playlist options.
5. trackid is an amazing feature. If you're in a pub and want to know what track is playing, trackid (software name) will record a 6 second sample and send it to the universal server and you will get to know the name of the track,artist and album within a minute (at the most) This is amazing and my friends think this is the sole reason I got the W960i and that is only because they find it so uber cool.
6. Tactile feel and very good build quality though the touchscreen gets ruined without the not included plastic cover/sticker. Exceptionally good build quality.
7. While the 3.2 megapixel camera is quite a disappointment, the zoom no longer ruins the photograph as much. Improved zoom.
8. Wireless works even though the browser is corrupt and buggy.
9. Big fonts when typing a message
10. Ear volume is satisfactory and the phone catches signals well. It is also light to carry.
11. trackid - This phone has trackid. If a song is playing around you and you wish to know the name, trackid allows you to record a sample, within a few seconds of the sample being sent, you will get the name of the song. It all takes much less than a minute.
Cons
1. Most lacklusture ensemble of menu, shortcuts and files
2. Doesn't come with mp4 playback software which means no videos. It still records in gp3 and though the videos were of good quality, video playback software (divx) was very buggy on this phone and never worked for me.
3. Where is the torch? I miss it.
4. Battery life has dismal written all over it. Try talking 3hours and 20 mins on a single charge and you'll remember Jesus of Nazareth. I had to keep reducing the brightness to 19% and what not. 65% is default brightness.
5. The general feel of the menu gets worse every month and it becomes more and more prone to mistakes. To navigate there is a little joystick like navigation button on the left which is annoying and cheap. I don't even use it enough because my friend said his broke for his w950i and his girlfriend's did the same. You can't help but feel cheated because the menu is nowhere near as good as the Iphone.
6. The bundled earphones are same as the ones you get with the other walkman series and there is nothing different. This is annoying because SE are trying to save money and develop a standard and at the same time expect six hundred dollars for this phone
7. The camera is inferior to W810i and there are simply too many shades and blindspots when viewed on my computer. I have to photoshop photographs which are shot in dark light and personally increase contrast. Don't even think of comparing the Nokia N95 camera to this. The iphone camera likes to make images look a little brighter and livelier unlike this nincompoop.
8. The ringtone needs to be better tuned because the phone likes to do a little 8-10 second jig before it starts playing the mp3 you have selected as your ring tone.
9. The card scanner hardly works and the buttons for the walkman (touchscreen) are annoying.
If by this time you are wondering if I'm easy to annoy, then well I am if I feel I am robbed of my money. This phone is clearly the worst disaster and misuse I have made of my dad's hard earned funds.
10 ***BIG FLAW*** If you were to use the earphones on this phone, you will find that the output of the volume is about 35% as loud as the W810i. I simply cannot believe this nor accept it. This major flaw aggrevates me. I have tried different earphones and headphones but they have actually reduced the output volume and they have the nerve to call this a walkman phone. I used an N-Series phone the other day and I am not kidding but it was five times as loud with earphones. Terrible effects if I were to someday take this phone to gym as a stand-alone mp3 player.
11. A free carry case was provided but it is of such cheap quality that i wouldn't use it. The manual was bad.
12. Software for transferring files to the phone is bad if you are a media junkie like me with over 1TB of data. It will take hours to transfer 4gb worth of music to your phone even though individual transfer is high. The software is so buggy and slow though it promises a lot and is achingly confusing. I use good old Disc2phone.
13. You cannot view a message and go to the next without pressing back and scrolling to the message. When you press back it completely refreshes the previous window and you have to scroll all the way to the message you were looking at again.
The W960i has many other flaws but I have spoken about it's major features. It is not a good camera phone. It is not a good mp3 player, a no good one infact. I even tried to attach music systems to this with the 960 being the source and the sound reproduction was just so low, it was no good. You cannot even choose custom-equaliser settings.
Conclusion - Do not buy this phone. The camera is ordinary, there is no torch, the touchscreen is buggy, inbox becomes slow with time, takes a long time to restart, decent voice quality, the walkman sounds nice when on loud speaker but abysmal when left to play on earphones. The keypad is ok, there is no mp4 or avi playback, there is a lag when opening any application which makes it simply unworthy of being given a shot. The battery life is a day's worth and talk time is around 3-4 hours at max. Sony Ericsson is not what it used to be. Definitely not worth buying.
I haven't used the iphone or an n-series nokia or the viewty but if a phone has this many flaws despite the number of features, i just don't want it.
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