“The new Sony Ericsson W960, announced today, is the new top of the line Walkman phone. Headline features include 8GB of flash memory (700 albums, 8000 songs), UMTS (3G) and WiFi connectivity and an autofocus 3.2 megapixel camera. The W960’s software platform is UIQ 3 on Symbian OS. The W960 weighs in at 119g with dimensions of 109x55x16 mm and has a monoblock form factor. In the product press release Nicklas Sivander, Product Manager for the W960 Walkman phone, says: “You couldn’t ask for a better music mix of high performance media player and intuitive phone. The touchscreen is complemented by a regular keyboard and the phone itself is amplified by the Media Manager programme and the many music accessories. The days of taking an MP3 player, a camera and a phone with you when you leave the house are definitely over.” Other notable features include:
Tri-band GSM (900, 1800, 1900) and UMTS 2100.
2.6 inch TFT touchscreen with 282,144 colours and 240 x 320 (QVGA) resolution.
The ability to navigate through media stored on the phone using a stylus or your finger on the touch screen.
The ability to transfer music from a PC at the rate 1Gb every 3 minutes thanks to USB 2.0 PC connectivity.
Video playback at 30 frame per second full screen is al supported.
FM Radio with RDS
Media Manager PRO, a PC program for organising media and optimising music, video and photos for use on the W960. Media Manger will replace the existing Disc2Phone software. Media Manager features include:
SenseMe – automatically detects the mood of music when you import it into the phone allowing you to take better advantage of the Sense filtering / playback on the phone.
Transfer of music with automatic re-encoding if necessary and the ability to create play lists.
Imaging helps you move images both from and to the phone. It allows you to store images captured with the camera on the phone and to send images to the phone (including resizing to optimum size for wallpapers).
Media feed allow you to enjoy video and audio podcast on your phone.
Support for TrackID music recognition software allowing you to record a clip of a song and instantly find out the track title, artist and the album. Furthermore TrackID has been enhanced on the W950 to provide more detailed information about the song being identified and there now support for extra searching options (e.g. a text search just giving the bands name).
A stereo Bluetooth headset (HBH-DS220) will be included in the retail box in addition to the usual wired headset.
A redesigned look compared to the W950 with rounder edges and more defined keypad keys. The back key has moved from the side of the device to the keypad.
The usual range of UIQ and Sony Ericsson applications including the usual Document Viewers, Blogger, Opera Web Browser and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync email support.
“There is no keyboard or anything of the sort to be found — text input is solely and completely handled through software, including pop-up keyboards and handwriting recognition. This might not be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that the handwriting software bundled on the 701 is, to put it mildly, horrible.It’s a bar-style input area, somewhat like those seen on Windows Mobile devices. Unlike them, you can’t write elsewhere on the screen, and you can’t, you know, actually get your handwriting recognized. At least I couldn’t, no matter how careful and precise I was.There’s also another soft input program that pops up small, quarter-circle keyboardlets on the two bottom corners of the screen. I assume that these are intended to be used by the operator’s thumbs, but it’s woefully inadequate as a thumb keyboard, as most touchscreen-based thumbboards are. The mouse can be controlled either with the stylus (any stylus, as the digitizer is pressure sensitive) or via the orange stick-style controller in the upper right.” Read more
“Sony Ericsson has tapped Gracenote to power a sideloading-enabled mobile music platform.The new platform includes features such as search and discovery, song identification and playlisting, and is designed to allow the easy transfer of tunes between home music libraries, online music stores and mobile phones. Users can search for music by typing in an artist, song, album or lyrics, and can use the search listings to learn more about the song, purchase a ringtone or full track or share music with a friend.The service also includes a recommendation engine. Gracenote said Sony Ericsson will embed the offering on all its music-enabled handsets starting with the new Walkman models W910, W960 and the K850 Cyber-shot.This is just the latest effort on Sony Ericsson’s behalf in mobile music; the handset vendor has leveraged Sony’s Walkman brand to a large extent throughout its handset efforts.Gracenote’s technology is used by online services including iTunes, Yahoo Music and Winamp. The company’s mobile partners include Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Musiwave as well as carriers such as Japan’s KDDI and Korea’s KTF.“Sony Ericsson is a the forefront of bringing groundbreaking handsets and services optimized for music, and Gracenote’s mobile music platform addresses the increased demand for the combined convenience of a mobile handset, online store and PC, and accelerates the potential of mobile music for both the consumer and the carriers through the integration of those three domains,” said Jim Hollingsworth, senior VP of sales and marketing for Gracenote. ”