"It's Normal!" Steve Reviews the Sony Ericsson Walkman W960

Umm some of you guys are smoking some good stuff! ALL nokias i have ever owned automatically turn on the phone to sound the alarm if you happened to turn the phone off before you go to bed. my s40 6131 did this, and certainly my n95 does this. when you go to sleep some people turn their phones off, and the alarm still sounds.

Another Unregistered wrote "Thanks again for the ritual humiliation that is 'asking a reasonable question on the internet'".
I hear you, brother. Mobile phone forums in particular can be particularly brain dead, even if it's ofteen brain dead questions. This forum actually seems much better than most.

buster wrote "Why on earth would you buy a smartphone, choose to use it as an alarm clock (don't you have a real alarm clock?)"

Sorry, but I think that that is a VERY strange comment for a smartphone enthousiast to make.
Allow me to demonstrate. One could easily replace "alarm" with:
- PDA (Calendar, address book, note pad)
- MP3 player
- video
- photo camera
- video camera
- e-mail application
- radio
- TV
- book (e-book)
- almost every other smartphone function, perhaps even including the actual phone.

See what I did there?

Steve, you commented on the difficulty of switching applications. So long as the application you want to go to is running it can be quickly and easily accessed through the Task icon on the top right of the screen.

I don't think its wierd at to use your 'smart' phone as an alarm clock. A big part of a smart phone is its calender / reminder functions - an alarm is part of that. Don't you think?
- Why do people think something they don't use is wierd - cant you understand everyone has different needs than you?!? haha

I also thinks it a reasonable request to have it wake from standby.

Steve my media centre pc turns on to record programs and then back off again. My NAS turns on to do backups and off again.... hehe

While I rarely turn my phone off, I think it's fair enough if others want to do so. Different strokes for different folks!

Regardless, I think auto-booting to sound an alarm is a useful feature to have. Perhaps, your phone dies while you are out and you plug it to charge when you get home but don't bother to switch it on because you're knackered or whatever. And perhaps you have a crucial job interview the next day and can't afford to oversleep... you never know, it could happen! :tongue:

Anyway, I think this thread is going a bit off-topic, so... umm... W960 is nice but not perfect. However, I for one welcome our new 8gig overlords. 😉

Does anyone here have both P1 and W960. From what I've read the software should be almost identical except that the W960 has a flashy Walkman music player. Is this correct? I'd be curious to know what other differences there are if any.

I turn my phone(s) off to save battery life.

S60 phones that have working alarms that I know of, 6630, N70 , e61 and N73. Great, I use
this feature all the time on holiday (not all phones tho 😊) and other times.

We've had several discussions about encoding with the H264 codec, how H263 just doesn't give the same quality etc. Several UIQ users asked Steve to reconsider, since UIQ phones (which are Symbian after all) don't handle H264 well. Steve said he couldn't do that because of ... well, some video production reason that we didn't really understand.

Now, we are getting excited because the W960 and the latest P1i firmware apparently play SS50 in H264 format after all. Goodness me, what did we all make the fuss about?

Only ... well, Steve's having a little joke with us all. It turns out that Steve encoded SS50 in H263 format. The W960 and P1i play SS50 because ... it's *not* H264 format. And, with all due respect, was the quality so noticeably different? No. Because at the bitrate Steve uses, H263 gives perfectly acceptable performance and quality.

So, thanks for listening to us Steve 😊 Now it's OK to 'fess up' and admit that you fooled us all. Oh, and now we've seen that it works, let's keep the codec at H263 for all we UIQ3 users 😉

And, seriously, keep up the good work with the Smartphone Show and all your stuff on AAS.

Best regards,
Malcolm
www.freepoc.org

Eh? How do you work out that it's H.263? My video software told me it was making H.264 - and my E61i can't play it, so it probably is some H.264 dialect...

Can you be more precise as to what your video software is reporting the ss50.mp4 file as?

Steve
PS. regarding video software problems - it's a whole Windows Vista incompatibility saga - that's had me tearing my hair out. You really don't want to know. Or go anywhere near Vista if you have anything to do with video.

SS50 is definitely not H264, Steve, as you can see from the attached jpgs. It's regular MPEG-4. That's why the P1i and W960 play it just fine.

And let me just make the 'quality' point again. There's no question that H264 is a better codec than MPEG-4/H263. But on a 240x320 screen, at video resolutions above (say) 350kbps, for podcasts (as opposed to ripped DVDs), you don't really see a difference. Except that: quite a lot of current Symbian devices don't play H264.

So please stay with the same codec that you used for SS50. It does the job just fine 😉

Best regards,
Malcolm
www.freepoc.org

The problem with UIQ's alarm clock is not really that it doesn't work when the phone is switched off imho (still, that functionality just should be there too), but that it doesn't make the tiniest bleep when the phone is in silent mode.

I keep my phone in silent mode practically all the time, and if I forget to turn it off, I'll sleeping happily until I wake by myself, instead of being woken by the phone, which just displays a mocking alarm message on its display...

Jejoma wrote:Steve, you commented on the difficulty of switching applications. So long as the application you want to go to is running it can be quickly and easily accessed through the Task icon on the top right of the screen.

No, I commented on the difficulty of switching to anything FROM the Walkman app 8-)

malbry wrote:
So please stay with the same codec that you used for SS50. It does the job just fine 😉

www.freepoc.org

Except that I'm still finding it hard finding video editing suites that will run under Vista and both handle smartphone MP4 reliably and render it again afterwards. Video software seems buggy to the extreme. 8-((( So far, I've been through Quicktime Pro, Ulead Video Studio 10 Plus, Power Director 6, Pinnacle Studio 11 - sigh.

Just to reiterate, the switch away from H.264 (it seems) wasn't intentional. I agree Malcolm's screenshots appear to show no H.264, but that then begs the question of why the E61 et al can't play the video properly. Just goes to show how complicated digital video can be!!!

This was a handy feature on my old Nokia 6310 and I think it had been standard in Series 40 for a long time before. It has been in all the Series 60 / S60 devices I've looked at.

It allows me to turn off my phone at night so that I don't get calls whilst I'm sleeping, and still have a wake up alarm from the phone in the morning. 😊

as mentioned before, by putting your phone on flight mode (all smartphone now have it) you also wont get any calls, spent a negligible amount of battery life, and let your smartphone apps work as they should all the time, without any valid reason to turn the phone off. On other hand, i should mention all SE dumbphones alarms work with the phone turned off - but they arent smartphones, so...

Just taken delivery of the 960... nice phone.
I noticed on your opening image that the phone is on Vodafone, how did you remove the Vodafone live icon?

Sorted it.... Debranded it without any problems.... Goodbye Vodafone Live..... Hello Sony Ericsson!

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Hi folks,

nice discussion you have here about SE W960i 😊 I consider buying it soon but I have some questions since I am a noobie in smartphones and I hope you can answer them.

I was wondering what is the playback time of music and video (depending on the codec used). I know that W960i's processor is 200MHz which is not that much for smooth playback and heavy loads but it is definitely good for battery life. So if any of you has any impressions on playback time or made such tests, please feel free to share with us 😉

Another thing that bothers me are firmware updates. I made a quite thorough search in the internet about upgrading the OS from Symbian 9.1 to a newer version, but it seems that this is only possible through firmware updates coming out by the SonyEricsson site only. Am I right about that? And are these updates possible using just the bundle USB cable in the factory box or do I need a special device to upgrade as it stands with my old SE K500i?

Thanks a lot,
Pantersen

hello everyone,
My problem is that any time i am going to send a sms i charged for 2 or 3.
That happens after 71 characters(2 sms).
how i can send 1 sms with 180 characters??

Hi,
I switched from K750 to W 960 after a long wait and only 2 things i really miss. The on off light option and also the various options we had ( with K 750) in profile like outdoor, in car, at home etc. They worked for me then. Wander that might not be too popular a feature.

Any comments?

HK

I've had this phone for over a fortnight now and after my first few days of praise for the phone, things started going a bit south. I was impressed at how well all the features on the phone worked (like WLAN/WiFi, Bluetooth, GPRS, MP3, Video etc.) but have started seeing more and more issues with the simplest of user interface tasks.

My advice to anyone using this phone would be to turn off the screensaver (the picture that appears before the screen dims), turn off the Today screen if possible and disable automatic keylock. The screensaver will appear over incoming calls if you don't pick up quick enough so you can't tell who's ringing or what you're doing. The keylock does similar antics for incoming calls and calender alarms, effectively turning your handset in to a singing brick until you have to remove the battery. With these two removed, I'm starting to see a lot more stability.

The camera application seems to have been an afterthought as well, which I was very disappointed with considering the surprisingly good quality of my W900i

I'm really hoping they start making fixes for this soon - and don't leave it as a "Whoops, don't worry, we'll be one the money by the time the XPERIA is out!"

-Kijduse

You mentioned in one part that it has a tiny mono speaker(undesirable)..
what does mono mean?? I have a W810i at present... I dont care what the definition of MONO states... I hope it sounds better than W810i... Does it?

Please reply as I have to decide by end of the next week whether to buy 960i or not!

Thank you.

[FONT="Tahoma"]I currently own a W810i and wow! thats a piece of art.
It does so much already- am I gonna be satisfied with W960i?

As some ppl said earlier it does not have a light on-off option..
I really need that coz the Govt here SUCKS! & I'm in the dark often at night... it would be really disappointing to know that there's no light option!

Also- "A PC can wake up on its own!!"- it's known as a RTC Alarm & its in the BiOS of your Motherboard..
ASUS A8M-VN does it(I've tried it on mine!)
RTC-(Real Time Clock) this is the same concept on which the W800/810i & lots of other fones ring alarms even when turned off!

Take any Sony Ericsson fone press direction keys-

Left
*
Right Right
*
Right
*

after pressing the exact combo you will see a secret menu opened you would see 3 options..
go under "Service Tests" check "Real Time Clock" there- It proves my point!!

Well People who have 960i please try it too..
tell me what yol see?
Please Please tell me how is the sound from the speakerfone?? is it better than W810i? if not then Balls to 960i!
Im better off with 810i-

Please Reply.
Screw Sony Ericcson for being careless in putting together such a beautiful 960i- I hope the firmwares are with some fixes...:con?

:frown:

[/FONT]

Would your PC perform any action if you left it off?

Yeah you are right...
dont mind me mentioning it-
Some guy was just saying sarcastically that does my PC start automatically??

I just quoted on his line saying that RTC functions in BIOS helps to do that...
also if you read the initial comments some guys are arguing on the alarm function..

even sony ericsson uses the RTC concept to sound alarms even when the phone is switched off!

Maybe I am a little too late giving out the info.. heh heh!

how do i unbrand my phone. is it safe? someone said i could turn my phone into a "brick", what does this mean apart from the obvious?

There is a review about the music player on here that is just plain wrong!

It says it fails the pocket test because you can't access the buttons from your pocket.

The volume controls change track up and down if you hold them for a second or so, and you use the button on the basic head set wire to stop and start music.

Still a great sound that doesn't go load anougth bay far, no user EQ only presets!!!!
and mega bass as only one of the presets, can't use it with a setting :evil:

and that massive pause between track...5 seconds sometimes WTF

Try again sony :eyesroll: could of been a great allrounder but the video recorder and camera are no where up to smartphone standard, stop trying to fool us sony....I'm going nokia by by!

Helllo People-I may sound silly, I'm a young nurse whom loves her gadgets and love my S/Erricssons-I want the sony erricsson W960 as I'm a textaholic/snap-o-holic..(love the feel/buttons/running of it!), taking note of the 8GB memory-but no flash!?-I am maybe silly looking into this-as do use the running aps of memos/calender/diary type functions, but do need an alarm!-if so maybe I'll settle for the K770i....Feedback pls...Natalie,23 (a young dinosaur-but needs advice!)

Though being a walkman phone its ridiculous that the walkman 3.0 player does not allow real media songs to be added to the playlist. It accepts only mp3 tracks on the playlist. I need to play real media tracks 1 by 1 from the file manager which is real stupid. But P1i which has basic walkman player version allows to add real media tracks on to the playlist which is so convinient. I prefer having rm songs cos they r 5 times lighter than mp3's which allows me to store more songs. I hope SE rectifies this problem with the next firmware upgrade

re: earlier comments, previous SE phones had alarms that worked when the 'phone was switched off..

But, my query is how to set the alarm for gradual increasing volume as opposed to full blast from the offset (leaving me doing a cat on the ceiling impersonation).

The call ringing has increase volume still but it seems to be lacking on the alarm?

the volume on my w960 doesnt go very loud, is any 1 else having the same problem??
other than that i love the fone!!!!!!!!!!!!!