Ricky Cadden, over on Mobile Burn, takes a long hard look at the Sony Ericsson W960 Walkman phone, and finds a mixed bag, from a bright screen to a cheap stylus, a poor camera interface and of course a long look at music playback functionality, which gets a strong thumbs up albeit with a wish for a built in 3.5mm headphone socket and the ability to playback by genre. Ultimately the W960 comes up short in Cadden's estimation with a poor user interface, slow USB transfer and clunky camera to blame.
Read on in the full article.
A Walkman-branded phone that can't use Walkman headphones? Isn't that a bit strange?
Haven't read the full article yet, but the excerpt on the camera UI quoted here is not quite true. There are handy keypad shortcuts for most camera functions including the flash (it's '*' to toggle it on and off IIRC), though I agree an auto setting would have been nice. The nifty thing is that pressing '0' in the camera app brings up a map of the keypad shortcuts so you don't need to memorise them all.
The P1 has the same feature in its camera app btw.
As usual, put someone who handles s60 devices 99% of his time reviewing UIQ3 devices, and errors like that happen...frankly...didn�t he try the keypad when he was using the camera app???
Mobileburn has arguably the most balanced and some of the least biased reviews anywhere and on any brand. So I would take any accusations of fanboyism by any Mobileburn staffer with a serious load of grains of salt.
We are talking about Ricky Cadden...not other mobileburn staffers, i thought that was clear...
MB reviews are, generally, well balanced and thought out. However, it's funny that the S60 fanboy dings a UIQ phone for a lot of shortcomings suffered by... S60 phones (slow USB transfer speed, anyone).
So because he talks alot about Nokia S60 phones, he is automatically a fanboy and any criticism of another brand is an obvious bias. I'd say thats a very typical veiw of the internet today, and just lessens the accuser's status abit more as a serious commenter.
I've been following Ricky for quite a while now via his main website called SYMBIAN GURU. Get that? Symbian. S60 and UIQ are both Symbian platforms and as a person that is interested in the handsets that run on those platforms, i'd say he has every right to review anyone and give his hands on view.
He also review Blackberries, Motorolas and other handsets that interests him or he gets assigned to via his position at Mobileburn.
Its only in the mid to late months of 2007 that UIQ have come back to the fore of mobile industry and ever since the P1i and Motorolla Z8 have they had something new and bold to show.
Before all this, Nokia have been constanly releasing and working and promoting S60 and its applications both software and hardware, thus there has been alot to talk about and review. They have been extremely accesible to bloggers and media, thus Ricky has had alot of Nokia stuff to talk about. He has bad mouthed and scored down Nokia handsets and services aswell, many many anoying times.
Ares, i recall you accusing AAS of the same bias not too long ago, that broken record tune is getting old. If you dont like what someone says about you fave manufacturer/OS/handset then point out the mistakes, create an educated response and leave it at that, refrain from just dismissing them as biased or fanboy, that is incredibly childish. Just 'cos an englishman tastes coffee and dislikes it, it doesnt mean he is biased towards tea, maybe its 'cos he just had bad coffee.
Read more of his stuff extensively. Dont sully a good person's name just 'cos you disagree with his view on your fave handset. Thats a very small thing to get worked up about in the grand scheme of things.
chill out! 😎
He may claim to be the symbian guru, but as someone who is an employee of Nokia, he should not be reviewing phones by competitors to his employer. And if he does, they should go on his personal blog, not a reputable news site.
End of story.
ditto
and Orophin Anwarunya, the guy made a gross mistake on the review...and remember, its a rather "old" device...a bit of search and he would know the thing has camera shortcuts...
If I am not mistaken he is a S60 employee, not Nokia employee. However, if I am mistaken, then I do agree, he should not be reviewing other manufacturers phones.
As Ares pointed out, this phone has been out for quite a while, so such errors shouldn't have been there in the first place.
Anyway, if you want to read a W960 review from an S60 guy, I'd recommend steve's review right here at AAS.
At the end of the day, a review is just one person's opinion, so it doesn't matter anyway.
Hey, Ewan, thanks for the blurb. And glad to see some discussion.
In regards to the camera shortcuts, I've used dozens of camera phones from every manufacturer, and never once have I used keyboard shortcuts, nor known any exist. Hence, I wouldn't have known that the 0 would bring a map, even.
That's not why the device got a bad grade from me. The slow USB transfers (which I've repeatedly dinged the N95 8GB for, as well) and the lack of 3.5mm audio jack on a 'music' phone is a big one.
In any case, I've reviewed at least half a dozen phones for MobileBurn (in addition to being their News Editor and covering morning news for 9 months) and most certainly do not allow bias to cloud anything. I look at what the handset claims to do, and how well it does those things.
@rcadden most users don't use the pc suite/media manager software to transfer stuff to the phone.people generally just drag nd drop. The W960 performs brilliantly in that regard.Even steve found the usb transfers to be blazing fast. It was much faster than the overhyped N81 8GB in the MR comparison review.
@kurt_karun - fair enough. The software that I used came in the box with the W960i, so I'd assume a user would install the default software. Honestly, the software itself is brilliant, it was just the speed that sucked.
Funny thing is that the review in general is well balanced, but its spoiled by some errors, like the one mentioned.
It makes me remember when ricky was on a recent AAS podcast, and you all went on and on and on about how the perfect touchscreen device would have a touchscreen, but also a dpad and numerical keypad, to alow one handed operation. Well...that was quite right...but strangely no one could remember SE is gonna launch in less than one month 2 devices that are precisely that (G700 and G900). So yes, sometimes i think you guys are so focused on nokia and s60 stuff that forget important things from the other side of symbian, even if not intentionaly.
ares wrote:Funny thing is that the review in general is well balanced, but its spoiled by some errors, like the one mentioned.It makes me remember when ricky was on a recent AAS podcast, and you all went on and on and on about how the perfect touchscreen device would have a touchscreen, but also a dpad and numerical keypad, to alow one handed operation. Well...that was quite right...but strangely no one could remember SE is gonna launch in less than one month 2 devices that are precisely that (G700 and G900). So yes, sometimes i think you guys are so focused on nokia and s60 stuff that forget important things from the other side of symbian, even if not intentionaly.
You know what, I remember that podcast. Honestly, I *think* it was before the G700 adn G900 were announced, but no matter. I've said to plenty of people, the absolute best form factor of any handset that I've touched was the SE P910a. If it had a d-pad and dedicated end/send keys, got updated in the features (cam, data speeds, etc) and was slimmed down a bit, i'd still buy it in a heartbeat. The combination of a touchscreen, regular keypad, and QWERTY just hasn't been beat yet. Here's hoping SE (or someone) re-does the design sometime soon.
Well...the G900 and G700, to some extent, show that SE is on the right track. The performance of these devices will go a long way in bringing UIQ into the forefront.
I'd agree about the G700 and G900, though I would say that they are more mid tier devices than high end. Until I've actually tried one I'll hold off saying too much... We'll be sure to have a review on AAS as soon as possible.
Be very interesting to see what comes next from Sony Ericsson, especially with versions of UIQ that are optimised for that (3.2).