"But Sony Ericsson don't make Sendo phones?"...

Very true, they don't; but seeing as Sendo haven't really existed for over 1 1/2 years now and rumours of the Sendo X3 being launced under a Motorola name have not come to anything, we felt it time to showcase what this site considers to be one of the best Symbian based phones currently available - the Sony Ericsson W950i.

 

As most of you will know, Sony Ericsson have, for the last few years, been producing a range of Symbian based UIQ interface phones. The range started with the P800, followed by the P900, P910 and now P990 models. With the advent of the P990, Sony Ericsson's first device to be based on UIQ 3, they also announced two other Symbian / UIQ phones - the business oriented M600 and the "Walkman" W950. (the i suffix merely indicates the units to be European spec, as oposed to Chinese units which gain the c suffix)

 

As such, the M600 and W950 are very similar. They're almost identical in form factor (apart from the keypad) and built on the same chasis. The main differences between the two models are the keypad, and the built-in storage options. The M600 doesn't have masses of built in storage, but does have a Sony M2 external memory card slot; whereas the W950 doesn't get the memory card slot, but gains a whopping 4GB internal storage. (making it competitve with the current top of the range iPod Nano)

 

Both phones lack a camera, this having been removed to make the M600 a more busines-oriented phone, and the W950 features an RDS FM radio, which is ommited on the M600. The final ommision on these handsets is WiFi - this wasn't included as Sony Ericsson wanted a clear distinction between these devices and the P990.

 

Other specs for the M600 / W950 models include:

GSM Tri-band (900, 1800, 1900)

UMTS

HSDPC

GPRS class 10

240x320 pixel 24bit colour touch screen

Bluetooth (including A2DP)

USB2 file transfer

 

Going from a Sendo X2 or indeed an N73 to the W950 is quite a jump for the average user. While the phones are all based on Symbian OS, the versions they use are different and the phone interfaces have also changed somewhat. UIQ3 is a very different beast from S60.

 

The first thing that's noticed is that, while in UIQ3 it is far easier to use a keypad for phone navigation than in previous UIQ devices, the W950 is still primarily a touch screen device and so the majority of tasks will require at least some interaction with the screen. You'll very soon get tired of dragging out the stylus for every operation and will have the art of finger tapping the screen figured out in no time at all. Life is made slightly easier by the inclusion of a jog-wheel on the left hand side of the device, but this has been "dumbed down" from previous incarnations and now only goes up, down and in (in being used as a select key). To counter the loss of function, a dedicated back key is now fitted just below the jog-dial, which allows you to jump back one or more steps from where you currently are. It takes some getting used to, but using these two keys together makes most tasks quite simple, even if achieving them using only one hand is quite an art to master.