W960 Walkman vs Nokia N95 - Music Player
I’ve had plenty of time to play with the Sony Ericsson W960, the full review should be up on MobileBurn.com soon. However, given that the handset is based on the Symbian OS, I thought it would be interesting to compare it against the Nokia N95-3, which is my current primary handset.
The W960 features 8GB of internal storage, along with a proprietary data port, meaning you can only load up the music via the USB cord. Sony Ericsson also, unlike some other really successful cellphone manufacturers, has put together a rather user-friendly music management application for the desktop. You’d think, with such a fine setup of USB and convenient desktop management, that loading your handset up with tunes would be a breeze. Sadly, this is far from the truth.
It took a whopping 16.5 hours, nonstop, to transfer 7GB of music onto the W960, through the USB cord. Seriously, I wish I was kidding. It was ghastly. However, once you’ve gone without your phone for a full day to get the music on there, the Walkman portion of the handset is actually pretty decent. There’s a dedicated button in the middle of the handset, clearly marked with the Walkman icon, so there’s no guessing about what it does.
The actual music player application is completely beautiful. The background is an animated visualization, with my favorite being one that looked like a lava lamp. The interface is very lovely, laid out in a list which you can scroll up and down through. You can view your music according to artist, album, track, or mood. Oddly missing is the ‘genre’ sorting method, which was really annoying to me, as that’s how I usually listen to music.
The mood setting is something I thought was interesting, and well implemented. On both the desktop and mobile music managers, users can set the ‘mood’ of the track from a preset list of 5-6 moods. These are synced across when the phone is connected, and users can easily assign a mood, right from the now playing screen. Brilliant. Star ratings are also implemented in the same way, which works great and makes it simple to manage a large music library.
Overall, the W960’s data transfer speeds completely ruined the experience for me. With only 8GB, I’m sure to be changing up my on-phone music selection often, and I simply can’t leave my phone connected to my computer for 16hrs+ while the music is swapped out.
The desktop music manager made me even MORE anxious to get ahold of the desktop music manager that Nokia previewed at the Go Play event roughly 9 months ago.
most sony products will not allow you to transfer music files from the player, can you do this on this phone? Since it is a symbian.
My N95-1 makes irritating hissing sound when listening to music. That’s not how music player should be. I would pick W960 over N95 just because of that (assuming that w960 doesn’t have that issues).
Wow, 16.5 hours? Thats terrible!
My N95 (with 8GB microsd) was stolen recently, and since the 8GB cards aren’t sold here in NZ, insurance hooked me up with an N95 8GB model. I wasn’t happy with around 2 hours for 5.5GB, compared to the speeds I had been used to previously using a USB card reader.
regarding the his sound, i had that on my first n95-1 and after i hard reset it the hiss went away. there was also talk of being able to get rid of it by turning off key press sounds in your active profile.
Tried everything but nothing worked.
lol…Update the firmware on the W960i to latest version and use File Transfer mode via the phone. I dont have to wait that long to send 7GB files to the phone. The music player sucks big time on the N95 more or less on all nseries phone except n91. Nokia do not give u a phone all in one. for example n95 it has same audio DAC as N91 and they disabled music quality which is nufing no were near to da N91.
for music wise Sony Ericsson always have the upper hand. even with P1i being a buisness oriented phone it still has a music player which offers MegaBass so u still get the music quality wereas nokia nothing !
16.5 hours ? There was definitely something wrong or you did not see the option which sets usb transfer speed.
i did send 5 gb data in ~ 30 minutes. And after having w800i for 2 years, the data transfer speed is amazing for me ( 14 - 20 MB per second ).
http://ul.gcg.gen.tr/x/6d25adb.png
by the time that i took this screenshot, i was also burning dvd and moving files around.
Hey guys just 1 qs is the W960i LOUD on head phones like when compared to an ipod..pls itl take a a line to answer thx
@M D A - I found the W960’s music playback capabilities to be great, personally.
i have a w960 an it doesnt take 16 hours to transfer that size of music…. maybe its the method u used… did u use de software or just drag´n drop? because with the software takes more time the reason its that its clasifiyng all yout songs in folders so u can get to any song in an easier way(u can also use the search botton).
W960 Walkman the best
Can anyone tell me how do u check what updated firmwares there are on the phone?
I have been using the W960 for a long time now. I can tell you it takes me approximately 20 minutes to fill up the 8GB with music files. gr8 phone. recommended. way better than the n95.
haha maybe yout computer is old or you did something wrong with the phone, 1 loaded 7.4 gb in 30 minutes or less minutes
before you do a review, please read the phone manual first. there are two options to choose from when connecting the phone to the PC. Fast File Transfer and Normal. It is obvious what option you used.
hi guys i m using nokia n95 8gb
and its fine in using the phone but the only problem is while on a multitasking the phone hangup and this really sucks……..
but in music player i believe there is noprobles…. but at first i was havein some problems that teally sucks me… in the beginning i did some mistakes to it was really heritic .. actually waht i did was i just copy music filse from my computer and i just do paste it in the location Nokia N95 8GB\Mass memory\Sounds\Digital… than i will update songs to my mobile music player… while doing this my nokia n95 8gb sometimes hangup or mobile will restart…tjis really sucks me… than i just tried to transfer music files with the help of nokia music manager which on the phone cd which is given along wit the phonw and this really good after using nokai music manager i dont have any problen with my music player….and every ting is working fine for me…when you are free just do a power drien for your phone….. E-mail: vichu_catchme@yahoo.co.in
W9SEXY OVER N95:]
MUSIC PLAYER IS MILES AWAY FROM N95,S
BATTERY LIFE
DESIGN
BAR PHONE NOT THE RISKY SLIDER
TOUCH SCREEN
TOUCH BUTTONS
BETTER RADIO TRACK ID AND RDS
3TIMES BETTER MULTITASKING USING TASK MANAGER 128MB RAM(15 APPS AT A GO!!!)ETC
Im using W960, on XP(office),Ubuntu(home). I have a very good transfer rate specially at home, The only problem I have was “Analyse Sense Me” on Sony Ericsson Media Manager Doesnt Work(office). Im not fond of setting mood setting manually inside the phone. that was so tiring. but overall I use this phone a lot and I find It Irreplacable, I dont even think n95 ,Iphone was worthy enough. those phone will not even win over k850. I have transfer rate varying from 13mb/s to 300mb/s. It actually vary on the file I was transferring, when transfering an average size 3gp video(about 30mb) took only 10~15 seconds, and a bulk mp3 sizing up to 2gb could eat an aproximately 25~45 seconds. of course i did that in “fast file transfer mode”. I havent fill it up to limit yet. I dont think that would be nessecary since you can’t even listen to that much of music at a time.
Apr 17th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
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