The W960i is Sony Ericsson's flagship Walkman mobile phone and definitely does push the boundaries of mobile music listening. Unlike most Walkman phones or units that boast of an advanced music player, the W960i does not allow external memory, as its internal memory is fixed. This is not a problem, however, because the internal memory in question is an impressive 8 gigabytes, holding a little over 8,000 MP3s in the phone memory. Only a few other phones can hold that much music. Listening quality is also very good; the phone comes with stereo headphones, and allows Bluetooth connectivity for wireless listening, but you should purchase a Bluetooth headset separately.



One of the attractions of the W960i is the touch sensitive screen or touchscreen. Yes, it has a keypad too, but the idea of the touchscreen menu is to navigate through your music playlists with ease. Touching the album art automatically plays the song you want to hear, and you can stop, rewind, forward and adjust listening levels without fumbling for the correct buttons or waiting for the menu. The mobile phone comes with Disc2Phone software that lets you rip songs from CDs and transfer music from your computer, supporting formats such as MP3, AAC, AAC+, E-AAC+, and WAV. Furthermore, as if you didn't have enough musical possibilities already, the W960i also has an FM Radio.

Special features for this 3G Walkman Smartphone are MegaBass, for a majestic listening experience, PlayNow, for better ringtone downloading options and a nifty new feature called TrackID. You want to know the title of a catchy song you heard on the street? Record a few seconds of the song and TrackID will immediately send you the song's details: title, artist's name and album title. A nifty "Name that tune" gadget that will let you discover more music faster.

What makes the Sony Ericsson W960i so great is it's not only a Walkman phone, it is so much more. The touchscreen is highly appreciated not only on the Walkman, but also for email and internet browsing and for 3G video calling. The touchscreen is a large LCD display that's 2.6 inches, making the W960i a rather large and heavy phone. It's not bulky, however, as it's slim despite its wideness, and people don't seem to mind the size when they're browsing on Opera Mini or writing out documents with a stylus using the touchscreen's handwriting recognition feature.

Whilst some users wish that the W960i had HSDPA for speedy 3G and was Quadband instead of Triband, they are quite happy with the 3.2 megapixel camera with digital zoom, autofocus and LED flash, especially since the older Walkman phones didn't have a camera at all. With a lot going for this flagship Walkman phone, it's easy to tell that the W960i is going to be Sony Ericsson's most popular mobile phone for quite a while.