I purchased this phone in Nigeria in July 2009 at a great price of Naira 43000 only(INR 14500 approx.). I was looking out for W995 which was not available in the local market. Reasons for selecting this phone were,
Walkman music player
Said to be an I-Phone killer with 8 GB internal memory
3.2 MP camera.
Touchscreen with WIFI, 3G connectivity options.
Inbuilt office suite and PDF reader
Other utilities like RSS aggregator.
I am both a music and camera freak. Earlier I had tried SE K750i and Fly MC100. Features this phone offered exactly suited my requirements of good music and great picture quality.
Immediately after purchase I started working on the features of the phone. I have still not fully explored the gadget but can conclude on features worked on so far.
The Look - Not much stylish. The casing is also unattractive and appears of low quality plastic. Keypad is handy and there was no problem accessing it as I have thick and broad fingers.
Jog Dial - Very useful and convenient in browsing and selecting phone contents. Saves use of stylus to a greater extent.
Touch Screen - Requires hard tapping. Got used to it after some time. Works great now. The 2.5" screen is OK but could have been better.
Media - This phone boasts of great music experience with WALKMAN Music Player. True, the experience is worth while but as I mentioned above, I had been using FLY MC100 earlier which was equipped with YAMAHA Chipset for amazing music quality. I could not stop comparing W960i with MC100 on this front and observed that MC100 is a clear winner. Though vocal quality in 960i is unquestionable and unchallengeable. Sound output is also maximum both in headset and speaker as well. There are some useful features such as rating and classifying music based on moods, playlist editor, music update, transfer sound from headset to speaker and vice versa. Sleep timer facility is also useful. Jog Dial comes very handy when using walkman player. FM radio with RDS does the best job. Features such as music side-keys, Track ID recognition, Playnow etc. are as usual. Video player is another good feature of this phone. It can play MP4, 3GP and WMV files with cool features such as auto screen adjustment, bookmarking etc.
Camera - A big big disappointment. I expected it to produce moderate results, but it seems that in the effort of making this phone a business and music gadget, SE has totally ignored it on camera front. The pics I had taken were of inferior quality. Produced too much noise and lacked freshness. What annoyed me is 3.2 MP only works when you do not zoom in the lens. As you go on zooming in, the mega pixels keep on dropping to 2, 1 and finally VGA. This really frustrated me. My SE K750i clearly did a great job with 2MP camera and a lens cover which is not available here. Flash is simple(not xenon) and unimpressive. Photos taken with macro mode produced somewhat acceptable quality pictures. Video recording is much more satisfactory with great quality and sound recording.
Connectivity - Used WIFI to connect with opera browser. Worked excellent. Did not test 3G.
Other features - Menu is intuitive. Task manager feature is useful to review and decide on running tasks. Office suite contains word processing editor and excel. Phone can be accessed when connected to PC in 2 ways, fast file transfer and normal modes. Fast file transfer is a useful feature for exchanging files between PC and phone and is really fast. Mailing features such as SMS, MMS, Exchange server setup, Push Mail are as usual. One of the great features in messaging section is on-screen QWERTY keyboard and handwriting recognition. Battery life is excellent.
Though I managed to procure this piece at comparatively a cheaper price, the features it promised and I expected were exceeded in some cases and not met in others.