W950i UMTS Walkman phone: A mobile music dream

Sony Ericsson has announced a major new addition to Sony Ericsson’s family of Walkman phones. 

The W950i is an ultra-slim, ultra-stylish, UMTS-enabled device with 4GB of onboard storage complete with touch screen for simple navigation through music genres, playlists, individual songs or music albums. 

More than a music phone, the W950i delivers broadband-fast e-mail and Web browsing plus a suite of high-performance entertainment applications, making it one of the most highly specified phones in the Sony Ericsson portfolio.

"Bringing the Walkman brand to Sony Ericsson phones was one of our outstanding achievements in 2005 and we have now sold more than three million Walkman phones," said Miles Flint, president of Sony Ericsson.

"The W950i is our sixth Walkman phone to be introduced since that announcement and listening to music on mobile phones is now an established and growing consumer behavior," he said.

"This announcement also demonstrates the flexibility of the Symbian v9.1 and UIQ 3.0 platform to create a consumer-focused offering and the W950i is now our third Symbian-based handset to be introduced in 2006," he added.

The W950i’s design will turn the heads of the most avid style aficionados. Its thin, sleek and compact form is finished in Mystic Purple, fingerprint-proof matte with orange accents. 

The purity of its design is strengthened by the keypad being flush with the surface, and orange backlighting that brings the music keys to life in a stunning, practical way.

The music player within the W950i has the functionality and sound quality of an equivalent standalone device. 

Its 4GB storage can take up to 4,000 songs and the sound quality, delivered on high quality headphones, makes listening to music a real pleasure. 

A new graphic-rich interface on the Walkman player makes it easy to navigate around the music library by song, artist or playlist, and it’s now possible to search visually by browsing through album covers using the stylus and touch screen. 

The W950i has all the benefits of a combined phone and music player, enabling multi-tasking between listening to music, SMS texting, e-mailing and browsing the Internet.

Getting music into the W950i is fast and simple and can be done in a number of ways. The supplied Disc2Phone music management software is an intuitive package that handles transfer to the phone of music stored in the user’s PC. 

UMTS capability also makes the W950i ready for fast direct-to-phone transfers from available operators’ download services. 

Beyond music, the W950i is a complete mobile entertainment center that delivers great speed and exceptional quality sound and vision.

Users can now enjoy the complete spectrum of mobile multimedia applications, from Web browsing, push e-mail and video streaming to 3D gaming and store-and-share of media files. 

Besides music, 4GB is enough storage for a wealth of photos, videos or e-mail attachments in the phone.

Stereo sound through wireless headphones is now possible as the W950i supports Bluetooth streaming in stereo. 

The Bluetooth stereo headset HBH-DS970 available as an accessory delivers high-quality stereo sound through stylish, comfortable headphones.

W950i is the third Sony Ericsson phone based on the new Symbian v9.1 and UIQ 3.0 platform, benefiting from a growing multitude of third-party applications.

All of these applications are available to download from the Sony Ericsson Application Shop, an online catalogue that is stocked directly by third-party developers.

The Sony Ericsson W950i is a dual-mode UMTS Walkman phone which starts shipping in the third quarter.