Switching to W960

Today, I bought a Sony Ericsson W960 to replace my Motorola ROKR E2 and, probably, my Acer n311 PDA as well eventually :) So now my phone history is as follows:

• Siemens M35: Chose it because it was somewhat "ruggedized". Just thought it was a good idea to have more durable phones. I later gave it to my younger brother when I moved to Singapore.

• Siemens C35: Chose it because it was one of the cheapest phones with 2-year post-paid plan I could find when I first arrived in Singapore. Wasn't a remarkable phone in any way, though I seem to recall that it was very reliable, like both its predecessor and successor.

• Siemens M55: Color screen, and if I'm not mistaken, was also one of the cheapest phones with 2-year plan (what can I say, I was a poor student :p). Unfortunately it was later stolen :(

• Sony Ericsson Z600: An easy to use (albeit thick and somewhat slow) clamshell phone. Bought it for my dad actually, I got to use it for a few weeks. First encounter with Sony Ericsson's user interface, found it quite nice.

Phones I've owned (not to scale, obviously :p)

• Motorola E398: Chose it because feature-wise, it looked compelling given its price -- for example, not many of its competitors has memory card slot. First encounter with Motorola's "good hardware / bad software" combination. Main issue? Responsiveness. Another issue: user-friendliness.

• Motorola ROKR E2: As with E398, I chose E2 because its feature looked compelling for its price (was $138 with 2-year post-paid plan). It has QVGA screen and hardware powerful enough to watch movie during commutes, accepts standard SD card (cheaper than microSD), and has standard 3.5" earphone jack. It also uses miniUSB port and can work as removable storage. Unfortunately, Motorola's "good hardware / bad software" phenomena persists... Responsiveness and user-friendliness remain a problem, although I still find E2 interface a major improvement from E398.

• Sony Ericsson W960: This time I had the opportunity to buy phones from higher-end range without exceeding my (admittedly small) phone budget. Reason? I had received upgrade voucher from my telco few weeks back. Combined with voucher from redeemed reward points and trade-in value of the E2, even PDA phones such as LG's KS20 and HTC Touch was well within budget. And having become PDA user at that point, I did consider Windows Mobile devices almost exclusively for quite some time. Later I start to realize that while I'm OK with Windows Mobile interface on a PDA, I want something better for phone functions. Looking for alternatives, I switched my focus to Sony Ericsson smartphones (more specifically, W960 and G900), which appeared to have better user interface, camera, and multimedia features than Windows Mobile phones in the same price range. My impression was that W960 and G900 were about even for my intended usage, but since the shop I went to didn't sell G900, I eventually bought W960. Total amount spent for the phone: $58 (+ $10 for the screen protector) :D I'm quite confident that I'll be happy with W960's phone functions (especially considering I'm using the aging, lower-end class ROKR E2 as baseline.. :P), although it remains to be seen whether its capability as a PDA will be enough to make me sell my trusty n311 :D
  

SE G900 Demo Tour


SE W960 Demo Tour