SINGAPORE: Some things appear more attractive on a glossy photo than they do in real life. My psychotic cat is one, and so is Sony Ericsson's latest Walkman phone - the W960i.

Measuring a proportionate 109x55x16mm and weighing 119g, it's a decent-sized smartphone that fits nicely in the palm. It's also a high-spec fanatic's dream come true: WiFi connectivity, Walkman media player and 8GB flash memory.

Sadly, there appears to be an over-enthusiastic employment of plastic — from the smudge-prone black casing, the white rubbery fringing, the protective panel down to the toy-like stylus.

The protective panel hides a TFT touchscreen generously sized at 2.8 inches. The screen supports 262K colours and displays text and images well under bright light. Colours, however, appear undesirably muted.

Input's not via the touchscreen only; there's an alpha-numeric keypad below the screen. Keys are small, but not unreasonably so.

A jog-wheel on the left spine of the phone lets you scroll through options conveniently. The Back button's not on the spine though, as it had been on previous Sony Ericsson smartphones. It now rests on the front on the W960i and that makes one-handed, stylus-less operation a touch awkward.

The phone is powered by the Symbian 9.1 operating system and sports the customisable UIQ 3.0 interface. I find the laggy interface wildly annoying — even with almost all applications closed, it's unacceptably sluggish.

The best part about the phone is the Walkman media player, which offers idiot-proof operation and a heady selection of options.

Press the Walkman key and three hidden playback keys below the screen light up with a pearly glow. Shuffle and loop options are available, as are equaliser pre-sets, including the formidable MegaBass.

You can even tag mood labels to your songs and watch the hypnotic full-screen visualisations change accordingly.

A jumbo 8GB memory, which matches Nokia's latest offerings, means you can cram in 1,600 songs, at 5MB per song. But storage hounds might whine about the lack of an external memory slot. And you need to attach an included adapter to get a 3.5mm headset jack.

The phone has a competent 3.2-megapixel, autofocus camera with a double-LED flash. Video can be captured in 3GP format at a maximum resolution of 320x240 pixels, but at a dismal rate of 15 frames per second.

In terms of connectivity, the phone shines. You can surf the Web via 3G or WiFi, as well as link to devices wirelessly over Bluetooth. You can even select which connectivity option takes precedence.

Battery life's not so grand — I have to juice up the phone every day even with minimal multimedia usage and negligible talk time.

Verdict

On paper, the W960i is full of promise. But a slow and unwieldy interface mars the user experience. Plus, it doesn't look so hot. Get this only if you want a music phone with copious storage and comprehensive connectivity options.

Retail Price: S$888 with 2-year plan - TODAY/fa