The W950i is Sony Ericsson’s flagship Walkman™ phone, and is one of the most unusual phones to be released in 2006.

The Sony Ericsson W950i is a Walkman phone for the European market. The candy bar handset has all the normal Walkman phone features including a high-end digital music player for MP3 and AAC files, an FM radio, and a melody composer. Other offerings include Bluetooth with a stereo profile, a speakerphone, an infrared port, e-mail, text and multimedia messaging, PC syncing, modem capability, support for 3G UMTS networks, a voice recorder, and basic organizer applications. It’s available unlocked for around $700 in the United States.

This phone has been designed as a music player & business phone – an interesting concept – and the W950i meets the needs of its target market well. What the designers at Sony Ericsson have realised is that even the best camera phone on the market today (the Sony Ericsson K800i or Nokia N93) is still not a patch on a dedicated digital camera, so why include one? By scrapping the camera they have produced a feature-packed phone that doubles as a full-spec music player and really can replace your iPod, without compromise.

Apart from having no camera, the W950i is unusual in other respects. It’s also the slimmest smartphone on the market, at just 15mm thick, and is also a 3G phone. It’s compact and lightweight and feels just right in the hand. The W950i has a flat keypad, that is actually very easy to use, together with a jog dial and dedicated music player keys on the sides of the keypad for easy access to your music collection. In addition the W950i has a touchscreen and stylus that makes navigation a breeze. It also supports handwriting recognition. The screen is very large (2.6 inches across), is bright and sharp, and is brilliant for navigating, managing playlists, and viewing graphics. In fact this is one of the most ergonomic and user-friendly phones around, and is a real pleasure to use. Nevertheless you should still expect to have to spend some time learning to use all of the features on this device, simply because it has so many of them!