PC Suite
Installation was reasonably straightforward – perhaps the only thing that needed some work was installing the application so it was available on my ‘user’ account. My Windows PC has two accounts (an ‘Admin’ and a ‘User’) and I install all the applications on the Admin account. Normally that means I can then see the installed apps as the user, or get the option to pseudo-install them. In the case of the Sony Ericsson PC Suite, I had to go into the file structure of my hard drive to locate the .exe file and run it from there, to get the option to auto-run the application for the User account. Not a trivial way of doing things, and frankly a check-box in the installer (Would you like this installed to all user’s accounts?) would be more user friendly.
Once you’re over that hurdle though, the PC Suite behaves pretty well. I’ve not had it crash on me in over a week of using it, and the interface is simple and easy to understand. You have a visual display of the connection status of your phone in the top half, and two rows of icons – the first for the main phone management (file manager, backing up and installing applications) and the second for additional services.
Synchronising Your Data
And so to the first synchronisation. Not that I ever trust software, but I’ll always do a backup of my Outlook PST file right before a first sync to a new phone (but you should all be doing regular backups of your personal data, of course). I'll then tweak the synch settings to make it a ‘one-way’ sync where the data is PC to Phone only. Subsequent syncs are two way, synchronising correctly. [Ed. Good to be paranoid, though for all smartphones in the last year or so, I've simply hit the sync button and had no problems... 8-) The rise and rise of SyncML seems to have ensured rock-solid syncing at last]
Setting up also allows you to have the PC Suite sync automatically whenever you connect your W950i to the PC, but I always leave it on manual (with the amount of connecting and disconnecting that I have to do of different devices I’m sure the automatic option would get a touch confused with the different mobile Operating Systems all talking to my Outlook data).
You can connect via IR, Bluetooth or USB – given that, in the near future, I’m going to be moving a huge amount of data (music) to the phone, I’ve made the first connection with the USB cable – which gives you a choice of “fast or normal” USB connection. Similar to Nokia’s S60 3rd Edition, 'normal' allows the W950i to talk to the PC Suite, and 'fast' allows the large 4GB internal flash disk to be seen as a USB Mass Storage device for direct copying and access.
Installing an eBook Reader
Last up in the first things(!) is to install an application. I’ve always carried an eBook/Text reader of some description in my PDAs and Smartphones – and while the W950i has not been available for very long, the virtue of it being a UIQ3 device means that all the software that has previously been written for the P990 and the M600 can be installed on the W950i - even though the user interface is slightly different.
So it’s over to the Mobipocket site to grab the UIQ3 version of their reader. Once it was downloaded, you can either double-click the SIS file to install it, or you can run the Application Installer, which allows you to navigate to the file – useful if you have the Nokia PC Suite installed, which is also using the .sis extension for installing S60 applications.
After confirming the installation on the PC screen, a task bar will show the copying progress, and you’ll be prompted to continue the installation on the W950i. You get the same dialog structure as any other Symbian device, so a title screen, perhaps a warning if the application is unsigned and 'are you really sure you want to install it', and then you can choose where to install the program, either on the phone’s internal memory, or in the 4GB ‘hard drive.’
Finally, copying an eBook to the device to read involves clicking on the File Manager option in the PC Suite – which is nothing more than a short cut to a Windows File Explorer location. You’ll be able to use the same File Manager that you use on your PC – the W950i shows up as another device. Here you can see the (simplified - bah, humbug) folder structure and the recommended places for different files. My eBooks are going to be put in the Documents folder.
Summary
Even with these first few steps, it is obvious that the W950i in use is very similar to S60 and people moving to this device from other Symbian powered devices are going to feel at home. For the new user, and that’s the target audience for this phone, it’s going to be a huge step up in what their device can do, and at times it does feel that the only reason I knew how to do something was because that’s ‘just how things are done’ with Symbian OS. That’s something that clearly is not applicable to the new user and there’s very little in the way of helpful wizards or “1… 2… 3…” documentation available. And, while not a showstopper, the first few minutes of any consumer experience need to be enjoyable – I get the feeling for someone new to UIQ, that that is not going to be the case.
Resources
Sony Ericsson W950i Review Part 1 (Music)
Sony Ericsson W950i Review Part 2 (UIQ interface)
Sony Ericsson W950i Review Part 3 (Applications)