[MikLSP]

Having recently purchased a W910i I have had my first experiences of Sony Ericssons SensMe™ function. For those who may not know:

Quote

What is SensMe™ and how can I use it?
With SensMe™ you can discover music by mood. The phone knows the mood of each song without you entering information such as slow, fast, major, minor, acoustic, electric etc.
How to use SensMe™
From standby go to "Menu" > Media.
Scroll to Music > SensMe™ and select "Open".
Use the Navigation key to preview different tracks.
Select "Add" to choose an area of tracks.
Select "Create" to view the playlist in the Walkman® player.

Note- this is NOT the Shake Control feature as many sites seem to be very confused with.

In order to make use of SensMe™ you must install the Sony Ericsson Media Manager software supplied on the disc and I initially thought that the software had to be used to transfer the music to the phone. Indeed transferring via the SE Media Manager is one way to add SensMe™ data but the transfer is rather slow.

After a little experimentation I discovered that the SensMe™ data is permanently added to the MP3 files as meta data on the ID Tags. This is very good news as once your music has been tagged it can be transferred through Windows drag&drop for example and the phone will still recognise the SensMe™ data.
Furthermore you can make the Media Manager analyse all the music on your computer without actually transferring it to the phone. This took a long time (10hrs to tag 24GB of music!) but as the tags are permanent the meta data is now added to all my music and it is not necessary to use the Media Manager software for transfer.

Once on the phone the SensMe™ function displays the music on a graph with Sad-Happy and Fast-Slow on each axis and allows you to choose a group of music by mood and tempo.
 DSC06323__Medium_.JPG (104.33K)
Number of downloads: 304

There are some songs which appear to have been put in the wrong area but on the whole I found it to be remarkably accurate. Of course a system designed to analyse beats and acoustics won't always get the feeling of a song totally correct.

Once populated you can move around the graph to select a group of tracks, rather irritatingly though the phone automatically plays each track you move to and there seems to be no way to prevent this.
After selecting the area you wish to play you may expand or contract your sphere of influence to encompass a larger or smaller number of tracks for your playlist.
 DSC06325__Medium_.JPG (100.76K)
Number of downloads: 120

It is also possible to select several groups to add to one playlist, selected tracks are shown in orange. Once created playlists can of course be saved.
 DSC06328__Medium_.JPG (89.42K)
Number of downloads: 124

One flaw with the system I have discovered is that it appears when the graph is heavily populated with a large number of tracks, some inevitably fall in the same place on the graph and the phones does not appear to recognise both tracks. This is evident by the fact that the number of tracks shown under my SensMe™ menu is 739 but when selecting every dot on the graph to add to one playlist only 646 tracks are selected

Overall I think this is an excellent feature and one which I hope Sony Ericsson perseveres with. The fact that your music is permanently tagged with the SensMe™ data is a huge plus and I would like to see implementation in other devices such as Sony Walkman, Sony PS3 and a player for PC/Mac which can make use of the data too

Mik

[Ly]

nice review.
im getting a w910i for my birthday. would you recommend it?

[weirdwilli]

Nice review, rank phone

[MikLSP]

Yes, I am impressed with the phone. The whole Media/Walkman is very impressive with some excellent features like SensMe™ and the auto screen rotation, the slideshows are also quite impressive

The main disadvantages of the phone are the camera is average with no LED and the menu slows down when using the Walkman.

Anyway, I'm not reviewing the whole phone as that has already been done, I hadn't seen much written in detail about SensMe™ and many sites seem to be totally confused and think that it is the shake control.

[MWEB1]

Usefull info that Mik, i had it confused with the shake thingamy TBH so at least i'm enlightened on that front now.

[number1]

first time i have heard about this and how it works sounds completey useless to me, it's just over compercates something as simple as listening to music, i couldn't be botherd to sit there and tag 25gb of music, i listen to dubstep when i want sad/slow & drum & bass when i want fast/happy simple.

[Aware]

Nicely written Mik!

Would be nice if you could add SenseMe rating to tracks on the phone itself......

[MikLSP]

@ number1

you don't need to tag them manually, the software does it for you. I started it before going out in the morning and left it going all day, once it's done it's done.
Also you don't have to use this to listen to music, it's just a nice alternative feature.

@ Aware

yes I agree it would be good if you could manually alter them on the phone, that way you'd be able to move a track to a position you find more suitable.

[korvmannen]

a cool feature but since it's only a software, it will never know if the song is happy or sad xD
it only measures tempo and volume changes.

While I had my W910 I didn't test this function because it seemed useless.
Now my W910 is sold and everyone is happy

[number1]

it's a useless but cool fuction

[Phenombox]

Thanks for the review Mik, sorted some things a bit for me

[MikLSP]

@ korvmannen

yeah, it can't actually detect the meaning of a song but the method it uses is remarkably accurate

[korvmannen]

that's a good thing, I am sure some people will use it.
Even if it's 10 out of 100
its still good

[93bh]

Nice review! Maybe I'll get k850 or w910, or even both.

[korvmannen]

damm rich kid...

[MikLSP]

The K850i doesn't have this function that I know of, it is exclusive to new Walkman phones

[Ly]

yeah k850 doesnt have it.

i kinda want k850, but i want a walkman cos ive never had one and never had a slider.
so w910i

[93bh]

Thanks for mentioning me, I'll get w910i.

[allyn274]

@ MikLSP - this was definitely enough to peak my curiosity about the SensMe feature. I think it's pretty cool! Maybe not the most practical in the world but cool. So I have 180 tracks in my music on the phone right now (on my memory card), but I noticed that SensMe is only seeing 47? Everything came through Media Manager - just at 2 different points in time. The feature to analyze my music is turned on, but do you have any idea why it would be only analyzing the first batch of tracks from 2 days ago - not the ones from 24 hours ago?

Thanks for your help!

[Hitman*]

The Problem might be, because the Media Manager sometimes messes up the settings you made after closing it, for example, I made all my setting, closed Mediamanager, the other day transfered music from a CD and was quite confused after it finished, that it transfered mp3 instead of aac, looked at the settings and guess what, everything back to standard, looks like you have to let it analyize your music again , fastest way is using the cardreader, which in my opinion is the most useful SE accessory.