Sony Ericsson is known for their Cyber Shot camera phones and its Walkman music phones. They are, in my opinion, one of the leading mobile manufacturers in the market today. In this article, let’s take a look at one of their more successful device, the SE W300i.
Walkman phones are generally packed with the most expensive and the best features. However, the W300i is more of a low-end Walkman phone. Of course, basic staples like bluetooth, a VGA camera, and the full range of Walkman music compatibility is still there, but its overall effect is a step down from models usually released by Sony.
Most of SE phones lean heavily on the swivel/candy bar design. The W300i on the other hand came out with a flip design, which in my opinion, is a surprise especially to Sony Ericsson fans. From the outside it’s quite attractive and doesn’t bear much of a resemblance to the company’s few other flip phones.
The phone is relatively compact at 3.5 by 1.8 by 1.0 inches, so it’s easily placed in most pockets. It’s also quite light for its size at 3.3 ounces, but the trade-off is that the overall construction feels somewhat flimsy.
In the center of the front flap is the external display which displays info such as date, time, battery life, signal strength, and caller ID. Above the screen is the VGA camera lens and a self-portrait mirror, while the speaker is on the top of the rear face. The volume control is on the left spine along with a control for activating the music player and playing and pausing music. The infrared port is on the right spine, while the connection port for the charger, the wired headset, and the USB cable is on the bottom of the handset.
Flip open the phone and you’ll see its 1.75-inch (128×160) internal display. The W300i shows a bright and vivid screen that displays all 262,144 colors beautifully and is perfect for viewing photos and videos, playing games, and scrolling through the user-friendly menus.
The W300i has a 1,000-contact phone book with room in each entry for five phone numbers, e-mail and Web addresses, business and home street addresses, a birthday date, and notes. As most phones now, users can organize contacts into groups, pair them with a photo for caller ID, or assign them one of 28 (40-chord) polyphonic ring tones.
Other basic/standard features of this phone include support for MP3 ring tones, a vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, voice dialing, a calendar, a task list, a notepad, a calculator, a timer, a stopwatch, and a code memo for storing passwords and other secure information. There’s also a recorder for both voice memos and calls which is limited by the available memory.
Sony Ericsson music player among their phones (especially Walkman phones) are basically similar to each other. It supports a broad range of formats, including MP3, MP4, 3GP, AAC, and WAV files. Opening the player takes you directly to the main menu, where you can organize music by artist, track name, or playlist. Settings include album/song shuffle and loop, Sony’s Mega Bass, and an equalizer.
You can store your music files to the phone as long as you still have available memory left. Its a bit small at only 20MB. But you can extend that using the supported Memory Stick Micro for extra space.
Its a bit expected, knowing that this is a Walkman phone, that the built-in VGA camera wouldn’t be that good at all. You can take pictures in three resolutions (640×480, 320×240, 160×120) and choose from a variety of editing options, including four color effects, a night mode, two quality settings, a self-timer, 19 fun frames, and a brightness control.
Of course, looking at the picture this camera produces, the quality is rather disappointing. Shots were blurry and grainy and colors washed out. Likewise, video quality was unremarkable. Still, the W300i does offer a few creative applications for the amateur photographer. With Photo DJ, you can add one of six fun frames; rotate the shot’s orientation; and use various image effects such as brightness, contrast, tint control, and photo marking.
The W300i has a rated talk time of 9 hours and a promised standby time of 16.5 days.
news source :http://www.camera-core.co.uk/11-03-2008-sony-ericsson-w300i-review.html
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