Since Sony Ericsson first brought its Walkman mobile telephone line ultimate year, music-pleasant telephones have had combined fulfillment within the United States. Though they are lauded by customers and critics alike, collectively with us, U.S. Vendors have not clamored to encompass their lineups’ handsets. Sure, Cingular gives the W600i, but it’s the exception rather than the rule of thumb. Sony Ericsson no doubt has taken note of this discrepancy, which may be a reason in the back of the Sony Ericsson W300i. While previous Walkman telephones were full of the maximum steeply-priced features, the W300i aims to be a low-cease Walkman smartphone. Although you still get Bluetooth, a VGA digital camera, and the entire variety of Walkman music compatibility, the entire impact is a step down from models just like the Sony Ericsson W810i. We were not crazy about a few design elements. However, name caliber turned into a top, and we commend Sony Ericsson for bringing cell tune to the hundreds. No carrier became set at the time of this evaluation, so that the GSM handset will run you $299.

So some distance, Sony Ericsson has caught to swivel and sweet bar designs for its Walkman phones, so we were glad to peer the employer roll out a turn telephone in the series. From the outside, it’s quite stylish; our model came in black. However, You can get it in white too. It would not bear a good deal of a resemblance to the organization’s few other turn telephones; we just like the smooth lines, the looped antenna, and the textured covering on the bottom of the front flap. The cellphone is moderately compact at 3.5 by way of 1.Eight utilizing 1.Zero inches, so it is effortlessly put in maximum wallet. It’s additionally quite light for its length at three. Three oz, but the charge-off is that the all-around creation feels just a chunk flimsy. We did not have any troubles when using the smartphone. However, it felt almost too light in our arms.

In the center of the front flap is the postage stamp-length outdoor display screen. Although monochrome, it is quite vivid and shows the same old facts, no longer to mention the date, time, battery lifestyles, signal energy, and caller ID (in which available). You cannot alternate the backlighting time, but a short flick of the volume rocker will spark off the show for inspection. Above the display are the VGA digital camera lens and a self-portrait replicate (however, no flash), at the same time as the speaker is on the pinnacle of the rear face. The aforementioned quantity control is at the left spine at the manager’s side for activating the music participant and playing and pausing the song. The infrared port is at the proper spine, whilst the relationship port for the charger, the wired headset, and the USB cable is on the handset’s bottom. One design flaw of the brand new Walkman phone connection port in which you can not connect cables right now.

Inside the smartphone, you’ll locate the 1.Seventy five-inch (128×160) inside the display. Sony Ericsson always does an excellent job with its displays, and the W300i is no exception. Radiant and shiny, it presentations all 262, a hundred and forty-four colorings beautifully and is best for viewing snapshots and videos, gambling games, and scrolling via the consumer-pleasant menus. You can alternate the brightness, however, not the font length or backlighting time.

On the alternative hand, Sony Ericsson would not have a fantastic track file with navigation controls and keypad buttons. While it made nice strides with the W810i, the W300i suggests a slip returned to awful habits. The five-manner toggle is massive and doubles as a shortcut to four consumer-described capabilities, but it’s flush with the floor of the phone and, as a consequence, takes time to get used to. The flat soft keys, clean button, and lower back manage are spaced a long way from the toggle. However, they are pretty small, given the smartphone’s size. While this isn’t always an awful thing, keep in mind that maximum Sony Ericsson telephones do now not have committed Talk and End keys.

The keypad buttons are worse, on the other hand. Designed much like overlapping circles, they’re flat with the cellphone floor and slippery, which made for some misdials. Even more, they don’t lend themselves to brief texting. On the upside, they have got a vibrant orange backlight. Below them are a devoted strength manager and a button for activating the Walkman player, but those are plenty too little. The Memory Stick Micro slot is under the plastic battery cowl, but happily, you don’t should cast off the battery to get at it.

The W300i has a 1,000-contact telephone ebook with room in every entry for 5 smartphone numbers, email and Web addresses, commercial enterprise and home street addresses, a birth date, and notes (the SIM card holds a further 250 names). You can classify contacts, pair them with a photo for caller ID, or connect them one in every of 28 (forty-chord) polyphonic ringtones. Support for MP3 ringtones is a gift as nicely but be informed that caller ID photographs do now not appear on the outer show. Other capabilities include a vibrate mode, textual content, multimedia messaging, voice dialing, a calendar, a mission list, a notepad, a calculator, a timer, a stopwatch, and a code memo for storing passwords and different relaxed information.

There’s also a recorder for both voice memos and calls; duration is sparing via handy memory. Although the W300i is considered an entry-level Walkman phone, it nonetheless comes with a pretty true wide variety of business-pleasant applications. Inside, you will find a speakerphone, PC syncing for contacts and calendar appointments, a newsreader for gaining access to RSS feeds, USB cable help, and full Bluetooth for no longer best connecting to a headset but additionally for wirelessly replacing documents and electronic enterprise playing cards. And like many different Sony Ericsson, You can use the cellphone as a modem and use the Bluetooth function as a far-off manage to connect to different Bluetooth gadgets.

The W300i’s Walkman music participant doesn’t vary lots from the preceding handsets in the collection. It helps a wide variety of codecs, including MP3, MP4, 3GP, AAC, and WAV documents. Opening the participant takes you at once to the primary menu, wherein You can organize the track using artist, song call, or playlist. Settings consist of album/tune shuffle and loop, Sony’s Mega Bass, and an equalizer. Toggling between the mobile telephone and the song participant is seamless, as the track routinely stops when you obtain a name. Hang up and mash the dedicated song key, and your tune alternatives up from the factor you left off. There’s an aircraft mode that lets you concentrate on your tunes in flight with the mobile phone powered off, and You can limit the player whilst using other capabilities. There are stereo audio systems also but no stereo Bluetooth profile.

Music capacity is sparing using the on-hand reminiscence. The internal area is truly tiny–just 20MB–and features in thoughts, that seeing that it’s shared with different packages, your actual storage space can be less. We promote investing in a Memory Stick Micro for additional space; our check cellphone got here with a 512MB card. Getting the track on the smartphone is fantastically easy. As nicely as the use of the included USB cable and Disc2Phone software program, you can ship tunes through e-mail, a multimedia message, Bluetooth, or infrared port. You additionally get an FM radio with 20 presets, While you have to use it with a headset, which acts as an antenna. You can set it to robotically test and application Radio Data System information from stations that digitally broadcast their names and contact letters. You are capable of using the radio as an alarm clock.

Since the W300i is supposed for a greater or less common cellphone consumer, Sony Ericsson included a VGA shooter instead of a megapixel model. You can take pictures in 3 resolutions (640×480, 320×240, 160×120) and pick out from a ramification of enhancing alternatives, together with four shade results, a nighttime mode, high-quality settings, a self-timer, 19 fun frames, and brightness control. There’s additionally a digital zoom, which varies using the picture’s size–at the bottom decision, it’s 4X; however, it is now not on hand at the highest decision. Other special photograph effects consist of a burst mode for taking four photographs in rapid order and a nifty panorama desire. For audio effects, You can pick from 4 shutter sounds. However, there’s no silent preference. The camcorder takes MPEG-four motion pictures in two resolutions (176×144 and 128×96) with sound and gives a comparable set of enhancing options. Clip period is capped at minutes for multimedia messages; otherwise, the duration is sparing by the to be had a memory.

Although we recognize the digital camera is a VGA, image first-class became an alternative insufficient. Shots were blurry and grainy, and shades washed out. Likewise, video high-quality become run-of-the-mill. Still, the W300i does offer a few creative applications for the newbie photographer. With Photo DJ, You can upload certainly one of six laugh frames; inverse the shot’s orientation; and use numerous photograph consequences, including brightness, evaluation, tint manipulate, and photo marking. There’s also a Video DJ. If that isn’t always pleasurable, more photograph-, video-, and multimedia-editing options are at the software CD, along with QuickTime, Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition, and a multimedia message composer. Moving snapshots and videos of the smartphone are painless. You can ship them in a multimedia message, import them through Bluetooth or the infrared port, or use the included USB cable and software program.

You can customize the W300i with an array of subject matters, wallpaper, and screensavers. As usual, you can buy extra picks and ringtones from Sony Ericsson through the WAP 2.0 wireless Web browser. Alternatively, the smartphone comes with a Music DJ application for making your personal ringtones and an unusual software called Music Match that performs guitar chords and piano notes. Though it turned into amusing, it wasn’t fairly talented. Gamers can experience 3 Java (J2ME) titles, Neopets, QuadraPop, and PuzzleSlider, with additional titles handy for buy.

We tested the quad-band, dual-mode (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; EDGE) Sony Ericsson W300i world smartphone in San Francisco using Cingular’s provider. Call satisfactory become quite precise with brilliant clarity and extent. We had no problem getting a sign and rarely had been met with static or interference. Callers suggested the same situations, and they may make us out below maximum situations. Speakerphone quality becomes slightly worse–voices sounded hole. However, it changed into honest as a whole. We related to the Plantronics Explorer 320 Bluetooth headset and were met with admirable name caliber too. The EDGE connection became sufficiently fast for shifting small files.

Using the covered Disc2Phone software program and USB cable, which additionally prices the phone, we tried loading a track onto our W300i. Transfer time becomes notably slow at 30 seconds for a 5MG tune so that you’ll be patient for a big import. As a whole, alternatively, the software program is easy to put in and exhibited a few of the quirks we discovered on previous models. And every other factor, the smartphone failed to switch off automatically when we disconnected the USB cable. Music excellent changed into par with that of other Walkman phones: clean and crisp, Though one transferred song had some very minor hiccups. The W300i might not replace a stand-alone MP3 player. However, it does the process admirably for short stints.

Our one real disapproval became that the telephone inclined to freeze at some point of regular operation, including whilst we had been going through a menu or while we had been using the USB connection. More than one time, we had to restart, however extra frequently, the smartphone unfroze after a pair of seconds.