Sony Ericsson W350 Review

Introduction:

Sony Ericsson W350 is a small, budget musical phone, targeting the young audience. It falls in the low class of the Walkman series and it’s the first phone of the manufacturer with the flip form factor. In order to facilitate the music functions when the phone is closed, there are some external buttons located on the lid. Besides the Walkman player you’ll have an FM radio, supporting RDS, to check out the latest news update for example.

The package includes:

• Sony Ericsson W350
• Memory Stick Micro (M2) 512 MB
• Charger
• User’s manual
• Handsfree
• USB cable
• Software CD

Design:

The W350’s design is quite youthful, but the only “WOW” effect is the opening lid. The size of the phone is really compact and it weighs only 2.6 oz (75 g). Sometimes, when it is in your pocket, you may get the feeling that you’ve lost it. Unfortunately, the small size is what makes the W350 inconvenient for use by people with big hands. It simply is too small, which can cause some discomfort for them. The device has been made of plastic, which feels like rubber-coated and prevents it from sliding.


You can compare the Sony Ericsson W350 with many other phones using ourSize Visualization Tool.


The TFT display is 1.9” with a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels and supports up to 262k colors. The picture quality will immediately remind you that you are using an entry-level phone. However, in contrast with the competition it can even be defined as an average display since now, you can find a good picture even in the entry-level phones. Nevertheless, we are happy that even though the image is faded, the screen is still usable.

Over it, we have the speaker, and below it, the light sensor with the music controls. They are not electronic and simply press the keys from the numeric keypad, which remain underneath them. The music controls are easy to operate and even if it is hard to realize when you have pressed one, there is a light short vibration to confirm your action.

The flip mechanism is stable and the lid is opened very easy manually. Unfortunately, the microphone has not been placed on this element but remains below the numeric keypad. Because of that, you cannot accept incoming calls with the phone closed, but you can at least reject them or silence the W350, by using the music control button.

Lifting the lid reveals all standard keys (numeric and navigational). They are very easy to distinguish and pressing them is easily felt. Even though the “up” on the D-pad is too close to the edge, operating it doesn’t create discomfort.



On the left side we find the uncomfortable Walkman button and the charger slot. The also unfriendly music controls are located on the opposite side. The only thing in the upper part is the slider, locking the keys on the front lid.

The loudspeaker and the camera are located on the back of the phone. The M2 card slot is also here, but it’s hidden underneath the battery lid. Replacing the card is done very easy.

Interface:

The W350 uses old generation software, which we know from models such as W880 and W380. Nothing new will puzzle you on the home screen. The background can be replaced by static pictures and flash animations. The main menu is in the standard grid and the view can be changed only by using flash themes, and not independently.



Phonebook:

The phonebook stores up to 1000 contacts or 2500 phone numbers at the most. The search option does not allow you to search by the second name of a contact. For each contact, you can enter up to 5 numbers, a few emails, picture, ringtone, address, date of birth and additional information.



Organizer:

You can have up to 5 alarms and each one can be set for different days of the week and assigned a separate ringtone. In Tasks, there is an option for entering an event or a call to be made with the option to add a reminder. The coded notes are pointless, because even if you enter a wrong password, you can see their titles or delete them, unlike LG where the notes are seen after entering the correct one, which we think is the better option. The rest of the functions as Notes, Timer, Countdown timer, Unit converter and Calculator are the standard ones.

The Calendar can be viewed for a month, week, or a day; the latter option shows the events, set for the particular day, and it enables you to add new options. When you want to add appointments, you select the starting time, duration and the reminder’s time. You can include details about the venue of the event, as well as a description. You have the option of setting it as an All day event (all birth dates from the contacts list are added as such) and to include recurrence options (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly).


W350 has only 14 MB of built-in memory, but the 512 MB M2 card included in the package makes up for that. If that’s not enough for you, you can always get a larger one as long as it is from the same type.

Messaging:

Here, besides the options for writing the standard SMS and MMS you will find emails, My Friends (IM) and RSS reader. For the emails, you have the options to manually setup more than one account and if it is POP3 or IMAP. For each account there are additional options such as signature, encrypting, and the period at which the mail is checked automatically.

My Friends is a chat messenger that combines your contacts from the other popular messengers (including MSN, ICQ, AOL, and Yahoo) in one shared program on the telephone.



Connectivity:

The Bluetooth 2.0 and the data cable included in the package are used for local connectivity. In the first option the speed is much slower. The phone also has support for A2DP, which allows it to transfer stereo sound wirelessly. The cable connection lets you select between: Phone Mode, used for synchronization (manufacturer software needed) and Data transfer, indicating the card as a mass storage device. However, in both cases, the large file (music) transfer is very slow.

The Internet browser that is characteristic for the manufacturer is Access NetFront. In our case it is version 3.3 and it could not load the heavy Phonearena.com. Nevertheless, we had no trouble logging in Blogger, Wordpress, Facebook mobile and other simpler sites. There are a few visualization options and they do a good job: zoom in/out, Smart fit and text only. Overall, this is a very good browser for an entry level music phone.

Multimedia:

The music player is Walkman 2.0, instead of the newer third one, but we expected that for a budget model. You can see all tracks, sort them by artist, album, genre or look at the saved playlists. When you play a song, a small album cover appears in the upper part of the screen, accompanied by the activated additional settings (equalizer, repeat, shuffle), and in the lower part we see the track info.

Sony Ericsson W350 is equipped with a built-in FM radio with RDS, which uses the handsfree as an antenna. Its interface is very easy to use and offers the standard options for manual, semi-automatic and automatic search of stations and saving them.

When listening to music, the loudspeaker performed well, even when the phone was lying on its back, for example. The music heard in the earpieces is loud, but the quality is average. Due to the lack of insulation, the external noises can be still heard. Overall, we are not impressed, considering that even the older W200 did a better job.

The video player is extremely simple. You only have Play/Stop and once the video is playing, there is no option to pause it. Because of that, you’ll either have to watch it till the end or stop it and then play it again.

If you are looking for satisfying performance, we recommend converting the specific files in 3GP format with a H.263 codec in 176 x 220 and no more than 20 fps.

Camera:

The camera is 1.3-megapixel, no flash and it is only intended to snap pictures. As we expected, it doesn’t offer any incredible options, but you can still select the size and the quality of the images. There’s also a self-timer, various effects can be selected and you can set the white balance. The pictures are low quality, but we didn’t expect anything else from a music-oriented, entry-level phone.

Software:

The Entertainment menu houses a few applications: the music editor MusicDJ, Video player, Games and TrackID. The last one is very useful and provides information on the track currently playing, by connecting to the Internet. Once you activate the feature, it’ll automatically connect to the web and will give you the information needed in about 20 seconds (saving, sending and analysis). Seeing a “no success” message will rarely happen.

There are a total of three games. The first one is Extreme Air SnowBoarding and as the name indicates, you are snowboarding and doing various tricks. There are a few game modes and you can kill quite some time with it. The second one is QuadraPop and is something like Tetris but with music notes. In Guitar Rock Tour (very similar to Guitar Hero), which is the last game in W350, you have to press different colors on the guitar strings, by using the keypad.

Performance:

We didn’t experience any troubles while using Sony Ericsson W350. It performed well and didn’t block even once. There was no lag and we are very happy with the phone in this aspect.

The sound quality during a talk is average. You will hear quiet but clear sounds, and on the other end of the line, they will be loud but sharp and monotonous. When in a noisy environment, you’ll definitely have to struggle in order to hear what the collocutor is saying.

According to the official data providet by the manufacturer, the Li-Polymer batter will provide 7 hours of talks or 300 hours in standby mode. Another option would be to listen to music for about 15 hours.

Conclusion:

Sony Ericsson W350’s key characteristics are its design and it musical abilities. It’s true that the flip form factor is not the most convenient or useful one, but it definitely differentiates it from the rest and ads a „WOW” factor, which is rarely seen in this class. However, we are disappointed from the music performance of the Walkman phone. We thought it was average, mainly because of the poor earpieces sound. Moreover, in case you can live with a simpler design, we recommend Nokia 5310 XpressMusic as the better choice.