Chubby Goodness (Sony Ericsson W300i)

Member Name: Review_God

Product:	Sony Ericsson W300i
Date:	14/09/08 (79 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Well featured for a budget phone

Disadvantages: Poor screen, thick and chunky

The Sony Ericsson w300i is quite outdated now, but it is still sold in many places - often at very low prices.

The phone is quite thick, at about 2cm. When I bought it I thought it was quite stylish, but compared to more recent phones it is chunky and slightly cheap-looking. It is a flip phone, which is good as it means that it won't be phoning random people in your pocket!

There are two screens, one on the inside and one on the outside, and neither are brilliant. The main screen is too small and has a very low resolution, and as such is no good for video or photo viewing, but it is fine for texting and making phone calls. The external screen is small and isn't colour, but it does it's job well enough and the orange backlight looks nice.

Though nothing special, the w300i is fairly full-featured. It has bluetooth, infrared, a FM radio (the headphone cable must be plugged in), a camera and a music player.

The camera, though, is a bit rubbish. It is 0.3mp, which basically means every photo will look horrid. It seems to me that Sony Ericsson only put it in so that they could advertise the w300i as being a "camera phone". It really isn't worth anything at all, even for quick snaps.

The "w" in "w300i" stands for "walkman", which is Sony's music player brand. What this basically means is that you get get a music player on the phone. It is certainly better than most low-end phone music players, but it isn't as good as a dedicated mp3 player. The internal phone memory is no good for music, but there is M2 card slot which is a very welcome feature. Mine came with a 256mb M2 card which is reasonable, but you will want to buy a new one if you use the phone as a proper music player.

The keypad is good in my opinion, but the keys are very smooth and close together which may be a problem for some people.

The battery life is excellent, and I often found that it would keep it's charge for weeks at a time. Obviously though, the more you use it the faster the battery will drain.

Believe it or not, the main purpose of a mobile phone is to make and receive phone calls. I know, it's crazy! I no expert, but I thought that the sound quality was good when both making and receiving calls. I've never had any dropped calls that were the fault of the phone, and people sound loud and clear. There is also a speakerphone if you like such things.

When I bought the w300i, I naturally went for the cheapest deal I could find. The problem was, it was a "Robbie Williams Special Edition", meaning it had Robbie Williams wallpapers, video and music clips on it. I don't like Robbie, at all, and the music clips weren't even full songs. I tried, and failed, to delete all this content. For some reason it is locked onto the phone and cannot be deleted. I'm now stuck with this rubbish on my phone, and this even includes a permanent shortcut to the Robbie Williams webpage on my phone menu. I was not pleased. Avoid this special edition.

The w300i, though, is a decent budget phone. It is nothing special, but at a low price it is definitely a good purchase.

Summary: A decent budget phone

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