Sleek and Slimline and so easy to use!!! (Sony Ericsson W380i)

Member Name: dogleggedhat

Product:	Sony Ericsson W380i
Date:	10/01/09 (57 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: looks great, buttons are easy to use, phone is easy to get around, walkman facilities are great

Disadvantages: the camera quality may put a few people off

I got the Sony Ericsson W380i as a Christmas present from my boyfriend as I had been coveting it for ages-not for many of its attractive features, such as its slimline appearance, gesture control (more of that later) and music control buttons on the front, but rather because it was purple. Perhaps a pathetic reason for choosing a phone in some peoples eyes, but what can I say, I just love purple! And the shade of purple which the W380i comes in is beautiful. Electric Purple they call it, but if that's not your thing, it also comes in 'Magnetic Grey' and 'Blushing Silver'

As mentioned before, the W380i is slimline, with dimensions of 92 x 49 x 16 mm and weighs just 100g, so it looks sleek and doesn't feel like a brick in your pocket. However, at the same time, it isn't so tiny and fragile that you feel it would fly out of your hand at any moment-I feel that it has a good balance between being light and slimline, without going too far.

The screen is 144 colour TFT and is very clear and colourful, whilst giving you the option to adjust the brightness if you're feeling that it's too bright. It also contains 14mb of phone memory with the option to increase up to 2gb (which isn't as big as some other models, but still offers enough space for a semi-decent amount of music).

I personally don't need my phone to have all the latest features and gadgets-all I use it for is texting, calling and listening to music, so I don't really need anything too technical. I feel that the W380i has struck a good balance in the features it offers-it's got lots of nifty little features on offer, but it doesn't overwhelm the user, which is great if you only want to make limited use of them. Most of the features are music related (quite obvious, given that it's a walkman phone!) but some of the non-music features are:-

Gesture control-when this option is turned on it means you glide your hand above the phone and you can silence and incoming call or snooze your alarm clock. A nice idea, though I think its more of a novelty, and because you have to put your hand pretty damn close to the phone, it probably won't work first time-it took me about 5 swipes to silence a call, and it probably would have just been quicker to open the phone and do this manually.

Flight mode-this is an increasingly common feature on new phones and on this setting the radio function is switched off meaning that your phone doesn't interrupt sensitive equipment such as that on a plane or in a hospital.

It also has a lot of the features which are common to a Sony Ericsson- An organiser with alarm clock, calculator, calendar, stop watch etc; FM radio, bluetooth, multimedia messaging, and a camera. However, the camera is 1.3 megapixel which means it isn't great compared to other camera phones, but is handy for taking spur of the moment pictures if you don't have a camera handy.

As mentioned before, this phone is a walkman phone, meaning that you can download, store and play music onto your mobile. I think that the W380i is particularly good in terms of the walkman facility. On the front of the phone are play/pause and skip buttons which are presented as little dots(kind of like the dots used in braille), and the song being played is displayed across the screen.

There is also a phone lock button on the front, which means that if you hit a button by mistake, it won't matter and your music will play uninterrupted. the phone comes with 'Disc2phone' software meaning you can transfer songs straight from a music cd to your mobile phone. the phone also has a 'name that tune' facility whereby is you hear a song and aren't sure of its name, you can record a few seconds of it and use the track ID facility to send it away for recognition.

MY EXPERIENCE
As already mentioned, I got this phone at Christmas, and I have to say that I really love it. I've found it incredibly easy to navigate and the buttons are great for texting on (something which i was worried about as I text loads!) The buttons are a good size too, so are really easy to use. the screen is a good size and very clear, and the layout of the phone is pretty self-explanatory, so is very easy to figure out, even without the guide book. I found that it was very easy to put music onto the phone, and you're provided with a USB cable to help you do this. I'm not massively great at putting music onto things etc, but I was able to do this myself with no issues. You also get a set of colour co-ordinated headphones, which is great, and the best thing about this is the headphones comes in two parts, and you can actually disconnect them and add your own headphones instead as there is a little jack halfway down for ordinary headphones to go into. This was great for me as I prefer big headphones and not the ones you put in your ears.

The phone is really comfortable to hold when making/receiving calls and the quality of sound is really good. Battery life has been fine for me-it needs charged every 4-5 days-although at the minute I've not been using the walkman facility too much, so this may change if you're using it or the radio for a long period of time.

I really can't fault this phone too much-I'm so glad I have it and it does everything I need it to do, and it does it well. It's a really good looking phone, sleek and slimline without looking too posh, and its so easy and pelasant to use, so I can't recomend it enough. The only problem I would state is the camera quality as it's not up there with other models, but I don't use the camera so it has not been a problem for me and hasn't put me off in the slightest.

I also hate how when you buy a phone from orange, they give you the price for the phone but make you buy a ten pound top up-very annoying as if you want to keep your old sim it means phoning up and transferring the money across-all a bit unneccessary I think! (I realise this isn't the phones fault-I really am just nitpicking now!)

Sorry this review is so long, but I really love this phone!

Summary: I can't see me trading this phone in anytime soon!

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