Introduction
Ericsson T10, T18, T28… all of them are legends by now, exceptionally the last one. What was the common? The flip. The flip which is practically extinct nowadays, this kind of form factor has been killed by sliders, rotatables and clamshells. We don’t want to answer the question why, we’re just happy that it’s back. Because it’s good. It protects the keypad, it’s easy to use, and in our case it also has external keys.
T10, T28 and W350i
Nowadays Sony Ericsson is told off quite a lot by the press (yes, by us too), by readers and users, regarding the lack of innovation. Of course, there is the answer, Xperia that has an unknown launch date, but innovation is not necessarily done only through features. The design might be just as important as functionality. C702 is a great example for this, as Sony Ericsson has cleverly found the gap on the market: there has been no dust- or water-resistant Cyber-Shot phone before. In the case of W350i they took a long forgotten form factor, and they have built a new phone on it, with some added musical features.
Available colors
And they did it good. As a former T10 and T28 owner I was affected when taking into my hands W350i that we got from XXL GSM; I just kept opening it, and closing it, and meanwhile I took out the vintage top phone for a photo. There are many of us like this, and because of this W350i had some advantage, because of sentimental reasons. It’s a nice job, that’s sure.
Together with a T28
Exterior
This handset is about the exterior. When looking inside the almost cube-shaped box, we get to see a stereo headset (unfortunately not the earplug type) and a USB cable besides the phone. I don’t think we should expect more, the most important is the phone that has a bit longish design compared to earlier (much earlier) similar models. When putting it near T28 we have to face how much did the mobile phone industry evolve in a couple of years, as the phone that back then was considered extra flat, now looks a chubby, fat piece of brick when compared to W350i.
The protagonist of our review has arrived in black, but there are white and blue editions too, and moreover the black one is available with violet or orange secondary color. We had the latter one. This is not so good-looking like the other editions, but it still attracts attention, on one hand because of its form factor, and other hand because of the shiny orange parts. On the front (on the external part of the flip) we can find the music control keys. On the side there is an orange stripe running along, while on the hinge at the bottom there is a discrete Walkman logo.
The data connector is on the left (poor guy is unprotected), which is understandable this time, as there wouldn’t have been enough room on the bottom. Besides this we can also find the music player’s hotkey on this side. On the right we can see the volume control keys, and there is a huge bonus point awarded for the slider keylock. The soft plastic back cover doesn’t have any attractions, the camera is kind of desolate, there is only a manufacturer logo and an orange W for identifying the phone. These have been printed with a 90 degree rotation, which is strange because W350i doesn’t have to be held horizontally when taking pictures.
After opening the phone the keypad fills out all available space, and although the keys might seem large enough, there are quite small in practice. This is mostly important for the central button of the silvery navigation ring, this usually has to be pressed with a nail, as it is tiny and it doesn’t pop out of the plane of the buttons. Of course it does not, we couldn’t close the flip if it would.
Menu
Although the 176 x 220 pixels display is not large, but it’s clearly visible thanks to TFT technology. On W350i – just like other SE devices – themes can change the icons, there is vibrating feedback when browsing the main menu and there are five default themes. The system has the usual structure, those who are familiar with it won’t be disappointed, but the whole thing has a kind of very special and new feature.
That’s because after we close the flip back we won’t get to see the standby screen, but the music player opens up. Always, in every situation. This is when the external keys start to work, and these are not real buttons. There is no kind of electronics in the front cover, so when tapping the front of the flip, we are activating some parts of the covered keypad through the soft plastic. We can try this out by closing the flip only halfway down and then touching it on the other side we can see that for example when we press play/pause, it activates key 2.
When opening the phone the player returns to the background and we are taken to the main menu. When in a close state a press of the volume control keys turns on the display for a short time so we can take a look at the icons representing missed events or we can check the time without opening the flip. I got to like this method quite a lot during everyday use, as it’s practical, forcing the Walkman interface is not disturbing at all, as it doesn’t matter at all what is displayed on-screen after closing the flip, since I don’t tamper with it anyway, and if I’d like to listen to music then it comes in handy. In case I open the flip, I get back to the menu item where I was before closing the phone.
Hirdetés
Basic functions
There are no surprises at the phonebook. It wants to immediately copy contacts from the SIM card, somehow this is a mania of all Sony Ericsson phones. Previously I’d liked to argue with this (mostly because I insert the SIM in a new handset every two days), but since a short time ago Sony Ericsson’s contact list has an option of back-synching (nice word) new contacts with the card. The contact list is tabbed, just as usual for the manufacturer, it’s easy to handle, the capacity is 1000 entries with a total of 2500 data.
Messaging has barely changed, the keys are not an ideal partner for longer typing, but the situation is not that grim, one just has to get used to it. The opened flip won’t disturb at all, as the ~160 degree can be increased even further to up to 10 degrees. It’s a nice thing that font size can be set in three steps, and it’s also cool that message text can be displayed full-screen. SMS, MMS and email are all supported, the latter handles attachments too.
The calendar has month and week views too, we can have one type of entry, which can have its location, subject, time, alarm and repetition. The calculator, code memory, stopwatch, unit converter and the alarm clock that remembers five time points are all here, along with an RSS reader, which I consider one of the most useful mobile applications lately.
Multimedia
There is a 1 megapixel camera on the back of the phone. Imaging is not the main profile of W350i, this is evident. Portrait viewfinder, few settings are characteristic, there is no flash, no autofocus. Exposure is lightning fast due to these, and the pictures reflect all these: they are acceptable if taken in good conditions, but as soon as lighting conditions change, they become noisy, blurred. The phone can record videos at 176 x 144 pixels, test pictures are displayed right here:
 |  |  |  |  |  |
Of course music is the primary weapon of W350i, and it’s darn good in this. The Walkman software has nothing new, it knows everything we’d need. There is MegaBass, it displays album covers, supports playlists and it can sort tracks by ID3 tags. Sound quality can be exceptional, based on the headset used (the default one ain’t bad, but it’s not as good as HPM-70), and it’s medium on the speaker.
In terms of usability it’s perfect, as we can access music player controls even when the phone is closed, we can set volume, and if there hadn’t been running some music in the background before, then we can resole this with the press of the lateral key, without opening the phone.
It’s very nice that W350i has RDS FM radio, this requires a headset to be used. If we’re at the radio, we have to mention the manufacturer’s TrackID service, present in their newer phones, which can determine the artist and title of the track currently played (in case of an internet connection) after a small sample has been taken. There are two “classics” in the list of games, none of these are the ones that shake the foundations of the world’s mobile gaming industry.
Data transfer, battery
There is no 3G, but W350i is not the kind of handset of which users would expect such things. GPRS and EDGE are supported, and although the built-in browser can display HTML pages, the display is small, the 176 x 220 pixels resolution is no perfect partner for surfing the web.
USB and Bluetooth are both present at version 2.0, the latter being of course capable of stereo sound transfer. I think that although the latest Walkman is W200i, still the subject of our current review is the one that reaches the level required from such a Sony Ericsson handset at a favorable price. The USB cable is included, there is Bluetooth and although the memory card is only 512 MB large, this is enough for an entry-level model.
The battery also surprised me, it kept the phone online for three days. Of course music playback reduces uptime quite a lot, but this is true for all musical devices. We weren’t happy, however, about the fact that changing the M2 card requires the back cover to be taken off (thankfully we don’t have to take out the battery), it would have been better to find a place for its slot somewhere on the phone’s sides.
Summary. Currently the phone costs a bit too much. As soon as it will be included in network operators’ offers, it will be a huge success, that’s sure. Good design, good usability, the Walkman-feeling is all right, only the price has to be decreased. Until then it gets this award, and depending on the price, this might be modified to Highly recommended in the future.
 |
| Sony Ericsson W350i |
Bog
Translated by Szaszati
Sony Ericsson W350i has been provided by XXL GSM. The phone can be purchased at:
Budapest VI. Jókai tér 6.
Budapest VI. Teréz körút 18.
On-line at www.xxlgsm.hu.
Specifications
| Sony Ericsson W350i | ||
 | General | |
| Technology | GSM | |
| Size | 104 x 43 x 10.5 mm | |
| Weight | 80 grams | |
| Available colors | Electric black, Ice blue, Hypnotic black, Graphic white | |
| Display | ||
| Display diagonal | 1.9” | |
| Display resolution | 176 x 220 pixels | |
| Display type | TFT | |
| Number of colors | 262 thousand | |
| Memory | ||
| Phonebook capacity | 1000 entries | |
| SMS memory / max. MMS size | n.a. / 300 KB | |
| Internal memory | 14 MB | |
| Memory expandability | M2 (512MB card included) | |
| Data transfer | ||
| Frequency bands | 900/1800/1900 MHz | |
| GPRS / EDGE | Class 10 (4+1/3+2) / Class 10 (236.8 kbps) | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | none / none | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | none / 2.0 (A2DP too) | |
| WiFi | none | |
| USB | 2.0 | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | none / present | |
| GPS receiver | none | |
| Basic functions | ||
| Profiles | present | |
| Vibra function | present | |
| Built-in handsfree | present | |
| Voice dialing / voice commands | none / none | |
| Sound recorder | present | |
| Alarm clock | present, also when turned off | |
| Predictive text entry | T9 | |
| Software | ||
| Platform | A200 | |
| WAP / HTML browser | 2.0 / present | |
| E-mail client | present (POP3, IMAP4, authenticated) | |
| Java | present, MIDP 2.0 | |
| Games | 2 | |
| Currency converter | present | |
| Extra software | TrackID | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | 1 megapixels, fixed focus | |
| Secondary camera | none | |
| Video recording | present (max. 174 x 144 pixels) | |
| Music player | present, can run in background | |
| Equalizer | present | |
| FM radio | present - RDS | |
| Battery | ||
| Main battery | 780 mAh Li-Pol | |
| Standby time | 300 hours | |
| Talk time | 7 hours | |
| Other | ||
| USB cable and stereo headset included in package | ||
