Introduction
We won’t be talking about great innovations. No new shapes, no fantastic developments. We will be talking about a network-independent phone, which costs about 95-120 €. This is where the pricing of low-end phones ends; Z320i just fits the category and as time passes it will fit even more.
For mobile-geeks like us it is not necessary a great experience testing low-end phones. They miss functions (email, Bluetooth, 3G) we got used to and keep on using every day. Basically that is the reason we have multiple SIM cards: a less known one gets popped in this handset and the card having my public phone number remains in some more advanced device.
The Z320i was a bit different though. I knew its price when XXL GSM offered it for testing. In spite of not having the features expected by me, I still put my card in it; the little clamshell is a great companion for everyday use. Particularly for such a price. It was obvious earlier that the low-end segment is going to widen (just like the mini category at cars, that one has been separated too: there is now supermini (Toyota Aygo) and mid-mini, like the new Corsa, which is about the same size as the Astra was two generations before).
Something similar is happening now. The Motorola F3, the Nokia 1112 and the LG KG130 are all very low-end phones. The segment above them has started gaining as much knowledge that is enough to make their use comfortable. The Nokia 3500 and the Samsung E200 are representatives of this category. And now Sony Ericsson has also joined, I have the Z320i in my hands.
Hirdetés
Exterior
Should I send a red or a blue one? Blue – I answered to the question asked by XXL and so it happened. I thought that this might be a more distinguished color and maybe it’s better for taking pictures of it. The small, square-shaped box, typical of the manufacturer, has arrived and I took the phone out of it. There aren’t many things in the box, besides the phone I found only a charger. Cost-reduction, I might say, although a headset could have made it to the package.
Neither me, nor others were overly excited about the shape of the handset. People usually got upset when they observed that upon opening the phone, its upper part gets below the lower one. As for me, I got used to this strange exterior after a few days, particularly because the use of materials and the functioning of the cover are quite all right, although when in closed state it can be moved a few millimeters horizontally.
The blue handset has a horizontal black stripe on its front; this is separated from the rest of the cover by a chromed line. One would expect an external display and he gets something like that, but not exactly. Under the black part four small drawings, using a dot-matrix-like display, show the incoming/missed calls, messages and the silent mode. This is a very basic solution, but it sure is a real energy-saver.
The external speaker and the camera are situated over this panel, the latter one rises a bit over the cover, just like in the case of Z610i. On the left side of the Z320i is the manufacturers data connector, the volume control buttons are on the right side, just like the – tadaam! – infrared port. Oh my God, we haven’t seen such a thing for a long time and this has as a result the lack of Bluetooth support.
Black is the dominant color in opened state, only the round-shaped navigational button has a metallic shade. The size and layout of the keypad is good, the backlight is white, strong one. The pressure point is surprisingly okay, I could write messages really fast.
Display, basic functions
Well, the situation is, that we have finally overstepped the era of 128x128 pixels large displays. The Z320i has a 128x160 pixels resolution display, which – being a TFT screen – provides a much cooler picture, one can easily together with it. Only Samsung E200 knows better than this in this category, but that is more expensive. (The fact that a resolution of 128x128 pixels is shown on all official website is more than pathetic).
The menu system has no surprises: nine icons, the good old Sony Ericsson graphics, already known logic, usual functions and a few themes. These don’t change the icons, only the color scheme. It’s hard to get lost in it, the keypad of the Z320i still has the “back” key, handling cannot give anyone a hard time.
The phonebook capable of storing 1000 contacts counts as good in this category. We get the usual tabbed scheme; there are no extras in it. It is advisable to turn off the feature of answering calls by opening the cover, as the external screen does not show us who is calling. There’s no devilry in message handling either: there is no email client, we have SMS and MMS support, the latter can have a maximum size of 300 KB.
Multimedia and organizer
We shouldn’t expect much in terms of music either. Z320i’s arsenal of music depletes in ringtones, there is neither a music player, nor enough memory for this, as expandability is not present on the list of features. The internal memory’s size is 7 megabytes, about 4 of which is free, the rest is taken up by factory applications, pictures and sounds.
The camera, however, is a 1.3 megapixel one, which is an evolution compared to the VGA cameras that were typical until now. It doesn’t know anything extra, it has a bit of customizability (effects, picture size and quality), but basically it just does what it has to do, namely we can take pictures with it. Obviously we shouldn’t count on exceptional quality pictures, at such a price it would be a mistake to expect something much better.
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Amongst organizer functions there is a calendar capable of showing month and week views. We can take only one type of note, but the possibility of making it repetitive is given. The alarm clock also stores only one time point, which can repeat, but then it will ring every day, as there is no chance for any further fine-tuning. Snooze time is 9 minutes, just as usual. For my despair code memory is missing, but there is a stopwatch, a countdown timer, memo and a calculator.
There is only one kind of game, namely Johnny Crash Does Texas, which can be familiar from other Sony Ericsson models. In this game we control a psychotic cowboy who has the mania of getting himself launched from a cannon and whilst in mid-air he “interacts” with different objects. The experience is made complete by the white loading text on black background which tells us not to try these “tricks” in real life. Good thing they warned me, as I just have a cannon here…
Data transfer, battery
GPRS is the only mobile network standard the small Sony Ericsson is willing to use. This is basically enough only for WAP, thus browsing websites is quite out of discussion, the software can interpret only xHTML pages at most. The situation is not much better at local level either, infra is pretty much insufficient (retro-feeling), as Bluetooth can be found in every other gadget. However I would have expected from Sony Ericsson not to spare this particular feature, mostly because they were the first to release the first Bluetooth phone. I think many would have been willing to pay a bit more if this would have been the price.
The battery, however, has manfully stood its ground. There is a 900 mAh capacity Lithium-Polymer battery under the hood and with this the device can operate for 3-4 days without charging. Of course this is no surprise in the case of clamshell phones practically lacking an external display.
Conclusion. In my opinion this is appropriate for such a price. The lack of Bluetooth is something that hurts me, but the memory expandability-music player pair would possibly have raised the budget too much, so I won’t be crying about that. It can be recommended for those who don’t need wireless data transfer but are looking for a fair phone at a small price and can get used to the little bit eerie design. As for us, we give it the award:
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| Sony Ericsson Z320i |
Bog
Translated by Szaszati
We have received the Sony Ericsson Z320i from XXL GSM..
The handset can be bought at:
Budapest VI. Jókai tér 6.
Budapest VI. Teréz körút 18.
On-line at www.xxlgsm.hu.
Specifications
| Sony Ericsson Z320i | ||
 | General | |
| Technology | GSM | |
| Size | 87 x 47 x 20 mm | |
| Weight | 90 grams | |
| Colors | blue, red | |
| Display | ||
| Display diagonal | 1.8” | |
| Display resolution | 176 x 220 pixels | |
| Display type | TFT | |
| Number of colors | 65.000 | |
| Memory | ||
| Phonebook capacity | 1000 entries | |
| SMS memory / max. MMS size | 200 / 300KB | |
| Internal memory | 7 MB | |
| Memory expandability | none | |
| Data transfer | ||
| Frequency bands | 900/1800/1900 MHz | |
| GPRS / EDGE | Class 10 (4+1/3+2) / none | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | none / none | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | present / none | |
| WiFi | none | |
| USB | none | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | none / none | |
| GPS receiver | none | |
| Basic functions | ||
| Profiles | none | |
| Vibra function | present | |
| Built-in handsfree | present | |
| Voice calling / voice commands | none / none | |
| Sound recorder | none | |
| Alarm clock | present, also when turned off | |
| Predictive text entry | T9 | |
| Software | ||
| Platform | SE | |
| WAP / HTML browser | present / none | |
| E-mail client | none | |
| Java | present, MIDP 2.0 | |
| Games | 1 | |
| Currency converter | none | |
| Extra software | none | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | 1.3 megapixels, fixed focus | |
| Secondary camera | none | |
| Video recording | 128x96 pixels | |
| Music player | none | |
| Equalizer | none | |
| FM-radio | none | |
| Online time | ||
| Main battery | 900 mAh Li-Ion | |
| Standby time | 300 hours | |
| Talk time | 420 minutes | |
| Other | ||
| external display with icons | ||
