| Sony Ericsson W300i |
 |
The Sony Ericsson W300i is a low-end quad-band GSM phone. It sports lots
of features that make it seem higher-end than it really is, such as a
camera, MP3 player, Bluetooth, removable memory stick, voice activation,
and speakerphone.
Last Updated: 23-Nov-2006 |
Before reading this review, please read
Some Thoughts on Phone Reviewing.
RF Performance
RF Sensitivity: I haven’t tested a Sony Ericsson
GSM phone in quite some time, but previous experiences with their products have
usually been positive experiences when it comes to this aspect of performance. I
therefore expected some really excellent showing by this phone, and to some
degree I wasn’t disappointed.
However, the W300i that I tested couldn’t quite hang on to a signal as long as
my old 1900 MHz Nokia 6310i when tested in the
various Halls of Shame over Square One. The margins were slight, but I’d come to
expect at least a small degree of superiority from phones that sported 850 MHz.
So, the bottom line is that the W300i does have very good RF sensitivity, but it
isn’t quite good enough to move it to the head of the class. However, it
compares favorably with other much-loved low-end GSM models that I’ve tested
over the years.
Over-the-road Performance: This was one area where
I’d never had any preconceived notions about the capabilities of Sony Ericsson
products. Sadly to say however, I was quite disappointed with the manner in
which the W300i handled over-the-road issues such as handoffs. The audio was
disturbed in such a way as to make me feel as through the call was temporarily
falling apart, which was a far cry from the vastly superior performance of the
recently-tested Motorola PEBL.
Recent Nokia models have shown an improvement in this area, even though they
have yet to come out with a design that can match some of the better Motorola
offerings. The W300i harkens back to the earlier days of GSM service here in
Canada when handoff performance of phones was iffy to say least.
Click on this link for a full description of
RF Performance, and how to interpret it.
Audio Performance
Tonal Balance: While I’d have to categorize the
overall tonal balance of the native earpiece as a little tinny, that’s really
quite misleading. I think it would be fair to say that the W300i is on the crisp
side of excellent. What I mean is that the tonal balance is superb, but when
compared to other excellent models the W300i sounds a little crisper and less
bassy. Which kind of excellence you prefer to comes down to personal preference.
What the W300i doesn’t have is a shred of shrillness, an iota of boominess, or a
scintilla of harshness. And that’s a remarkable thing in phones these days.
Sound Reproduction: I wasn’t quite so blown away by
the sound reproduction however, as it wasn’t as clear and distortion-free as the
recently-tested Motorola PEBL. That Motorola phone demonstrated to what degree
modern designs can reproduce audio from a GSM CODEC, and the W300i sadly does
not come close.
However, the W300i is (like the PEBL) wonderfully free of background hiss and
noise. It’s so quiet in the background that even in a totally noise-free room
you have to strain your ears just to hear that the phone is turned on when
there’s no one speaking at the other end. You’d be surprised how few phones can
achieve this lofty goal.
Earpiece Volume: While the W300i doesn’t appear to
support a volume-boosting feature, as we often see now on Nokia and Motorola
models, it has more than enough earpiece volume to be crystal clear, even in a
noisy food court. You’ll rarely ever have to turn the volume up all the way, but
it’s comforting to know that you have that extra headroom in the event that your
caller is extra-faint, or you happen to be in a super-noisy environment.
Outgoing Audio: As usual I recorded tests onto my
voicemail from various noisy and quite locations to see how the audio sounded to
callers. The W300i isn’t the greatest-sounding GSM phone I’ve ever tested, but
it sounds pretty decent and it copes quite well with noisy backgrounds. It
doesn’t have the background-canceling talent of my
Motorola i580, but it does a much better job of suppressing unwanted noise
than my Nokia 6310i.
Speakerphone: I wouldn’t rank this among the best
speakerphones I’ve ever experienced, but the one offered on the W300i is at
least loud enough to be genuinely useful in quiet rooms and moderately noisy
environments. Unfortunately the overall sound quality of the speakerphone is
quite poor and it doesn’t inspire you to use it unless you absolutely have to.
The speaker is on the back of the phone, but because of the bizarre-looking
handle it sports, the speaker is never able to touch the surface on which the
phone has been placed, and so it usually doesn’t make any difference one way or
another.
Click on this link for a full description of
Audio Performance, and how to interpret it.
Support Features
Ringer Volume: This has to be one of the
quietest-ringing phones I’ve ever tested. While it’s great that you can assign
pretty much anything you want as a ringtone, including voice notes you record
yourself, the overall volume of the ringers (even with the ringer volume turned
up to maximum) is laughably faint. Don’t count on hearing this phone ring in a
crowded shopping mall.
Keypad Design: After experiencing the featureless
flat keypad of the Motorola PEBL/RAZR it
was hard to imagine that anyone could conceive of a worse keypad, but kudos to
Sony Ericsson for pulling off the impossible. Clearly the keypad on the W300i
was designed for looks and not for functionality.
While the keys press with good tactile feel, the problem is the ridiculous
overlapped design. I don’t exactly have monster thumbs, but mine are too big to
accurately use the keypad on the W300i without accidentally actuating the key
above. I can only image how much a pest this thing is going to be for men with
even larger thumbs. Perhaps woman (or men) with small thumbs won’t have a
problem with this.
The 4-way cursor key is actually not bad, except the itty-bitty recessed excuse
for a center button. Thankfully the function of that button is almost always
duplicated on the left softkey, which in itself suggests that the engineers at
Sony Ericsson knew full well that the key was too small.
I also wasn’t too pleased with the lack of dedicated TALK and END buttons. These
functions have been relegated to the softkeys, and while it works for the most
part, the subjugating of two of the most important keys on a phone’s keypad is
an inexcusable design flaw that was no doubt done to satisfy the styling
department.
Display: The inner display sports 262,000 colors
(18-bit color depth) with a screen resolution of only 160 x 128 pixels. The
resolution is therefore a bit disappointing, but the display works well, even in
bright light. Use of the available screen real estate is usually quite good,
with a few puzzling exceptions.
For example, when typing in phone number, the font chosen for displaying your
entered keys is too large to fit more than 9 digits. So, since most places in
North America are now on 10-digit dialing, your entered phone numbers ALWAYS
awkwardly wrap the last digit around to a second line.
Aside from this quibble however, I had no real complaints about the inner
display or how it was used.
The outer display is quite impressive with a resolution of 101 x 80 pixels. The
display is only monochrome however, and it’s presented in reverse
(orange-on-black). Sony Ericsson makes good use of this display for incoming
calls and other status information. The font is a bit small however, and so
up-close good eyesight is a must.
Icing on the Cake
Camera: The camera provided with the W300i is just
a VGA model with a resolution of 640 x 480. While it has good color saturation
and reasonably consistent focus across the entire frame, it produces images that
are just too poor to be of much value. If you use the camera solely for taking
Caller ID pictures or wallpaper, it does the job.
MP3 Player: I would guess that associating the Sony
Walkman name with a camera is to give you the impression that it has excellent
music-playing capabilities. While I wouldn’t use the “excellent” superlative, I
will admit that the overall execution of this feature is very good. Sony
Ericsson even provides a 256 MB Memory Stick Micro card with the phone. If you
need more storage, you can buy Memory Sticks up to 1 GB in size.
I wasn’t all that thrilled with the user interface of the MP3 player, perhaps
due to being spoiled by a really first-rate program provided on my Motorola
i580, but there was no denying the excellent sound quality on the supplied
stereo earbuds. Right out of the box the W300i is really to provide you with
hours of quality music.
Conclusions
Like the Motorola PEBL, I must admit that the W300i does many of the aspects I
rate highly in a phone quite well. It has pretty decent audio quality and pretty
decent RF performance, and it has a useable speakerphone and a good display.
Sadly it does so many things wrong too, including a horrific keypad, faint
ringtones, and a camera that’s so bad it barely matters whether the phone has
one or not.
The price is ridiculous if bought outright or on a prepaid plan, but it drops to
$25 if you are willing to go with a 3-year contract. At only $25 the phone’s
overall lack of refinement is quite excusable and it’s good qualities (namely
audio and RF) may well be worth the other annoyances at this price point.
