Sony Ericsson - W300i Cell Phone Review

The Sony Ericsson W300i offers good call quality, a top-notch MP3 player, and a generous set of features. From the outside it's quite attractive. The phone is relatively compact at 3.5 by 1.8 by 1.0 inches, so it's easily placed in most pockets. It's also quite light for its size at 3.3 ounces, but the trade-off is that the overall construction feels somewhat flimsy.

In the center of the front flap is the postage stamp-size external display. Though monochrome, it's quite bright and displays the usual information, including the date, time, battery life, signal strength, and caller ID (where available). You can't change the backlighting time, but a quick flick of the volume rocker will activate the display for inspection. Above the screen is the VGA camera lens and a self-portrait mirror (but no flash), while the speaker is on the top of the rear face. The aforementioned volume control is on the left spine along with a control for activating the music player and playing and pausing music. The infrared port is on the right spine, while the connection port for the charger, the wired headset, and the USB cable is on the bottom of the handset. One design flaw of the new Walkman phone connection port is that you can't connect two cables at once.

Inside the phone you'll find the 1.75-inch (128x160) internal display. Sony Ericsson always does a good job with its displays, and the W300i is no exception. Bright and vivid, it displays all 262,144 colors beautifully and is perfect for viewing photos and videos, playing games, and scrolling through the user-friendly menus. You can change the brightness but not the font size or backlighting time.

The Sony Ericsson W300i suffers from poorly designed controls and keypad buttons and low-grade picture quality, and it had a tendency to freeze on occasions. Also, the battery discharges really fast.