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"Awesome looks and features, great quality, but earbuds suck. A great choice in this price range." on by wordatme
Pros: Looks; sony walkman; bluetooth; battery; interface; fast cpu; picture/video; music/photo/video mixing; voice recorder
Cons: Poor earbud design; fish scale keys; connection prongs
Summary: This phone looks and feels so nice, you'll hate yourself the first time you drop it. But once you do, it will sill work (I can attest to this). The design is very sturdy, with a very large hindge, and the battery cover will never fly off.
The fish scale key design will throw you off once and a while, so if you're a big texter, don't bother, especially if you have fat fingers. Worst are the mp3 and power buttons, which are extremely and needlessly small.
The screen is a tad smaller than others in this $ range, but does look sharper because of this.
The external screen is cheap, but looks nice anyway and can be read under heavy sunlight. However you have to press a side button first, which can be annoying, especially if you just want to change songs. But i guess the extra battery life is worth the extra button press.
Speaking of the battery, it's the best of it's competition. I did alot of research when shopping and the battery was this phone's biggest plus. Requires a 2 hour charge every two to three days under heavy usage. This was a great sale incentive for me because a dead battery makes for a very useless phone/mp3 player.
Yes the camera is only a 0.3 megapixel, but that's why you get a nice mp3 phone like this for so cheap. It's still fun to use due to the large memory capicity and included computer transfer cable. And it comes with all the features of the expensive cameras. Pics are 640x480, and videos are fun to shoot. The phone comes with MusicDJ, PhotoDJ, and VideoDJ. All are easy and fun to use, especially VideoDJ.
The phone has a whopping 22 megs of memory, and M2 card slot for an included 512 megs. You can fill the card with music and still have lots of room on the phone for pics and vids.
The feature full mp3 player works and sounds great, and comes with a 1 foot cord with a handsfree answer button and a headphone jack. But I had to buy some new buds because the included ones would not fit in my ear properly. The design of them requires that you jam them into your ear cannal, because they only sounded good when I got them 'air tight' in my ear (but then they sounded phenomenal). Otherwise they just sit in your lobe and sound crappy and extremely weak. Who jams earbuds into their ear cannals? No thank you. Obviously for me, the earbuds were the biggest draw back.
The phone's interface is slick and very fast. It includes several themes, and I got pleanty more for free from sony ericsson's wireless website. (Make sure your carrier doesn't rape you for downloading them)
No problems with the phone's signal, but I imagine the internal anttenna might be fussy out in the boonies. Depends on your carrier I think.
The phone has one connection for the USB, charger, and headphone cables, which is why I question the little plastic prongs on each that secure the cables in. They're designed to pop out incase they are bent the wrong way, but I'm not sure they will last the couple of years I want them to. I will just have to be careful and see.
A word on this phones competition, all of which cost the same and have identical features(except the T609 which sports a 1.3 megapixel camera):
-Samsung T609: smaller screen, poor battery, propietary headphones.
-Motorolla V361: poor design, terrible performance reviews, propietary headphones, its a motorolla.
-LG CE500: No handsfree capabilities, no video
It was a tough choice between the Sony and the LG (I like the LG's built in headphone jack), but ultimately the W300i is by far the better looking phone. Thanks for reading. -
"Don't pass it up" on by golfmade
Pros: Great functionality, great sound, small but not delicate
Cons: Camera could be better, power button can be hard to press
Summary: I've been living in Taiwan for a few months now and one of the first things I realized was just how many cell phones you can pick from, especially compared to what you can get in the USA.
After doing my homework and looking at several different phones, I decided to get the W300i (White version).
Pros:
To me at least there are more than enough features this phone has. Bluetooth, IR, USB 2.0 (and yes the cables are included).
One of the best features of the phone is the sound. While of course I won't be using this as my main MP3 player, it is nice to have a cell phone that plays songs and sounds great.
At first the keys looked a bit funky to me, but after seeing it in person and trying it out it's quite easy to use. The keypad may look strange but the keys are responsive (however I don't SMS so I'm not sure if they're good for that or not).
I like the fact that the sides aren't cluttered with keys, in fact there are only 3 keys total on the sides, all 3 are on the top left corner of the phone. They give you access to control the songs as well as other features of the phone.
The design is overall very well done in my opinion. The clamshell is very easy to open with one hand and the screen is big enough for my needs. The outer screen may bug some since it's only black/orange, but for me it's good enough.
Cons:
The power button is depressed, so it can be a bit tough to press if your finger isn't perfectly over it.
The camera could be better, but then again that would drive up the price of the unit. I already have a nice digital camera so I didn't worry that this camera doesn't have a top notch camera.
Conclusion:
This is a great phone in my opinion. There were several other phones, including Sony Ericsson, that I was looking at but they were way too expensive. I bought this in Taiwan for around US$140, so for all the features it has and the quality I think thats well worth the price. -
"Great cell phone for the money" on by methos1979
Pros: Decent clarity/reception, good mp3 player, stylish
Cons: Poor button design, marginal camera
Summary: I bought this camera a week ago as an upgrade to my old phone. I use Unicell as my carrier. I did some research on here after seeing what Unicell was offering for phones and went with the W300i Walkman.
CNET's editors' review was pretty much right on. The phone is a nice offering into the 'entry-level' mp3 lineup. It's small and pretty good looking from the outside. I like flip phones. I wasn't crazy about the black/silver/orange combo but it still looks pretty good. Replace the orange with something like red or blue and I'd like that a little better. The color scheme seems to say 'Halloween' to me. The Harley people will likely love it!
The outside display is pretty good. Monochrome orange (maybe that's why they went with orange in the color scheme?) that shows up very well even in sunlight. A color screen for viewing pictures of who's calling on the other other end before you answer it would have been nicer but to cut costs you have to make sacrifices somewhere and they chose this. Besides, the mp3 player makes caller id much easier - more on that later.
The speaker on the back top is nice and loud for speakerphone calls and playing ring tones/mp3s. Reception has been very good and call clarity very good also. The sound from the earpiece seems a little 'tinny' but I can hear everything just fine.
The unit feels a little too light and 'plastic-y' but it also feels and seems to be solidly made, not cheap. The battery cover is on pretty tight and the memory card slot can be accessed without removing the battery, so that was good. My phone came with a 256 meg card.
Inside the phone looks nice. Silver with a pretty big display with good resolution and colors. Probably the biggest negative thing about this phone is the button design. You've seen the reviews and the pictures. I can see what they were going for but they missed the mark. The buttons certainly look stylish or cool but I think they would have been better served with going with a more standardized set up. (I am really used to dedicated call and end buttons which I guess Sony never uses and really should start to use. But I quickly got used to using the soft-keys for that.) That said, the buttons all work just fine for me. I don't have really any problems operating them, even the number/letter ones and super-tiny Walkman and On/Off buttons. But I think they should rethink this in future models. It just seems to be so much wasted space. Buttons, IMHO, should be a case of function over form.
The menus and software that came bundled all look and work very well. I had no problems installing anything and transferring files and pictures was a snap. The camera works well and, as said in the CNET reviews, is marginal at best. But I didn't buy this for the camera. It's fine for fun pictures or contact photos but that's pretty much it.
The mp3 is where this unit shines. It provides exactly what I hoped for - a cell phone that I could listen to music on and not miss phone calls. 256 meg of space is only about 50 songs so I will be upgrading to the largest card I can find, which seems to be a 1 gig right now. 2 gig would be better.
The only issue I'm having with the player right now is that there are a couple of Sony mp3 files that came with the phone that connot be deleted. When I want to just play all my songs randomly those eventually come on and are annoying. I haven't gone in to the file manager yet to see if I can move things around to prevent this.
Another pleasant surprise for me was the included headphones. I know a couple people here panned them but I wasn't worried because I generally hate ear bud headphones and have several sets of over the ear headphones I prefer. But I tried the Sony earbud headphones and found them quite comfortable. I love that I can put them in, start the mp3 player in my car (or work, or wherever) and take calls without having to pull the phone out of my pocket because the phones have a mic and button on them to take calls with. You can also use your own headphones and still have this capability as the mic/button unit stays with the phone - your phones plug into that.
I was able to assign different mp3 songs as different people's ringtones so I can tell who is calling by that, a neat feature to me. In fact, I LOVE this feature. If I had to pick one thing I love about this phone it would be that when it rings I know who it is by the song being played. And it's great not to have to pay for ringtones - assuming you already have them on your computer.
This phone pretty much does what I hoped it would do. The drawbacks, the buttons and camera quality, were not enough of an issue to make me return it.
If you're looking for a nice looking, small, flip-type phone, with a camera, but mostly mp3 playing capabilities then this is a good choice for you. It has bluetooth and a bunch of other features that I will likely never use, or not use too much, but are nice to have.
Hope you found this actual user review helpful. I put more stock in what I read from actual users than the professional reviews but I must say that CNET really nailed this one.Updated
A month later and I still love this phone. Any problems I thought I was having turned out to just be me. Love the voice dailing. One word of caution: If you use the Magic Word function, make sure it's a unique word!!! Otherwise your phone will call people you don't intend to, when you are unaware!!!! Just ordered a 1 gig card. I just use Windows Explorer drag and drop instead of the included software. Much easier. And as for the buttons, I have not problem with them. I would upgrade my rating to a 9 easily. -
"A Very Neat Phone" on by DizzyPuppy
Pros: Excellent sound, great calling capabilities, fantastic design, very good UI and battery life, but most of all, EXTREMELY FUN!
Cons: VGA camera, keypad may be hard to use for those with large fingers
Summary: This baby rocks!
The sound of the Walkman is excellent, the call quality is great, but above all, this thing is FUN!
My last four phones were smartphones (Treo 270, DE P800, P900 and P910), but they were actually pretty boring compared to this one. Now I can carry only one small piece of material instead of hanging a brick and an iPod on my belt! As for the camera, I always have a very small one on me anyway.
This is a neat phone, it's extremely well-designed and it does everything it's supposed to do well, except for the camera part. But then you can use that to take artsy pics!
People with large fingers: Do try the keypad to see if it's to your taste before you buy.Updated
I'd like to take back something I wrote earlier on: I had looked at the photos taken by the Z530 and thought the W300's pictures would be the same. I was wrong! The W300 pics are actually very decent, they're just small. I'm not sure why the test photo on Cnet's review is so bad.
Frankly, I don't need any larger-sized photos from this phone either, I usually have a good camera with me anyway. So I'm really happy to have found this out.
This phone is great! Actually, it's one of the best phones I've had since the Sony CMD Z5 and the Treo 270.Updated
I'd like to take back something I wrote earlier on: I had looked at the photos taken by the Z530 and thought the W300's pictures would be the same. I was wrong! The W300 pics are actually very decent, they're just small. I'm not sure why the test photo on Cnet's review is so bad.
Frankly, I don't need any larger-sized photos from this phone either, I usually have a good camera with me anyway. So I'm really happy to have found this out.
This phone is great! Actually, it's one of the best phones I've had since the Sony CMD Z5 and the Treo 270.Updated
Alright folks, after having used this phone for 3 months now, these are the observations I can make:
- This is a fantastic phone! There's nothing as good for this price. It has replaced my iPod, the sound is actually better than my iPod due to the earphones - it's just that it doesn't hold as many songs, even with the 1GB card.
- The call quality is excellent, nothing to say there.
- Entertainment-wise, it tops all the phones I've had so far.
- The camera is VGA, but it's not that bad. It does what it's supposed to do.
- The looks are great, though I could have done without the orange keypad at my age.
- The battery is fabulous. You charge it for 2 and 1/2 hours and it keeps on going for 5-7 days, no matter how you use it, or whether you use it in the cold or not.
- The only (and really the one and only) nag I've had with it is the fact that sometimes I can't see the letters on the keypad clearly in the dark. But then I need glasses.
- I would have liked to have tried A2DP on it, but the current earphones well do the job, plus bluetooth consumes a lot of battery power.
In short, you won't be able to find a better phone at this price. It's a great little marvel. And I'm not exagerating. My wife constantly wants one too, and she has an LG Chocolate. If I had to consider another phone, I'd consider the z710, which has A2DP and a 2MP camera (with blue keypad!), but then I'm not sure about the quality of the sound on that one.
Cheers. -
"Beautiful phone with great design and quality throughout." on by n1020m
Pros: Crystal clear calls, long battery life & good volume,
Cons: Slippery little devil and Bluetooth is not Stereo
Summary: After charging this little beauty and trying it out for the first time, make a trip to Wal*Mart! Go to the electronics department where they have the cellphone cases hanging on plastic cards. Pick one out that fits your phone and take it home. This little phone is a real beauty from just about all aspects including design and fabrication. However, all that high impact plastic and shine makes it feel a little like you are trying to hold on to a wet bar of soap in the shower. So, sooner or later, it is going to take a dive on the street or sidewalk which could leave some scars. Thus, the need for the trip to Wal*Mart. That being said, if it does take a few dives, skips or slides, it is more than up to the task! Solid, sturdy and just about bullet proof construction makes it one of the few phones that actually has a chance to make it through a two year service contract and still work like the day it was first taken out of the box. It might not look new in two years, but I'm sure it has a very good chance to still be working like it did when it was new! A retired Engineer I am, I am!
This phone takes a little time to get used to, however! For one thing, it doesn't have the traditional SEND and END keys, we are all used to, for starting and ending calls. It is a menu driven phone and there are two little function keys at the top left and top right of the keyboard. So, after dialing a number, you will see the word “call” above the left function key, so just hit the left function key instead of a SEND button and away you go! Similarly, when talking on one call, and another one comes in, glance at the menu on the display to learn which button to press. Once you get the knack of it, it is a breeze! Just make sure you have your bifocals on, the first few times you use this phone, so you can see what to do. Without your glasses, you may be overheard saying some bad words while you are trying to figure out what operation should come next, so whisper, don't shout! The learning curve is not very steep and is easily mastered, so don't worry about such a minor hurdle!
When I went shopping for this phone I was forced to select from a very short list. Retired now and having spent several hundred hours flying a single engine airplane where cabin noise levels could probably sterilize mice and also having been involved in competition shooting for a number of years have made these old ears take on a pretty good handicap. So, for starters, I needed something that had good volume at the ear piece. In addition, I needed something that would give me a minimum of five(5) hours of actual talk time and a long standby time. If I leave the phone on and toss it in the glove box for a week, I still want for it to be capable of squeezing out another 20 minutes of emergency phone calls. This little phone wins on both of these battle fronts! I use it with the volume cranked all the way up and it is just fine for me. However, when I hand it to my wife, so she can talk to the grandchildren, well, it's kind of like that commercial for that personal listing device on TV, “Do you really have to have this thing so loud”! You get the picture! The volume is just fine, for me, the half deaf one and should be good enough for just about everyone else too.
I also like to listen to music, so the first thing I did was order a 1 Gig Micro M2 Sony Memory Stick. 1 Gig is the maximum this phone will take, but for me, that is just fine! Then I went to the Sony Ericsson site and downloaded their software package, for free, which allows your computer to transfer music, among other things, to and from your phone. I transferred 13 of my favorite CDs onto the 1 Gig memory stick, and I would estimate that it will probably hold about 10 or 11 more CD s just like it. That should be enough for me on my trips to see the kids and grandchildren. Oh, by the way, you can also transfer photos to and from your phone over the USB port or the infrared (IrDA) port. This makes it easy to setup our Caller ID files with pictures you have already taken. My last phone/carrier made you send everything back and forth over their network to squeeze every last drop of revenue they could out of you. I am very pleased with the Walkman capability.
I read one review that dinged the ear buds for not fitting properly. That person must have had some weird shaped ear canals, as I found that they fit quite nicely and were very comfortable. Besides, Sony Ericsson supplies three(3) sets of ear bud cover tips, small, medium, and large, which should provide a good fit to just about anyone! I listen to the Walkman at night, while in bed, and have no difficulty lying with one ear against the pillow with no discomfort whatsoever. The wires to the ear buds have a short connection to the left ear and a long connection to the right ear. This allows you to route the longer one behind your neck to the right ear and keep the wires out of your way. It also helps when putting them on in the dark.
Bluetooth capability is unsurpassed, but is not stereo! I suspect it supports Bluetooth Version 2.0 because I paired it to a Motorola H700 headset and all functions work as stated and all have been tested. The H700 is a 2.0 device, so I am assuming the W300i Walkman has 2.0 capability also. However, the documentation does not specify what level of Bluetooth is supported. But then, the Motorola H700 is backwards compatible to earlier versions, so who knows! I just know that all the functions and capabilities specified for the H700 work as stated, included voice dialing. The W300i Walkman phone paired with the H700 in about 10 seconds and I have been using it pretty much constantly since setup was complete. One reason for its constant use is that the ear piece volume from the H700 is even better than that from the W300i Walkman, so this half deaf person is in seventh heaven. I can hear again! Yea!
The call quality is phenomenal, period! I'm sure that this has a lot to do with the GSM network as opposed to my old carrier which used a CDMA network. Everyone I have called has reported crystal clear and loud voice quality, with no interference, and the same is true at my end of the conversation. The battery provides a good solid five(5) hours plus, of talk time, using Bluetooth most of the time and still allows time to listen to music. For the way I use a phone, I really can't complain about any of its functionality, only the slippery feel. But then, one should be able to overlook that! After all, it provides an excuse to make an extra trip to Wal*Mart and, in addition, it is a great looking phone and just about everyone wants to look it over and try it out. You will not be disappointed!
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