Are You Like Its ..? Sony Ericsson's W350 Walkman reviewed

It's the return of the flip phone – or at least that's what Sony Ericsson wants you to think. The Sony Ericsson W350 is an entry-level music handset, targeted at the youth market, that aims to bring a little retro style to the budget conscious handset segment. The amusing part is that most of the W350s target market would have never had the chance to use a flip phone, and it's functional benefit in this instance is questionable. None the less, the W350 is certainly unique.

Physical Aspects

As previously mentioned, the Sony Ericsson W350 is an old-style flip phone – with a plastic cover over the keypad that opens toward the bottom of the phone, unlike clamshell devices where the cover opens toward the top and protects both the keypad and screen. Sony Ericsson has used this design to allow for music control keys to always be available on the outside of the flip, though this negates the use of the flip as a type of key lock. Instead, a small key lock switch is placed on the top of the device. This lock switch only applies to the external keys, so if you open the flip, the main keypad is enabled.

Core Functions

Calling on the Sony Ericsson W350 was a pleasant experience. Incoming sound quality was far better than most devices in its class, with satisfying clarity levels. Volume is a little lacking for really noisy areas, but for the majority of the time I was very impressed with the little device. Outgoing call quality was also impressive, and the handset was quite good at filtering background noise of modest levels. Reception was quite strong, with the handset handling buildings and areas with traditionally poor reception with aplomb.

While the Sony Ericsson W350 does sport speakerphone functionality, it is basically useless for most situations. The external speaker is only moderately powerful, good enough for quiet environments, but is unfortunately positioned flush with the phone's body, and therefore is significantly muffled when the device is placed on a desk or other flat surface.

Battery life was somewhat of a disappointment with the W350, possibly because of the use of a 900mAh battery to keep with the W350's thin form factor. With average usage, the Sony Ericsson W350 could only manage 2-3 days on a charge, which is a little low for a simple feature phone. Making a lot of calls brought this down to 1-2 days.

The W350 includes the same Contacts application as other recent devices in the manufacturer's arsenal, which is as feature complete as they come for feature phones. The device is able to store up to 1000 contacts, and each contact can contain 7 different phone numbers, a web address, an email address, multiple physical addresses, a birthday, and can have a note attached. Contacts can also be assigned custom ringtones and pictures, and can be grouped to ease caller identification or to send group SMS messages. Editing is done in a nice tabbed interface, and the user can easily search though contacts - though only by first name.

The device sports 7 customizable ring profiles. Each profile can be customized with a ringtone, message alert tone, and other tone types, as well as be programmed to only accept calls from specified people while active. Switching profiles must be done quite deep in the settings menu, which is a bit of a pain, though, as on most phones, the silent mode is available by holding down the pound key on the keypad.

Messaging support is well implemented on the Sony Ericsson W350, and includes support for SMS/MMS messages and POP/IMAP/SMTP email. The screen doesn't provide the viewable area needed to be able to efficiently deal with email, but in a pinch the ability can be useful. SMS messaging is as expected, with SMS and MMS messages getting their own inbox separate from any configured email accounts. MMS messaging is basic, but support for things like slide timing and adding sounds and pictures is there.

On the connectivity front, the W350 supports GSM 850/1900/1800MHz and EDGE data connectivity. While there is no 3G data support, there really is not much reason why it would be required. Bluetooth 2.0 support is included for short-range connections, with the A2DP stereo headset profile available for wireless music listening.

The flip, which does make the device unique in the current market, also proves to be the handset's first big issue. The flip, even with its built-in music controls, is extraordinarily thin and flimsy. When closed, the flip wobbles over the face of the phone somewhat, and when open it just hangs there feeling very unstable. When knocked, the flip comes easily off it's hinge, which thankfully doesn't harm the device, but overall it provides more of an annoyance than anything else and really brings the overall feel of the phone down to a cheaper level. Whether you want it to or not, closing the flip activates the Walkman music player, meaning you cannot see the phone's standby screen when the flip it closed.

Ignoring the flip for a moment, the rest of the Sony Ericsson W350 feels quite nice in the hand. The battery cover on the rear of the device is a little lose, but overall the soft touch finish and basic bar design feel good. Our W350 had the black/orange color scheme, but the handset also comes in a more subtle white/silver design as well as an even louder black/purple look.

With the exception of the d-pad, the phone's keypad has large and easy to press buttons with a very blocky, rectangular design. The d-pad, on the other hand, has an elongated shape that made it hard for us to press the down direction without hitting the center select key. This select key is also depressed into the d-pad slightly, making it even harder to press on its own without using the tip of your finger. The d-pad also sits hard up against the ridge of the screen on top, making it hard to press the up direction.

The rest of the phone's body is very simple, with a Walkman shortcut key and charging port on the left edge, and volume control keys on the right.

The Sony Ericsson W350 packs a 176x200 pixel TFT display that is capable of showing 262k colors. While the display is small, it is quite bright and readable, even in direct sunlight. People used to larger displays will be disappointed with the W350, but it satisfies it's goal quite well – for standard text messaging and calls, it does the job well, but don't expect to be watching videos (due to significant ghosting) or viewing photos for extended periods of time.

Multimedia / Applications

Surprisingly, the Sony Ericsson W350 Walkman sports just a 1.3MP camera, while most handsets include at least a 2.0MP camera these days. For such a low-resolution camera, the device manages to take perfectly adequate photos. The fixed-focus lens is tooled toward portrait-distance photography and a fair amount of color bleed occurs in certain situations, but for a camera that is more an after thought than anything else, we were relatively impressed with the results. Saturation in certain photos was quite impressive, though this can at times move into the realm of over saturation.

The obvious major limitation on web browsing on the W350 is the screen size and resolution. While the built in NetFront web browser does an admirable job of compressing pages down to fit in the available screen real estate, you still can't expect to view sites as they are rendered on the desktop or on more higher-end devices. Nevertheless, viewing pages optimized for the small screen like the Facebook mobile website is quite pleasant.

The Sony Ericsson W350 is a music handset, and to bring this aim to fruition the manufacturer has included the Walkman 2.0 music player. The Walkman player brings somewhat of an iPod like experience to the device, organizing music by artist, album, or playlist. Playlists can be easily created right on the phone, and music can be synchronized through either Sony Ericsson's desktop application (Windows only) or by simply dragging and dropping music to the Memory Stick Micro card. A 512MB Memory Stick is included in the box with the device, with cards as large as 2GB supported. As mentioned earlier in the review, a subset of the music controls are available on the outside of the flip, including play/pause, skip and rewind track, and browsing the current play queue.

The W350 does not include a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, but instead packs Sony Ericsson's standard adapter in the box. While this is a little on the annoying side, the adapter does include a microphone and answer button, turning any pair of headphones into a wired handsfree. This is a good thing too, as the bundled headphones are terrible. Even with 3rd party headphones, music is always a little on the flat side with little bass, but on the plus side plenty of volume is on tap.

Basic personal information management functionality is included, though the basic Calendar application won't really satisfy those used to more advanced smartphones. The Calendar application allows simple appointments to be created and then listed shown in day, week, or month views, with each appointment getting a duration, reminder, location, and description. A very basic task list application is also included, as is a memo and code memo application.

Other utility applications include a calculator, stopwatch, timer, converter, and something called Music Mate 2, which aids in tuning various instruments. On the entertainment front, three games come pre-installed – QuadraPop, Extreme Air Snowboarding, and Guitar Rock Tour. Also bundled are TrackID for identifying currently playing music, and MusicDJ for putting together simple polyphonic tunes that you can then use as ringtones.