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. 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.
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.