Sony Ericsson W380i - A Low-cost, Slick-looking Walkman Phone

By Author: Jerry Smith
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In order to meet the interests of young, trend-following music lovers, Sony Ericsson has been introducing some heavy-hitting Walkman music mobiles recently. Then they are trying to release a budget-priced Music phone. So a mid-level Walkman phone comes out, namely Sony Ericsson W380i - a stylish clamshell mobile phone that delivers some attention-grabbing features and an attractive design in an affordable package.

Like many previous Sony Ericsson mobile phones, W380i isn't going to blow you away with an impressive list of features. Actually this is a handset aimed at looking good whilst delivering some fun at the lower end of the market. W380's design is characterized by the single color of the whole device and the sharp edges, which gives it an aggressive look. The handset is available in four sleek colors which include an electric purple, sparkling black, blushing silver and a magnetic grey. The clamshell design is stylish and practical as the phone comes with a second external OLED mono display (128 x 36 pixels) in addition to an easy-touch music controls. You can use the external controls to play, pause or skip their ...
... music. The internal 1.9 inches display can only display 256K colors at 176x220 pixels resolution, which looks less impressive than the QVGA displays of other phones.

Sony Ericsson W380i is quite compact as it measures 16mm in depth, 49mm in width and 92mm in height which fits nicely in any user's hand. The handset is solid yet lightweight, weighing 100 grams (including the battery). The battery life is also good supporting approximately 7 hours of talk time and 300 hours of standby time but these times are fully dependent on the features being used by the user.

The Sony Ericsson W380's camera is very much an extra rather than an integral part of this mobile phone. Because there is no dedicated camera button, you have to select the camera option from the main menu. Though it is not a huge problem, it does bring some difficulty when taking quick snaps. In terms of picture quality, there isn't much to say, since it is a basic 1.3 MP camera. Well, it is fine for taking the interesting picture here and there, but you wouldn't want to rely on it as your main camera in any important occasion. Another thing with the camera is that it is extremely bad in low-light situations since there is no flash. It's also worth noting that there is no video capture function on the W380i.

Since this is a Walkman phone, then an excellent media player is the area one would expect it to excel in, and, it really does a good job in this aspect. The Walkman music player in the W380 supports MP3, AAC, and AAC+ music formats as well as Sony's MegaBass mode. Like many Walkman phones, the W380 also supports the TrackID service for identifying music, and even has its own FM radio receiver and a pair of built-in stereo speakers. In addition, there's a 3.5mm headphone jack adapter so it's simple to upgrade sound quality by adding better headphones. The W380 also comes with Bluetooth system which supports high-speed EDR data and A2DP stereo headphones, so you can utilize it to enjoy music as well as transferring data. In terms of storage, this phone comes bundled with a 512 MB Memory Stick Micro M2 card in addition to the 14MB internal memory.

As to connectivity, this phone supports tri-band GSM GPRS/EDGE network. Being a lower-end handset, 3G and WiFi are surely absent, so there's no high-speed downloading or video call functions. And if you want to transfer files from or to a computer, there is also a USB connection to assist you.

Overall, the Sony Ericsson W380i offers a great mobile music player performance for a real budget price, and also works well in other aspects. So if you are a music lover and not so much care about other features of a phone, well, this handset will be your cup of tea.
Jerry Smith, the editor of http://www.mobilephoneonly.co.uk. An expert on mobile phone and an observer of UK telecommunication market. He writes reviews on latest mobile phones, and also suggests promotional deals and special offers from mobile phone retailers in UK.