Sony Ericsson W350i review

Sony Ericsson W350i Review

Reviewed by: Nate Lanxon

Reviewed on: 25 June 2008

Performance
Of course, this slow network performance is the result of this phone being geared almost exclusively towards music playback, despite the sparse audio format support.

After a very slow file transfer (roughly 15 to 20 seconds per song, 3 minutes or so per album), we started listening to some tunes and heard pretty decent sound quality -- as long as MP3s are encoded at a decent bit rate (at least 192Kbps). We used our high-end reference headphones, but you'll at least want to replace the rubbish bundled earphones with a decent pair.

Dashboard Confessional's nicely recorded Fever Dreams had warm and decent detail through the W350i and its general sound quality was on par with a good standalone MP3 player.

We did feel though that Dream Theater's Take Away My Pain sounded cleaner through Creative's Zen with subtle background sounds just slightly less well defined though the W350i. If you don't plan on using earphones any better than the bundled pair, though, you'll probably -- and sadly -- never notice this.

It's a fun phone to use with simple menus and reasonably large fonts, so phone addicts and newbies alike should enjoy using it. Call quality is good as well, though we've heard louder -- it might not be ideal if you plan on using it in mostly loud environments.

As a pocket camera, it's fine for quick snaps, but it can't compare to even slightly more capable handsets in terms of image quality (example here). Don't forget there's no flash, either.

Conclusion
Considering its price, its ease of use and its generally decent performance, it's hard not to like this compact little handset. But it's still no match for a dedicated MP3 player, which we'd choose over solely using the W350i for music in a heartbeat.

Still, few handsets -- bar the iPhone -- offer music playback capabilities to rival dedicated MP3 players, but if you fancy a better camera and more phone features, Sony Ericsson's more costly models will cater and are still the best of the bunch as music handsets.

Edited by Shannon Doubleday