Sony Ericsson W380i

We all love music and we all have phones, which is why Sony Ericsson's Walkman phones have seen pretty decent success. I'm Nate Lanxon and today we're going to take a cheeky glance at Sony Ericsson's new W380i. I'm not going to tell you this is a clamshell phone because it's pretty obvious, isn't it? What isn't quite as obvious is that it's a pretty rugged handset, with a good overall feel and a really pleasant keyboard. I found it easy to get into high-speed texting mode and to continue exploiting my unlimited text plan within a few minutes of using the W380i. However, there's an immediately noticeable downside to this music phone, and that's the absence of a standard 3.5mm headphone socket. Instead, you'll need to use a bundled adaptor with the proprietary socket on the side. It's a bit of a pain in the rear end, and I can't honestly say I was blown away by sound quality. It's nowhere near as good sounding as even a fairly good stand-alone MP3 player, and with a decent pair of headphones plugged in it's even more noticeable that performance is average at best. But the phone itself is easy to use and you can drag and drop MP3s onto it through Windows, or by using some pretty simple bundled software that also handles podcast subscriptions. There's no love for any other audio formats though, and music from the likes of Napster isn't supported. DRM-free music from 7digital and eMusic will work though, so if that's where you buy your tunes, you shouldn't have any problems. On the front is a little LCD display that tells you who's calling, some braille-esque touch-sensitive controls for the music player, a monaural loudspeaker and a 1.3-megapixel camera. Picture quality's pretty average for such a low resolution lens, but this is on the budget end of the handset market after all. Java games such as The Sims 2 are all compatible, along with the brilliant Opera Mini web browser which I strongly recommend using over Sony Ericsson's bundled browser which, frankly, sucks. The W380i works on 3G and EDGE, but there's no love for HSDPA, so high speed downloads aren't going to be an option for you. Overall this is a really nice phone and it's pretty simple to use, but we don't advise it as a replacement to your MP3 player or as your sole music player unless you don't care about sound quality or you exclusively use the MP3 format. It's out now on pay as your go and monthly contract, on a number of networks. I'm Nate Lanxon and this is the Sony Ericsson W380i.