The Sony Ericsson W350 is a hip and sleek looking device designed with the average user in mind. It is a flip open phone with different modes for listening to music or talking. This rather strange design decision makes the Sony Ericsson W350 surprisingly difficult and cumbersome to use. Nonetheless, the Sony Ericsson W350 may be a good choice for a teenager or adolescent as their first phone.



Announced in January 2008, the Sony Ericsson W350 is an American bound GSM phone. Although it does offer roaming support for Europe and Asia, customers in those regions should get the version that offers full support for their GSM frequencies instead. Furthermore, the Sony Ericsson W350 does not offer support for the high speed 3G data transfer networks, instead using the GPRS/EDGE network for slow speed data transfers.

Measuring approximately four inches by one and a half inches by a half of an inch, the Sony Ericsson W350 is a relatively small and thin device. It also weighs an amazingly light 75 grams, making it one of the lightest devices currently on the market.

As is to be expected from a Sony Ericsson phone, the Sony Ericsson W350 offers amazingly long battery life. Expect to get about seven hours of talk time or about 300 hours of standby time on a single charge. This certainly trumps many of the other phones on the market.

Unfortunately, the display is not nearly as good as some other phones in this market segment – but it does do its job properly. The main display measures 1.9 inches in size, features 176 by 220 pixels of resolution and a color depth of 262k colors.

There is also a built in digital camera that offers shots up to 1.3 megapixels of resolution. The camera also includes four times digital zoom capability.

Multimedia features on the Sony Ericsson W350 are rather well supported for a device in this market segment. The player can decode videos as well as a number of popular music formats thanks to the Walkman 2.0 software. Furthermore, an FM radio antenna is also built in. The 14MB of built in memory can be expanded via a Memory Stick Micro.

Other features include Bluetooth 2.0 support, a large phone book, an alarm, a calendar, a notepad, a stopwatch, a to-do list, a calculator, a voice recorder, a speakerphone, and email support.

Pros

* Decent feature set for an average range phone

* Long battery life

Cons

* No 3G support

* Cumbersome design

Overall

The Sony Ericsson W350 could have been one of Sony Ericsson’s stronger phones in the average user range – but the design really holds the device back. It’s a real shame, because there are a lot of good features here that many people would be happy to have in their phones. All in all, this is a great phone for a teenager or adolescent who hasn’t yet discovered text messaging, but not for anyone else.