Sony Ericsson K300i

...is perfect for me. The Sony Ericsson k300i is a dinky little thing. I've never really cared for top-of-the-range technology or spending cash on new and updated things when it is unneeded. Even as a teenager myself, I stuck to a cheap old phone which lasted me, using just basic features of just texting and calling. But to go back to that now, I wouldn't want to.

Upon receiving the k300i as a present, this Christmas passed, I turned ...
...did ^_^)

Sony Ericsson Desk Stand (CDS-11) I don't personally have this accessory but it seems like a most useful one.
Just mount your phone, plug in your hands free kit and charger, and you're ready to go, without cluttering up your desktop. This can be bought for around £13.
Car chargers can also be bought for around £8-12

USB Cables - these can be bought for as little as £4, a great deal in my opinion ... more

This phone is perfect for me. The Sony Ericsson k300i is a dinky little thing. I've never really cared for top-of-the-range technology or spending cash on new and updated things when it is unneeded. Even as a teenager myself, I stuck to a cheap old phone which lasted me, using just basic features of just texting and calling. But to go back to that now, I wouldn't want to.

Upon receiving the k300i as a present, this Christmas passed, I turned the phone on, and to see the sight of the menu was at first daunting, but I soon browsed through every option on the phone within a good 2 days and had a good understanding of most - it wasn't really confusing at all.

I always receive excellent signal with this phone, wherever I am, whether it be at home, out and about, or in Italy. I can always manage to be auto-connected to a service provider and it's very reliable. I recommend this if signal is an up point for you.

-- Features --

Contact Book
Adding contacts into the phone is so easy, and you can assign more than one number to each person (you have options to specify a certain type of number e.g. mobile phone number, home number, work number, fax number etc.) and you can also assign a picture to each contact you have.

-Camera-

Pictures? Well, you can have them sent to the phone through it's very reliable infrared receiver (or even send them to another phone or device), take them off your computer or laptop, or even take a picture on the phones camera. The camera installed on the phone is of decent quality - nothing special, but by no means below average. Though this hasn't proved a problem for me as of yet and I'm finding the camera quite useful, and fun to play with. The camera comes with 5 different effect options.. (black & white, sepia, negative etc..) and many different frames to capture your pictures in. The camera has a useful zoom feature, and the brightness on the camera can be easily altered by the press of a button. You can specify what size you want your pictures to be, which for me is very useful, and picture sizes tend to be quite small, while retaining picture quality - I love this about the phone. The camera also has the ability to record videos, and again, keeps the size (in my opinion) unbelievably small while retaining quality. Despite the camera not being top-of-the-range picture quality, I give it a
7/10 for quality and 9/10 for features.

-Keypad & Layout-

So what else is great about this phone? Well, for one, it has a simple to use layout so you will hardly ever become confused, and also, the keypad. The keypad may not seem important to some people, but it is to me. I become easily irritated by fiddly controls and buttons, but this keypad is perfect. With separate buttons for each set of letters (rather than 3 rows of 3 buttons like on the new Moto RAZR) it is easy to use and you won't get frustration or hassle while trying to type into the phone. Also the phone has a small and simple to use navigation button. You simply press left to go left, and up to go up and so on, and you'll never accidentally go the wrong way. (Unless you've maybe had a few too many drinks of course).

-Themes & Appearance - customize to suit you-

The phone has easy-to-customize themes and appearances, so you can change it to suit you without hassle, and also an option to set backgrounds and screensavers. And the power-saving option is always useful.

-Messaging-

Messaging on this phone is easy. With a range of options for messages - picture and media messages: easily send pictures, video clips, sounds and animations, normal text messages, and also e-mail messaging service. It's so easy to get used to using this phone, even predictive text which I always found so testing, now makes messaging so much quicker.
Storage of messages is pretty good, once you get to a certain capacity you are told to delete some of your messages, but you can save the special ones in a saved items folder - so there's no worries there. And it's not like there's minimal space for messages, I'd say you can hold around 200 in inbox and outbox before needing to delete any.

-Helpful Little Features..-

I'm never easily awoken by alarms, and often fall back to sleep - another great reason why I love this phone. This phone has a customizable alarm signal, so you can set it to whatever you wish to be awoken by. And when you do awake, you can turn the alarm off, or set it to "snooze" - my personal favourite option in the morning. The alarm will come back on after a short-slept 9 minutes, in which you will receive the 2 options again. The great thing about this alarm is that it manages to actually wake me up, with most other mobile phone alarms their tendency to wake me up isn't very high, but this phone never fails.
Little things like these I love about this phone. ♥

-Web Access-

Just to make sure you do, you should know I'm with Orange, and hardly ever encounter a problem with this network provider. Web Access on this phone is pretty decent, even when I was in Italy, late-January this year, I managed to quickly connect to the internet and browse around. For just £1 you can browse the internet for a whole day. Once you connect you will first be connected to Orange World, in which you will have the options to look around and keep occupied: e.g. while Big Brother was on, there was daily news and funny pictures from the house, there's also Boredom Busters which are free, that contain quizzes, jokes, and also access to the news, or you could just browse the internet. I'd say pay and connection for web access on this phone is good, but I don't have experiences of the web on many other phones. I have heard how slow they can be though, and I haven't known this phone to be very slow.

-Media-

Everything is covered. Pictures, music/sounds, videos, games, and even other applications are all covered on the phone. The phone comes with a range of emoticon pictures on it (to include on messages, to show people how you're feeling) and sounds, and also 2 games. There is an inbuilt sound recorder on the phone, and using the sound mixer on the phone, you can easily create little catchy tunes - that should keep you occupied for a while in times of boredom.

-Charging and Battery Power-

Phone charging for this little model is relatively quick, taking little more than a few hours to fully charge. Battery power lasts up to at least 7 hours of talk time and 300 hours stand-alone time (that's more than a week and a half of battery time). I rarely find battery power a problem, when I run out I just charge it for a couple of hours and I'm sorted.

-Accessorizing The Phone-

There's a whole range of accessories you can buy to go along with this phone.
Vehicle Phone Mounter: Simply clip it onto the a/c vent on your car and insert phone. But still, on your mobile while driving, it can be a little tricky? Well not with the hands-free kit that comes free with the phone (or at least when you buy it on Orange pay-as-you-go from Phones4U, like I did ^_^)

Sony Ericsson Desk Stand (CDS-11) I don't personally have this accessory but it seems like a most useful one.
Just mount your phone, plug in your hands free kit and charger, and you're ready to go, without cluttering up your desktop. This can be bought for around £13.
Car chargers can also be bought for around £8-12

USB Cables - these can be bought for as little as £4, a great deal in my opinion and a most necessary accessory to make full use of your phone and its features. (Especially the camera feature =).)

X-Bad Points-X

There aren't many bad points, just a general few..

o Even when your volume is set to silent, if you open a movie or sound click, the sound will still be heard - there's a silent option for a reason, and it just doesn't do it's job.
o Upon capturing an image, the phone produces a digital shutter release sound, and this cannot be turned off (to the pretty certain knowledge of myself and family who have attempted to turn the noise off)
o Memory, I've found that while the phone is able to store it's own media pieces well (pictures, sounds, and movies), you cannot store your own big pictures or music files on here, as the phone only has 12MB of memory (Around the size of 4 MP3 format songs).

--- Pricing ---
On eBay you can find this phone (PAYG) for as little as £39.99 but in most cases between £50-60.
I found on offer for this phone: Pay As You Go with a Free Vodafone SIM card (NEW) for just £49.99 from the link. This is a pretty decent price to me.

----- Overall Feel for the Phone -----
Simple..
I-love-it. I wouldn't trade this phone for anything else, especially not one of the really new phones. Why waste your money when this phone covers everything and more than you need?

If you bought this mobile phone, I'm almost certain you would love it.

I hope you found my review helpful, and any comments (or criticism) will be appreciated. Thanks. =)
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