Sony Ericsson W300i Walkman

...know about ;)
The Sony Ericsson’s W300i is the best phone I have ever had – NO EXCEPTIONS. I should know because I’ve had quite a few. My mum and dad have (and use!) this cool phone. It’s primarily a music phone but the camera quality is still decent compared to other phones I’ve had.
My phone came with some cool speakers but my mum and dad’s phone didn’t. You will also get some Sony Ericsson earphones which are good except for the ...
...external speaker above the 3D Sony Ericsson logo.
The cover is easy to attach but *seems* quite hard to remove; maybe I’m just weak or too scared to break the phone. You have to not be scared of breaking the phone when taking the back cover off because you’re just pushing down and forwards (with the phone upside down, back facing towards you) until it magically opens. The battery is easy to insert because you’re kind of like slotting it up ... more

[ introduction / experience ]

I will talk as much as I can about this phone. What I will be talking about is how the phone is for me in my experience, how the phone feels and looks physically, battery life, the menus, submenus and going in to detail about what each feature does exactly and how it works. Transferring files from your phone to PC or PC to phone. You might already have this phone and I will include some secrets that maybe you didn’t know about ;)
The Sony Ericsson’s W300i is the best phone I have ever had – NO EXCEPTIONS. I should know because I’ve had quite a few. My mum and dad have (and use!) this cool phone. It’s primarily a music phone but the camera quality is still decent compared to other phones I’ve had.
My phone came with some cool speakers but my mum and dad’s phone didn’t. You will also get some Sony Ericsson earphones which are good except for the fact that one earphone’s wire is short and the other is long. You can use a better pair of earphones if you like.

[ physical ]

I would say this phone actually feels like a real phone and not some piece of plastic that will break straight away if you drop it. This phone weighs in at 94g. It’s robust, not that heavy and feels secure when you flip it open. Unfortunately the camera eye is not adjustable; it’s at the top on the outside of the phone. There is a tiny mirror next to the lens so you can see how it probably looks on cam. On the front of the phone there’s a nice little orange walkman logo below the LCD display. On the side there’s three orange buttons, everyone always asks what these do… I can’t tell you yet.
On the back of the phone there is a loud external speaker above the 3D Sony Ericsson logo.
The cover is easy to attach but *seems* quite hard to remove; maybe I’m just weak or too scared to break the phone. You have to not be scared of breaking the phone when taking the back cover off because you’re just pushing down and forwards (with the phone upside down, back facing towards you) until it magically opens. The battery is easy to insert because you’re kind of like slotting it up into the phone. If you’re taking the battery out, then you just pull it back then drop out. Inserting the SIM card is easy; getting it out is slightly harder. You just have to put pressure down as you slide it out. The design is simple and attractive. The phone comes in the colours ‘shadow black’ and ‘shimmering white’. I prefer shadow black, I think most guys do.

The main screen is bright and stylish - 128 x 160 pixels, 262000 Colours (TFT).
There’s a cool orange LCD (2 colours) which is 101 x 80 pixels. Like the main screen, the LCD screen turns itself off to save battery power. When you press one of the shiny orange side buttons it turns on and lights up.

The number buttons are circular layered on one another. These buttons aren’t too small but can be fidgety sometimes. The off button is quite small; I can imagine some people having trouble with it. Inside, there is also a Walkman button so you have your tunes at your fingertips. There’s a main circular navigation button and a button in the middle of that. If you have chunky fingers then you might get a little annoyed by this. The circular navigation is great for when you’re playing games, if you play for too long (like I did) though your thumb will begin to ache. On the left and right side of the navigation buttons there are two other buttons (easier to press). The two top buttons will select from the menu on whatever section you are on. Then underneath on the left is a back button to go backwards and then on the right is the cancel button (like cancelling letters in text).

[ shiny orange side buttons! ]

Ok, I’ll tell you. If you press any of the side buttons with the phone closed, the LCD will light up and you can see:
• signal strength
• bluetooth status
• date and time
• battery power
• network

But wait… While the LCD is on, press the top orange button and you can see this information scrolling:
• phone status
• date
• phone profile
• alarm/recurrent alarm setting
• model
• my mobile number (ok not mine personally, sorry. Very useful if you haven’t remembered your number yet)
• amount of free memory
• amount of free memory on the memory stick
• configuration
• profiles (not sure what this is)
• charge status (in percentage)

If you press the top side button with the phone open then you see all this information again except its just on the main display, easier to see.
The bottom orange side button will show you if you have any appointments for that day.
If you press and HOLD DOWN the top or bottom side buttons with the phone open then you verbally say who you want to call after the tone and it works. Obviously you set the recordings of names for the people in your contact list.
The middle orange button with phone open will play or stop your music tracks.

If you press the top or bottom side buttons while the music is playing (or in the middle of a call), it will adjust the volume accordingly.

[ menu please – tell me about it ]

Here is the menu:
• PlayNow (internet related)
• <Your network> (internet related)
• Entertainment – Games - Video DJ - Photo DJ - Remote control - Record Sound - Demo tour
• Camera
• Messaging
• Walkman
• File Manager – Pictures – Videos – Sounds – Themes - Web pages – Games – Applications - Other
• Contacts
• Radio
• Calls - All call information - Answered calls – Dialled - Missed calls
• Organiser – Alarms – Calendar – Tasks – Notes – Calculator – Synchronization – Timer – Stopwatch – Applications - Code memo
• Settings – General - Sounds & alerts – Display – Calls - Connectivity (Bluetooth)

PlayNow and <Your Network> is internet related, I think internet on phones is a joke so I don’t use so I won’t talk about that.

I use the entertainment features a lot. You’re phone comes with the main decent java-based games QuadraPop (remember Tetris?), Neopets (it’s a trial version and then they expect you to go online). You can go online and download games but I did this once and lost nearly £9 (can you see why I don’t like the internet on phones?). I did download a game called AlienScum which is cool, like the old classic Space Invaders, up to 20 levels (I managed to complete it!). I can link you to some free stuff later which includes games.

VideoDJ is pretty cool, I haven’t used it all that much but basically what you can do is record videos or use existing videos and add text and music to them. You can replace the audio track or you can mix it which is great because you can hear what’s happening still while a tune is playing. The only unfortunate thing about this is you can’t play MP3s, probably because of the size or compatibility.

PictureDJ - another little feature, I don’t use much. You can add several things to your images:
• Clipart (clown mouths, noses, beards hats etc)
• Frames (candles and wine, burger and chips, James bond style)
• Effect (auto level, tint, negative, cartoon, frosted glass, contrast, painting, brightness)
• Tool (text, pen, line, ellipse, rectangle)
• Rotate
• Colour palette

MusicDJ – compose your own tunes, this will probably take you a long time. I haven’t used it at all really but you can choose from loads of different beats and stuff:
• Drums
• Guitar
• Piano
• Trumpet

Remote control - I don’t know much about this but I think you can control other people’s devices.
• Presenter – Sorry, no idea
• Media player – I think this means you can control Windows Media Player / iTunes
• Desktop – I think you can see your own desktop on your phone, don’t take my word on this though

Record sound – this is really cool. The sound quality is decent as well. I have used this once to record a lecture in class, mostly just to test the phone out thought. While we’re on the subject, an awesome feature is that you can record your phone calls through the menu as your taking a call.

Demo tour – this is just a demo of the phone, nothing special. I deleted it.

[ the camera ]

You can record videos and take pictures. As I said before, the phone is mainly a music phone but the camera is still decent. If you’re looking for a camera phone though you probably want to go for something else. Even though it’s a music phone, I still use the camera feature a lot, it’s great. Record yourself having fun with your friends and family (including the pets!). You can later put all these on your PC and upload to YouTube if you like. What’s great about it is you can delete the files on your phone that you’ve saved to your computer so you can save space.
Technical info: VGA, 640x480 pixels (interpolated to 1.3 MP), video (QCIF).

I just found a cool shortcut. You can change many of these modes by pressing the numbers.

There are several modes you can use when TAKING PICTURES –

Shoot mode:
• Normal - which is just a normal picture
• Panorama – this will let you take three pictures in a row and after you’ve taken them it will shrink them, put them side by side and turn it into one picture. I hadn’t had this with my previous phones. Cool little feature
• Frames – you can choose from many different frames and then get ready to take the picture with the frame around it
• Burst – this is good. When I first used it I didn’t know what was going on. What it does is takes four pictures really quickly and you can cycle through the pictures after you’ve taken them

There is also night mode which you can use when light conditions are poor.

Effects you can use:
• Black & white
• Sepia – cool desert look
• Negative – inverted colours
• Solarize – its like the negative style but different

The phone sizes for taking pictures are
• Large (640x480) - You cannot zoom in when you are on the large picture option
• Medium (320x240) – You can zoom in once (2x)
• Small (160x120) – You can zoom (1x, 2x, 4x)
• Extended – This is if you want a digitally enlarged picture

Picture quality modes are ‘normal’ and ‘fine’.

You can choose from four different shutter sounds, these are the sounds that you hear when you take the picture. Unfortunately you can’t use your own sound or turn it off completely.

You can choose to save to either the phone stick or memory which saves you having to move them if it puts your pictures where you don’t want them.

WHEN RECORDING:

Shoot mode contains ‘Picture message mode’ and ‘High quality video’. One is just smaller than the other so it’s easier to send through picture messages.
The two video sizes are ‘Large (176x144)’ and ‘Small (128x96)’
Also has night mode.
The effects are the same as above.
The ‘Save to’ option also.

[ messaging ]

[SMS, EMS, MMS, Email and Instant Messaging]
Simple text messaging, I do a lot of texting. You can use the old style text where you would like press the number 3 three times to get the letter F. Alternatively you can use the predictive text so if you were writing ‘cat’ then you would just press 2, 2, 8. Selecting the symbols is simple.
Picture messaging – send and receive picture messages, I don’t use this much because I’ll only really send pictures through Bluetooth because its free: D
Supports voice messaging – I haven’t used this so I can’t really say much about it but the quality is good.

[ more about the walkman / radio / sound ]

What I love about this phone is the music and the radio (FM support!); I’m listening to the radio while testing everything out on my phone right now. When I first bought this phone I was really impressed with the quality of the radio, it was better than I expected. You need the radio antenna in the phone but you can listen to it externally through the speaker or internally through earphones. When you adjust to the radio station you want, your phone (through something called RDS) will find the stations name automatically (may not be available in some countries), cool or what? Also has Stereo and Mono support so if your reception is poor on Stereo then you can change to Mono and it may improve. You don’t have to keep searching for the radio stations when you wanna listen either, it has presets. I have seven presets on my phone, you may be able to get more but I think seven is enough.
When listening to the music on your phone (not radio) you don’t need to have the antenna in. You can create your own playlists. So choose what type of songs you want to play for whatever mood you’re in.

What is awesome is that it’s polyphonic as well as monophonic so you can use your MP3s or midi files for your ring tones. Not just your ring tones but text messages so when you receive a text, it’s not just a short beep, you know when you get a text ;)

Turn the volume up and down on-the-fly with the orange side buttons. When the volume is turned to the minimum it will go silent and when the volume is turned up to the max, believe me it is very loud. The only time you wouldn’t be able to hear it is if you’re in a loud club. The phones vibration comes in very handy if you are somewhere where you have to be quiet.

[ battery ]

The battery life is impressive also. I read somewhere that the battery life was short but I totally disagree. Unless you’re making calls, watching videos and playing music for hours the battery power is awesome. All my other phones have had batteries which run out fairly quickly. Now it’s not me complaining about battery life, it’s my friends. :P

Here’s the technical information about the battery
Standard battery, Li-Po 900 mAh
Stand-by Up to 400 hours
Talk time Up to 9 hours

The battery will also charge whilst plugged into the USB of your computer.

[ the organiser ]

Organiser:
• Alarm – The disadvantage with the alarm is that you have to keep setting it every night.
Unlike my old phone (X70) you could set the times in one whole go for the whole week. The alarm on this phone is great, will definitely wake you up.
You can have an alarm which will go off just one and a recurrent alarm which will go off again when you ignore it or use the snooze feature.
Here you can set the alarm signal, so everyday I wake up (or try to) to Eric Prydz – Call on me.
You can even set it so the radio will play when you wake up but remember you need to use the antenna. I don’t use this because I always like to charge my phone up when I go to bed.

• Calendar – This is nice, I don’t use it much but you can set appointments for a specific day and set time duration and you will be reminded

• Tasks – Set tasks and after you do them you can mark them as done. You see the subjects then view it and see more details
What is also great is you can send these tasks to others like through Bluetooth if you like.

• Notes – Similar to tasks but just put little notes in your phone. These have come in useful for me quite a lot
People tend to forget about the little cool stuff that their phone can do
You can also show a note in standby

• Calculator – If you’re not too good at Maths, like me 

• Synchronization – I’m not sure about this. It involves the internet so I don’t use it. Maybe to synchronize the time?

• Timer – This has an evil alarm on it. Set it to go off in however long you want

So you could say I’m going to sleep for exactly seven hours, set it to go off in 7 hours and 10 minutes

• Stopwatch – Good if you’re swimming or racing and trying to set a personal best. Doing laps etc

• Applications – This contains cool stuff like:
FaceWarp - so you can mutilate your friends faces, this is freaky
MusicMate – I’ll never know what exactly this is about because my phone crashes on it
Newsreader – Supports RSS but this again requires the internet, if you use it then cool – get news from any site to your phone
World Clock – This is either already on your phone or you can download it for free from the Sony Ericsson site.

• Code Memo – You use this to store personal information like credit card codes, passwords etc. You have to supply a code to access it. Personally I don’t use it because I’m sure it’s not that secure.

[ settings ]

• General
Profiles – adapt your phone to different situations. In a meeting, at school? The profiles change ringtones/vibration/keypad sounds are regulated by their profile
There’s already some preset profiles for you to choose from
Time & Date – you can set it so the time will automatically change when you enter different time zones
Language – Phone language and writing language, I assume this means predictive text can work in French for example
Update Service – You can update your phone software, this doesn’t affect your user data
You can set it to check for the upgrades every month or every time you start your phone
Voice dialling – Don’t like searching through your contacts? You can set it so you can just hold the side orange button and say a name you have set and then it phones them
Voice answer – Handy if you’re using a hands free kit. Answer and reject calls with your voice
Play caller name – This plays the callers name (if set) when the phone rings
Magic Word – Instead of holding the orange side buttons to activate the voice dialling, you can just record a magic word and when you say it the phone will let you say someone else’s name and it will dial them
Shortcuts – You can change the shortcut keys for Navig key up/down/left/right. I like to have the camera as up, contacts as down, left is record (instantly records, really useful) and right to set my alarm
Play/Pause button – This is where you can set the orange shiny button to be the button for the radio or music on your phone.
I use the music because for radio I don’t always carry the antenna around with me
Start-Up Menu – Show or don’t show. If you are in a place where you aren’t allowed to use transmitters you can just let it use the walkman only
Locks – SIM lock, set a PIN to protect your subscription from unauthorised use, I should probably set this.
Phone lock, this code protects the phone and personal data from being used with another SIM card
Setup Wizard – Just a basic guide through the phone and provides some tips
Phone Status – I went through this above (shiny orange buttons!)

• Sounds & Alerts
Ring Volume – Goes from 1 to 8 – Very loud
Ringtone – Choose from your music, yep mp3s as well! You can choose different ringtones for different people in your contact list
Silent mode – All sound / tones become silent, vibrate on. Tip: quickly turn silent mode on by holding down the hash (#) key
Increasing ring – Ringtone will just increase until it gets to the loudest possible
Vibrating alert – Obvious. I always have this on, don’t see why anyone would have it off
Open phone sounds – there are three different sounds you can have when you open your phone or you can choose to have no sound
Message alert – Choose what sound you want to play when you receive a message, yep mp3s!
Key sound – Choose what key sounds you want, click, tone or none. These are annoying, turn these tones off people… We don’t want to hear your dialling!

• Display
Wallpaper – choose your wallpaper, get pictures off the internet. YES you can have animated wallpaper
Themes – There’s hundreds of themes you can choose from and some already come with the phone
Start-up screen – when you turn on your phone you will see a picture or animation of your choice or don’t have one
Screensaver – when you leave your phone without pressing anything a screensaver will show, choose what image/animation you want to show until you press something
Brightness – the default brightness, its usually set at 100% but I put mine at 80% just to save that little bit of battery (I’m an energy-saving-whore)
Sleep mode clock – turns the clock off in sleep mode

• Calls - The phone will log up to thirty missed calls, received calls and dialled calls
Features ALL – ANSWERED – DIALLED – MISSED call sections

• Connectivity
Bluetooth – Wirelessly communicate with other devices (this doesn’t cost you anything).
Send and receive files/images/sounds/games. The Bluetooth feature will work faster with other phones that are Sony Ericsson.
Infrared – I don’t use this but its another way of sending and receiving files, extremely slow though
USB Connection – File Transfer or Phone Mode. This option shows up when you plug the USB into your phone from the computer.
Use the USB connection to transfer.
Synchronization – No idea what this is sorry
Device management – Internet related, its to do with account settings, you can create new accounts
Mobile Networks – Allows you to choose different networks to connect to
There are a few more settings which are internet related and packed with confusing jargon.

[ transferring files to and from your PC/Phone ]

Because this is just a review I won’t manually go through each step of installing the software and hardware. Basically all you’re doing is attaching the hardware and inserting the discs then restarting. Be careful and read the instructions because you don’t want to mess it up for yourself.
Transferring files to and from is simple. When you attach the USB cable to your phone, your PC will ask you what you want to do, OPEN the folders and move the files you want into the correct place of your phone.
Be careful when pulling out the USB because it is possible you can lose some information off your phone. This hasn’t happened to me before and I usually just pull it out and risk it but I think you’re supposed to eject it from your PC.

[ miscellaneous (including price) ]

The browser supports WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML (NetFront).
In the phone book: 1000 x 20 fields. Photo call included so when your friend rings their set photo will show.

My mum only got this because it was advertised by Robbie Williams. As a young teenage lad I don’t really care to have him on my phone. I don’t have him on my phone but I think you can get a Robbie Williams version if you’re into that: P

My mum said I got my phone for £80, apparently in Woolworths you can get it for £50. I have just checked on E-bay and you can get it for even less. EXCEPTIONAL if you ask me!

When you buy the phone it comes with earphones as I said before and some ear covers, a USB cable, battery and charger. The memory stick is inside the phone. If I have missed anything please let me know. :)

Update: TO ACCESS THE SECRET MENU (WORKS ON MOST SE PHONES) do this when you turn your phone on:

> * << * < *

[ links ]

All sites listed below have been used by myself and work fine.

For more information please check out: http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_w300-1486.php
Free downloadable stuff for your phone: http://www.coolsmartphone.com/forum/dload.php
Awesome site full of free phone stuff: http://www.myw300.lasyk.net

[ thanks and copyright ]

If you have actually read all of this review then you have my respect and I want to personally thank you. Rate and comments = HUGE thanks :D
I have to copyright a review this big ;)

© Copyright 2007 Tha-Flash 

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