Though it's sturdy enough in situ, the back cover has to be removed if you want to swap the Memory Stick Micro (M2) card or the SIM, so you’d hope it would be able to withstand plenty of fingernail clawing and unclipping. The front flip though is remarkably bendy, and while it’s easily detachable (and is presumably replaceable), it’s not the most robust cover you could want – we’ll be interested to see how it fares with plenty of in-pocket battering.
The forward, rewind, pause/play and scrolling up/down music player buttons on the flip have an attractive rounded design, accented by some striking colour schemes – orange or purple on black, silver on light blue or graphite on white versions of the W350i are available.
The shell has a tactile, rubber-feel, but the flip is made from flimsy, plastic
A small slider lock on the top of the phone can be used to prevent accidental pocket tune-playing (as the phone is ordinarily cued up ready for Walkman action in flip-closed mode). A Walkman button on the side is used for firing up the player in open mode, or toggling back to the music selection menu when closed.
By contrast to the lightweight flip, the W350i’s large numberpad beneath is firm, and responsive to the touch – its curved, glossy key design is functional rather than tricksy, and no doubt devised for speed texters.
The phone uses an older version of Sony Ericsson’s Walkman phone user interface rather than that used on most recent models. Arranged around a familiar central navigation D-pad, which can be programmed for feature shortcuts, there are a pair of softkeys plus back and clear buttons - but no conventional call and end keys. Getting around the menus is pretty intuitive, though, with the standard type of Sony Ericsson icon-based grid set-up, plus straightforward sub menu tabs and lists of options.
COMMENTS
Memory Stick Micro?
Sigh - when are they going to learn? Sony has learned the lesson of its proprietary ATRAC audio codec but when it comes to storage there's the rest of the world and then there's... the Sony Memory Stick. Nokia has abandoned its POP-port in favour of jack sockets and micro-USB. When it sees the light, I'll consider a Sony Ericsson phone.
better to spend £20 more
SE phones with i in the model let you use it as a bluetooth modem via connection setup tools on the cd, no need for a datacard, better getting w850i and £60 on a 8gb mem card
About time!
Now That S-E have stopped trying to compete with the premium "fanboi" phones, thwy can get back to what they do well, producing good, solid, no frills handsets.
flip-in eck
I'm loving the return to the flip cover - that's something that's been sorely missing in recent year. best phone i ever had was the old Z7 - not because of the features, although the menu system was cool, and not even because i replaced the silver case with an all-black matt one off ebay and the leds on teh screen with blue ones - but because it was great being able to flip it open with your little finger while you brought the phone up to your ear, and making a bedee beddee noise like from StarTrek :)
