Sony Ericsson Walkman W302 budget music phone
Recession-busting wonder?
Review Sony Ericsson's recent Walkman updates have spanned the gamut from the high-end W902, through the mid-range W595 and W705 - due in this month - to this, the budget blaster of the bunch, which may lack the bigger spec numbers of its siblings, but in these cost-conscious times, at least manages to get the basics right.
Sony Ericsson's Walkman W302: budget spec, high-class looks
But if the W302's specs say it's a budget handset, the design doesn't. The casing is sleek brushed metallic black - or white - on the front with a dimpled plastic back. It's attractively slim at 10.5mm thick, and lightweight too: just 78g. It's a little bit shorter but slightly thicker than Nokia's rival music handset, the 5310: 100 x 46 x 10.5mm to the Nokia's 104 x 50 x 9.9mm.
The first hint of its budget roots comes when you remove the back, which seems sturdy enough when it's on, but extremely thin and flimsy once it's off. Underneath, is a Memory Stick Micro card slot, though you don't need to remove the battery to get to it.
The screen is a goodly size at 2in and looks impressive too with 262,000 colours, though it only offers a 176 x 200 resolution - the next up the range, the W595, has 320 x 240. For a screen this size, though, it still looks acceptably sharp and clear, even with video.
The keypad below the screen gives the appearance of being very cramped. In fact, it's a miniature marvel in the way it combines small size with ease of use. The keys are very small, but decently spaced, so they're easy enough to distinguish - though you'll need to use the tip of your thumb. The circular navpad, which also doubles as music controller in Walkman mode, has no less than six buttons around it, which could have been a recipe for disaster, but thanks to precision design, this never gave our thumb any problems.
The keypad's tiny but texting friendly
In contrast to the front, the sides are distinctly uncluttered, with just a discreet volume rocker, camera key and Walkman buttons, plus SE's multi-connector port.
COMMENTS
Re: Xbox fanboys?
Can't be me, as I am not American, suffered from SE products and their "you bought it, your problem" attitude for years, and saw enough SE units break or die (other than mine), sometimes within days of purchase, to clearly state that stuff coming out of SE is mediocre at best. If I had to choose, I would rather have a Motorola these days. I guess that says it all.
Xbox fanboys?
Whenever there's a review of a Sony Ericsson phone, there's usually lots of comments made by Sony-hating Americans, who clearly *never ever* have used Sony Ericsson phones, and have a hard time understanding the concept of a joint venture business. This time too.
While I do agree that Sony Ericssons proprietary "Fast Port"-connection sucks, the overall quality and features of Sony Ericsson phones are first-rate... and, like AC posted above, MS flash memories are not more proprietary than SD...
SD is proprietary
I agree about the proprietary connection but not on the memory card. SD is equally as proprietary as MS. Hell when SD was first announced, it was not even compatible with MMC slots and came out later than Sony's MS as well! And now we have miniSD, microSD, microSDHC, miniSDHC, all of which are proprietary nonsense.
What kind of degree
do I need to differentiate all those Sony / Sony Ericsson products? The phones look like the music players and they all have cryptic names and employ proprietary tech like this was the 90s. Some have some more useless software features than others but you will likely never know. Try browsing their website, you'll be in tears. Sony needs to slim that shit down (all of it), give all of their devices proper names and make them distinct — you know, like that Xperia thingy, but available for purchase and working well out of the box. Otherwise it's just "some crap Sony (Ericsson)" even to people who care about gadgets, and "some phone" to everybody else. You don't want that.
Lost me at 'no 3.5mm headphone connector'....
If you are designing a music phone then you need a headphone socket, for me it's not worth arguing pros and cons, it just needs one, and a micro-SD slot.
Typical Sony...
ttfn
PH cos I bet her slots not micro...
