The Sony Ericsson W350 appeared on the scene this year in Canada and at initial glance, sparks some interest. It seems small and comes at a super-budget price ($20 after carrier subsidies from Rogers Wireless). It bills itself as a very small flip-phone built for music first and just happens to also be a phone. Reality doesn’t quite match this marketing push but regardless, the phone has it’s strong points which seem to balance out the compromises.
Budget
When looking at the w350 you have to consider it’s two driving factors: budget and the Walkman branding. When looking at the budget factor, you must remember that this was designed to be an inexpensive phone – probably for the youth market, so you have to temper your expectations to some extent. The problem is that many design decisions seem to have been made with this phone which leave it feeling needlessly cheap and flimsy. The flip cover for instance serves no real purpose other than covering up the keypad and feels like the weakest point on the phone. If the phone breaks, it will probably be the flip. That’s probably okay because it doesn’t do anything anyhow, right? Then why even have it on the phone?
The battery cover is flimsy too as you need to bend and pry to remove it making you feel as though you are about to break the phone. Lastly the phone has a kind of rubberized finish which may make it feel satiny soft and help with grip, will mar easily and end up making your phone look weathered after only a few days of normal use. These design issues leave the phone feeling cheap and disposable but yet for no reason – they don’t make the phone any cheaper to produce so just seem to be poor choices by the industrial design team rather than economic compromises. How unfortunate since otherwise this phone wouldn’t seem like a compromise budget phone at all.
Walkman
the phone bills itself as a Walkman phone, built for music. Great. It has roughly the same form-factor as the 8gb Zune we reviewed earlier this year and looks very similar yet it is a long way from functioning as well as a music player. The music player software isn’t spectacular whatsoever and is actually somewhat lackluster. The phone hardware is capable of so much more but the walkman software is decidedly basic. Another drawback is that there is no standard headphone jack. Why must phone manufacturers insist we either use their proprietary headphones or a special adapter to make our own headphones work with their devices? It may not be as infuriating with a Nokia or Motorolla phone but when you affix the Walkman brand to your phone (to the extend where the Walkman logo appears four times on the phone itself!) it suggests you know something about music players and would appreciate why someone might not want so much hassle with a music player. On the upside however, the built in speaker performs admirably. This is actually notable considering how small and compact the phone is. Overall as a music player this device is marginally competent yet overall quite unremarkable.
Software
Watch out if you get this phone from a service provider. They may have messed with the software. The unit we’re using from Rogers Wireless has integrated their horrible Rogers Music Player for instance. The TrackID feature also seems to have vanished as a result and the ability to customize the phone is severely hampered. In the past with other phones we have found that if you can de-brand it and restore the manufacturer’s default software rather than the version from your service provider, a budget phone can quickly become a great little gadget comparable to the more expensive models. Why service providers feel the need to cripple our hardware and add ‘features’ which work poorly and nobody wants is a mystery but it’s worth noting that the w350 is not exempt from this phenomenon.
Conclusions
Considering all the little things we dislike about this phone we actually love it overall. It has a great size and weight, practically vanishing in your pockets – you might even forget you’re carrying it. The speaker is clear and loud. It has solid battery life (better than many larger phones with bulkier batteries) and really functions well as a phone. For the price that’s all you really want anyway. They should have just removed the Walkman branding, the crappy camera and the pointless flip cover. Do all that and maybe apply a more durable finish to the casing and they could have a superb phone at an unbeatable price. As it stands it’s not a bad phone at all but with a few design tweaks it could stand out a lot more. It’s really a good phone and a pleasure to use but it’s just trying too hard to do too many things and seem cool. If it just relaxes and learns to be itself it will find that it has a lot of friends who love it.
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