Sony Ericsson T303: budget 2G phone that looks nice but few features

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 05 March 2008 19:53

Opinion and Analysis

While we’ve said the T303 doesn’t have the full set of advanced smartphone features, there are still some of the features you’d expect to see in any modern phone.

Yes, there’s Bluetooth as standard. There’s a back-mounted camera, but it only takes photos at 1.3 megapixels in a world where the lowest baseline is usually either 2 megapixels or increasingly 3.2 megapixels – and there’s no flash to light up images in darkened rooms, like a nightclub.

There’s also the Track ID feature which lets you record a snippet of a song to be uploaded and identified, fulfilling the answer to the question ‘hey what song are we listening to again?’

And while it has basic, standard features like an alarm clock, notes, calculator, tasks, stop watch, speaker phone, vibrating alert, picture messaging, a sound recorder, an FM radio, vibrating modem and more, one of the most alarming features is the Media Player.

Alarming because the T303, according to the press released we received, only comes equipped with 8MB of onboard memory, and reportedly doesn’t have a Sony M2 memory stick socket – their press release certainly didn’t mention one.

Even with songs encoded at 64Kbps, there are only so many you can fit into 8MB, especially if you want to use the camera’s photo feature which will chew up part of the 8MB of storage.

But what do you expect from what is expected to be an AUD sub-$200 pre-paid phone? Certainly not all the latest features.

The phone should do well compared with others in a similar price range but it, especially coupled with its expensive looking design, but it will hardly set the world on fire.

If your budget is bigger, have a look at SE’s W910 slider phone with Walkman music player, 3G, an M2 memory stick socket and plenty more.

But if you are on a budget, you may well find that the price, when they finally release it, could well be just right.

Additonal information can be found at Sony Ericsson’s website, but after all that the phone won’t arrive into the market until mid 2008 anyway - around three months from now!