• Sony Ericsson Z300i

    Sony Ericsson Z300i

    Sudeep Naik, Apr 05, 2006 1928 hrs IST

    The Z300i is an inexpensive mobile phone for people who don't just want to talk but flaunt it as well.

    Smart looks, Compact and lightweight, Color display, Inexpensive.

    Low-res screen, Time delay while typing, Inconvenient navigation keypad.

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Features and usage
The first thing that strikes you when you open the clam is the color desktop and the spacious manner in which the keypad is laid out. They keypad has a basic design that also incorporates a navigation pad. The phone's 128 x 128-pixel, 65 K colour screen is sometimes difficult to read in daylight, and menu icons have jagged edges, but background graphics and games were delightfully clear and colorful.

The phone has a 640 K memory which can be used to hold around 250 contacts, emails and SMSs. The external screen shows an analog clock when the phone is closed, and when you get an incoming call, the name of the caller scrolls across the display. The scrolling speed is pretty slow though, meaning that you have to hold the phone for a while to discover who it is. The navigation keys can be programmed to open your favorite functions. The buttons are well spaced out but a little too deep for comfort if looking to type a quick message. The navigation pad is dominated by a central select button, making the directional keys a little hard to press without accidentally pressing the center button. The features are pretty basic. Apart from the call and text functions, the Z300i has an organizer, stopwatch, calculator, WAP browser and a ring tone composer. The bundled games are "OK" at best and look decent.

The overall sound quality is good as compared to other entry-level phones. With 32 polyphonic appealing ring-tones, you have a good range of melodies too. Also the reception quality is decent enough.
The main thing we noticed when testing the Z300i was the time delay during typing text and address book scrolling. When we did a test run of text messaging, words took a few milliseconds to appear on screen. Normally, it wouldn't be too inconvenient, but some letters tend to get left out as a result. Then we had to scroll back through a sentence and edit the words. This may not go down well with the SMS gung-ho teens who form a major slice of the mobile phone market.
Apart from all the features that have been discussed the phone is equipped with GPRS and WAP 1.2.1. But there is no IR or BlueTooth to transfer files from the phone to the PC or other phones.

Conclusion
The Z300i is priced at Rs. 4600/- with one year warranty. It represents good value for money compared to other low-priced phones like Nokia 1600 or Nokia 2600. Although I'm not too sure how many teenagers would go for it, older novice users can still have a sophisticated-looking phone with an easily navigable menu. I have been thinking of giving my dad one of these.

Test Unit sourced from Salora International, Mumbai

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