Thread: Sony Ericsson W380 Mobile Phone Features

The Sony Ericsson W380 caught our attention first. A cute clamshell phone, this one features a high quality matte purple body with some pink shortcut buttons. Now before you think Playboy (the pink does resemble the magazines favourite shade) this phone isn't necessarily aimed at females, a fact which may not become apparent the first time you see it. When we saw other colours of the phone Le. silver and black, we knew for sure that SE has designed something totally unisexual. The OLED embed¬ded into the front of the phone comes as a shock at first, because looking at the body one expects it to be an opaque fibre, and not translucent. Nevertheless this display is pretty useful when the phone is closed, as it shows you the time, battery status, missed caiIs, unread SMSes, etc. Besides the utility it's also ultra cool, and adds a little more value.

The SE K660 is another excellent looking phone, white with light, fluorescent green trim on the sides. It also feels remarkably solid to hold, and looks like a K850i clone, albeit smaller, and of course much cheaper. Other than the two Sony Ericsson phones the Nokia 5310 Express Music is also noteworthy. It's very slim, in the same league as the sleek Sony Ericsson W890 in this regards, and the body is entirely made of aluminium. The media player buttons on the front bezel, to the left of the screen are very visible, and very usable. Its main shortcoming is the flat keypad that exudes a wooden feedback-SMS junkies beware! LGs KF510 is another sweet looker-made of shiny metal available in glimmering red and black the KF510 is superbly built and has a great slider mechanism. Also worth mention is the Motorola ROKR U9, which is a cute, oval shaped clamshell phone that looks a little like the Motorola PEBL (named because it resembles a pebble, evidently).



We'd give the beauty award to the W380 though, and the best build prize would be claimed by the K660 so that's two for Sony Ericsson. Nokia's 5610 Express Music is also available, but this one doesn't impress with its build too much, although the slider quality is good. Nokia's 6500 Classic is another sleek, slim phone with a decent keypad and good build quality-although we didn't like the battery cover's removal procedure-a simple grab and yank cannot be good for the long run, where some sort of play between surfaces is bound to develop. This phone also has 1 GB of inbuilt memory and no memory expansion-a shame considering the falling prices of flash storage. The Samsung D780 is a plain looker, well built, but simple. The Nokia 5610 and LG KF510 have the best cameras, the resolution of both are 3.2 megapixels. Both also have excellent screens. With VGA resolution video capture the Nokia 5610 does take the lead when it comes to video shooting.

LGs KF510 has a superb antenna inside and the voice clarity is testament to this-we enjoyed clear call quality even in zone 2 which absolutely butchers cell phone radio signals. In terms of music quality it lags behind though, and both Sony Ericssons and Nokia's Express Music duo outperform it easily. The KF510 does get back in the camera quality tests-understandable since it does have a better camera, and was the only other phone besides the Nokia 5610 to sport an autofocus-which does do wonders for image sharpness. A surprise performer in the music test was the Sony Ericsson 100 W380-this cutie has a great voice 80 too.