Sony Ericsson W380A First Impressions

It seems to be that time again when Sony Ericsson creates a new phone and I was able to get my hands on one of the latest flip phones made by them, the Sony Ericsson W380A. What would I want with a new phone since I recently got into the group of Canadian 3G iPhone users? Well I am always looking for cool electronic gadgets and trying them out that way I stay in touch with the electronic world and get to play with geeky gadgets.

Sony Ericsson W380A

When I opened the box that contained the W380A I was not sure what to expect as I have not seen any photos of this particular cellphone and was curious if it could replaced my previous Sony Ericsson phone the W580i.

The first thing I noticed was that it was a flip phone, not a slider like the other models Sony Ericsson has out on the market but a nice flip phone with a basic design.

Unfortunately I no longer have my W580i as it gave it to my Dad to replace his old school Motorola Flip (which was mine before my Motorola Razr) so I cannot show you a side by side photo of them to give you a better understanding of the size. Though I can tell you it is roughly the same size as a Motorola Razr and feels lighter.

Navigation

The phone navigation works similar to all the other Sony Ericsson phones I have played around with. The buttons do not feel cheap like the W580i, are slightly larger and are spaced a bit further apart making it easier to use and not accidentally hit the incorrect key (fat fingers can use this phone with relative ease!).

Features, Software Etc.

The phone features internally such as programs and such are the same as the other Sony Ericsson phones so I will not go into detail about that. I like to find out what the phone does for me as a first impression; after all to me a cellphone is a cellphone right?

If you are looking for specifications of the W380A phone head over to Sony’s website for their overview. They go into better detail about the phone such as the blog uploading feature, the build in Walkman, enchanced bass, the ability to read RSS feeds and more.

Fun things

One thing that I found out about the Sony Ericsson W380A is that it has the ability to recognize hand gestures. Sure this may sound really cool and I bet you would love to try it out but the one thing that, to me, makes it more of a novelty than a useful feature is that you can really only use the gesture control for two things; 1) silencing incoming calls and 2) turning off the alarm.

You might find this a great feature of the phone. For example, you are lying in bed sleeping, your alarm (on the phone) goes off and you just glide your hand over top of the phone to turn off the alarm. Are you awake enough when your alarm goes off to turn to be able to ‘glide your hand over’ it? I did find that it does not really turn off the alarm either, it is like hitting the Snooze button on an alarm clock. If you don’t turn the alarm off it will continue to go off at set intervals.

The external screen I found (literally) to be quite entertaining and unique. I even showed it off to a bunch of people at work and they thought it was pretty cool.

As you can see from the above photo there is no external screen. I thought this to be a bit of odd since why would a flip phone not have an external screen? I would not want to have to open it up to see who was calling me.

What I did not know was there is an external screen and it is placed behind the plastic of the cover. The top cover material is translucent and when you hit either the buttons on the front (we’ll get to that in a moment) or the unlock key at the backside-top it shines through the plastic. Pretty neat eye-candy if you ask me.

I mentioned the buttons on the front right? Well there is the Play/Stop button along with the Reverse and Fast-Forward. The buttons themselves are part of the top cover and are raised up like Braille. They also illuminate while you are playing music. This allows you to play your music without having to open up the cover and use the keypad. The volume control button, like most phones, is on the side and works while the cover is closed.

Optional Fun

Sony Ericcson has always (or at least I have found to) create some interesting accessories for their cellphones with the Walkman technology built in. I had the luxury of being able to play with such an accessory that utilizes the Bluetooth technology built into the Sony Ericsson W380A.

Sony Ericcson Portable Bluetooth Speaker Ball (MBS-100)

One thing I have always found neat about various devices of today is that a lot of them support Bluetooth, a wireless system which allows for wireless accessories such as the MBS-100 Speaker Ball. The phone that I got to play with was pre-synced with the Speaker Ball so I had no troubles using it. In fact I got a bit freaked out when I pressed play on the W380A because the speaker ball started to make noise (well music actually). I thought that was pretty cool.

After playing around with the MBS-100 Speaker Ball I found out that the sound quality of it was pretty good. I mean it’s not $4000 stereo speaker system but it has a decent range of highs, mids and lows that someone who wanted to listen to music from their phone would be able to enjoy it without having to hear the tinniness of what cellphones usually produce.

A feature that I do like about the Sony Ericsson MBS-100 is that it has a built-in rechargeable lithium battery. You just plug it in to charge it via the cable (proprietary Sony cable of course), unplug it when it is ready and take it with you!

The speaker itself is not very big either and would probably not take up much room in a backpack, large handbag or on top of a desk.

Final Thoughts

The Sony Ericsson W380A is a nice little flip phone with the usual standard Sony Ericsson cellphone features that have been with them for a few years now. The upside to the phone is that I like how the buttons do not feel cheap and breakable like they do with the W580i and that they are spaced far enough apart so people with fat-finger syndrome can use it without any incorrect key presses.

The translucent screen is a neat novelty though if it were to get scratched up I could see it being hard to see the display whereas a clear screen might still make the information behind it a bit more ledgiable.

The hand gesture feature to me is a bit of gimmick and not much of a useful one either. I am sure the novelty of that will ware off quickly as well.

The MBS-100 was more fun to play around with and sync with the phone than the phone itself. I did find one issue with the Speaker Ball is that it did not sync (pair) up with my iPhone. I wanted to see how well it worked with the iPhone but I have been told the iPhone does not support (or does not have) stereo Bluetooth capabilities, a bit of a let down.

If you are looking for a new flip phone and you do enjoy the Sony Ericsson brand and quality but are not really looking for new features within a phone then I do recommend getting your self a W380A. The size and feel of the phone is something I liked and I do wish it was available when I had my Sony Ericsson W580i as I would have gone with the flip-style phone over the slide-style.

On a rating of 1 out of 10 (a rating of 10 being hot-stuff, must have device and 1 being throw it into the garbage disposal and flick the switch) I would give the Sony Ericsson W380A a 6 and the Sony MBS-100 a 7.