Sony Ericsson W380

Sony’s Walkman brand of cell phones often bring a little more to the table in terms of design, and the W380 is no exception. As mobiles go, the W380 is not designed for those of us who crave hi-tech features, but it should appeal to the funky, style-conscious youth of today. So, for all the cool dudes out there, here’s my take on the W380.

Form Factor
When I say ‘cutting-edge’ design, I mean something that looks really funky. By that yardstick, the W380 is definitely cutting-edge! It even looks as if its edge could cut you. I couldn’t resist that, sorry, but what I meant was the W380 seems a bit incomplete – when it’s open it has a very (how shall I put this?) cut-off-at-the-top look. But I loved the design ever since I first saw it last year.

The 1.9 inch TFT display (which I think could easily have been larger) has a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels and there's an external OLED mono display with a 128 x 36 pixel resolution. There are three audio player keys located under the external display that also provide haptic feedback when used.

The 1.3 megapixel camera is in the front. There's a cool sensor under the camera that lights up when a call comes in. What’s interesting about this is, if you wish to silence the handset, a gesture control feature lets you simply slide your hand up and down over the sensor to switch it to silent.

There's a proprietary slot on one side for USB, charging, and handsfree connectivity. On the other side is the volume control that could also be used to silence incoming calls without cutting the call. A small key-lock slider is located on the rear just above the battery panel.

Though Sony Ericsson provides hot-swap slots for its handsets you still need to remove the back panel to access it. So should we consider this hot-swap or lukewarm-swap? Nevertheless, the W380 supports M2 cards though the slot is unfortunately under the rear panel.

The W380 has a nice large keypad with a 5 way nav-pad and shortcut keys for the internet and other functions. The problem is that for some reason the keys are a bit hard to depress. Not that it’s in any way much of a hindrance; it just slows down message typing a wee bit.