Sony Ericsson W380i: Beauty and the beat

A recent addition to Sony Ericsson’s Walkman series of “music-enhanced” handsets is the W380i, a stylish mobile phone with a clamshell form factor.

Designed to turn heads while providing entertainment for the youthful, style-conscious, and music-loving market, the W380i joins the roughly dozen current models of the popular Walkman series from Sony Ericsson.
The external display alone is worthy of being a conversation piece. With the clamshell closed, the phone doesn’t even look like it has an external display. But hit the Power button and watch a display light up from behind what turns out to be a translucent purple (or gray) case. Cool!

You can see music tracks, radio station IDs, caller ID, and other notifications from the display without flipping open the device. The W380i boasts sleek and chic lines and its slanted edges lend it a futuristic look.

The tri-band GSM/EDGE W380i weighs 100 grams and measures 92 x 49 x 16mm. It comes with a 1.3-megapixel camera with 4x digital zoom (but no flash or autofocus), a small 176 x 220-pixel internal display, Bluetooth, and WAP.

The phone also features a gesture control function, which allows you to mute calls or snooze the alarm with just a wave of your hand. The touch-sensitive music buttons on the outside of the flip cover lets you play, pause and skip tracks so you won’t have to flip open the handset — a boon for those who just can’t miss a second of their music even when their hands are full.

Adding to the fun are different light effects that you can assign to different callers. The lights also dance to the beat of your favorite song.

Yet another nifty music-oriented feature of Sony Ericsson handsets is TrackID, which not only enables you to get the title of an unfamiliar song you just heard, but also tells you who the artist is and which album it’s from.

The W380i comes with Media Manager PC software for easier transfer of music, photos, and videos between your computer and your phone. Just click and drag the music files and the software automatically converts the music to the right format.

Transferring tracks straight from a music CD to your mobile phone is also possible with a simply drag-and-drop using the Disc2Phone CD-ripping software.

The W380i has a measly 14MB of internal memory, but Sony Ericsson included an expansion slot so you can slip in a Memory Stick Micro to expand your storage.

All things considered, the Sony Ericsson W380i is one uncomplicated handset that should please most basic and mid-range phone shoppers but gives music lovers a compelling incentive to give it a closer look.