Sony Ericsson W350 Cell Phone Review - Audio Quality
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Marianne Schultz Published on November 12, 2008 Comment on this |
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| Even though the W350 can double as your digital music player, its call audio quality is still an important aspect of its overall performance. Unfortunately, the audio received by the W350 leaves a bit to be desired, and sounds in certain frequencies will sound clipped to you. Audio sent by the W350 is a little better, but it's side tone is higher than the ideal level, which may cause you to adjust by speaking more quietly than you need to. | |
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General Audio
Feature phones are usually meant to provide additional functionality in a specific area so that it can essentially do double duty to replace another device. The W350 is a music-centric phone, meant to double as a digital music player so you don't necessarily have to carry another one with you. But, how it does as a phone is also important, and to evaluate this, we look at a phone's audio quality in terms of the sounds it sends and receives as well as its side tone, the amount of your own voice piped back to you so that you can judge how loudly you're speaking. We do all of this using guidelines defined by international audio experts and testing equipment and software that cell phone manufacturers use themselves. We use a head and torso simulator (HATS) made by Bruel & Kjaer and the SoundCheck software by Listen, Inc. For more information on how we do our audio testing see this article
Sound Receive Frequency Response (7.73)
This test focuses on the sound received by the phone, where our testing equipment and software transmits a defined range of sounds on a test call and then analyzes the sound that the phone puts out from its speaker. In the chart, the red lines show the outer limits beyond which a phone's sound receive frequency response should not go beyond, and ideal performance is represented by a smooth curve through the middle of the area defined by the red limit curves.
The W350's Sound Receive Frequency Response chart
In this test, the W350 did well in the lower frequencies, but vacillates and surpasses the lower and upper limits at higher frequencies. At these frequencies, sounds received by the phone may cut out, resulting in clipped speech to you. This performance earns the W350 the second-lowest score among our comparison phones.
| Cell Phone | Sony Ericsson W350 | Nokia 5310 (on T-Mobile) | LG Chocolate 3 (on Verizon) |
| Score | 7.73 | 8.09 | 8.34 |
| Received Sound Frequency Response Graph |  |
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| Cell Phone | Sony Ericsson W580i (on AT&T) | Samsung Beat (on T-Mobile) | Samsung M520 (on Sprint) |
| Score | 7.65 | 8.12 | 9.12 |
| Received Sound Frequency Response Graph |  |
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Sound Send Frequency Response (8.50)
To complement the previous test, here we focus on the quality of the sound sent by the phone. Our testing equipment and software evaluates this by transmitting a known range of sounds through the phone's microphone on a test call, and then analyzing how accurately the sounds are actually transmitted by the phone. As with the sound receive frequency response test, the red lines show the outer limits which should not be surpassed, and ideal performance would be a smooth curve through the middle of these limits.
The W350's Sound Send Frequency Response chart
In this test, the W350 again hits the limits, though this time at the very start and at the very end of the frequencies prescribed by the limits. Sounds at these frequencies may not transmit at all, resulting in clipped speech to the person on the other end of the line. Relatively, this is better performance by the W350 in comparison to the sound it receives, and it scores in the middle of the pack of our comparison phones here.
| Cell Phone | Sony Ericsson W350 | Nokia 5310 (on T-Mobile) | LG Chocolate 3 (on Verizon) |
| Score | 8.50 | 8.67 | 7.95 |
| Sound Sent Frequency Response Graph |  |
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| Cell Phone | Sony Ericsson W580i (on AT&T) | Samsung Beat (on T-Mobile) | Samsung M520 (on Sprint) |
| Score | 6.17 | 7.38 | 8.21 |
| Sound Sent Frequency Response Graph |  |
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Handset Side Tone (8.04)
Side tone is the amount of your own voice piped back to you to help you assess how loudly you're speaking. If too little of your own voice is piped back to you, you may think you're not speaking loudly and compensate accordingly. If too much of your own voice is piped back to you, you may think you're speaking too loudly, and adjust by speaking more quietly. Either situation will likely cause problems for the person to whom you're speaking. Experts define the ideal level of side tone at 18 dB, and the W350 comes in a little higher than this at 19.96 dB, which may cause you to speak more quietly than you need to since you'll hear more of your own voice than is ideal. Our comparison phone that comes closest to this ideal is the W350's big brother, the Sony Ericsson W580i, at 18.77 dB.
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