Sony Ericsson W350 Cell Phone Review - Multimedia

Living up to its Walkman reputation, the W350's music player is pretty darn good, offering many features that enable you to enjoy your music on the go. Video playback is a completely different story, unfortunately, since the W350 couldn't play back any of our test video files, even those in common formats.

Accessing Music Software (24.16)
When the W350's flip is closed, the Walkman player software opens automatically. This feature is a bit annoying if you're used to seeing a screensaver come up by default when a phone is closed or put in to standby mode, but it works quite well if you use the W350 as a music player often. In this test, we time how long it takes to go from a closed, unlocked state to the moment a song starts playing, and using the dedicated music control keys on the outside of the flip is the fastest way to make this happen on the W350, taking only 0.83 seconds for a song to begin playing once the play button on the front of the flip was pressed. This is close to the performance of the Nokia 5310, another phone with external dedicated music controls that started music playback almost instantly. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Dedicated Music Controls (16.0)
As expected, a Walkman-branded phone from Sony Ericsson has a number of dedicated music controls that can be accessed when the phone is in the closed position. As mentioned in the previous section, the dedicated key on the top of the left side opens the music application. The flip itself has 5 buttons to control music playback - a D-pad allowing you to scroll up, down, left and right in the menu system and song lists and a center select/button that acts as a play/pause button. We should note that these buttons aren't embedded in the flip itself - when you press on these buttons, you are simply pushing through to the keypad buttons directly below.

A button the top of the phone locks the phone down so that button presses are no longer recognized - quite handy to ensure you don't inadvertently adjust the volume or switch to the next song. Speaking of volume, the volume rocker on the right side of the phone adjusts the volume of music played through the loudspeaker or headphones as well.

You shouldn't have any problems at all controlling music playback on the W350 with all of these dedicated buttons.

Music Software Functionality and Organization (8.0)
The W350's music software has a decent number of features to manage your music and keep your ears happy on the go. It provides 4 view of your music where you can see your music by artist, album, song, or playlists. In any view, you can start typing the artist's name, the album title, etc. to find what you're looking for. It's not possible to assign a rating to any song, album, or artist. The software allows you to create and edit playlists right on the device and it had no problem playing and identifying the tags on our test unprotected MP3, WMA, and AAC files.

A song playing

Album art can be displayed but it can be a little hard to make out on the tiny screen. Songs saved to the memory card are automatically added to the library, so you don't have to do anything special to make sure the W350 sees them. There are 5 equalizer presets to select from: Normal, Bass, Mega Bass, Voice, and Treble Boost. The Play Mode option in the Settings menu allows music to be looped or shuffled. Two skins are included to change the look of the player, with no effect on functionality.

The main view in the Walkman application

As previously mentioned, it's easy as pie to access the software using the dedicated button the left side of the phone. With the flip closed, the external pseudo-buttons allow easy navigation to play and control music playback, but the flip must be opened to gain access to the menu using the right soft menu key to create playlists and change settings. Music can easily be played in the background while accessing other applications on the phone.

Online Song Downloading (7.0)
AT&T offers the Napster Mobile music subscription service throuch which music can be downloaded over the air directly to the W350. This service costs $7.49 per month for 5 songs, or songs cost $1.99 when purchased individually.

The service can only be accessed through a web portal, and backing out of the browser will stop any downloads in process. Downloading songs is slow over AT&T's EDGE network, so it won't quite be instant gratification when purchasing music.

Streaming (0.0)
The W350 could not stream audio in MP3, WMA, or Real formats from any of the web sites we use to test this. In the AT&T Music folder in the main menu, there is an XM Radio application through which music can be streamed, but this is a paid service that requires a monthly service and we award no points for it.

Podcast Support (0.0)
The W350 has no software on it that allows direct subscription and downloading of podcasts directly to the device. Podcasts can only be transferred to the memory card manually or by syncing with software like Windows Media Player, and they are treated just like music files that can be accessed and played in the music player software.

Music Sync with PC (7.0)
The W350 does not come with any music syncing software in the box. With its USB cable and a Memory Stick Micro card installed, the phone will appear as a USB storage device on a computer to which music can be dragged and dropped. On PCs, Windows Media Player will recognize it and allow it to be set up to sync media, or users can also download a media player program from Sony Ericsson's site. Mac users are out of luck for automated syncing software and will be able to use the USB drag-and-drop method, or send files via Bluetooth to the W350.

Music Formats and DRM (4.0)
The W350 had no problems with the test AAC, MP3, and WMA files we loaded on to a memory card, and it's compatible with the WMA DRM scheme used by Napster Mobile.

Music Interruption (9.0)
When a call comes in during music playback, the music stops so you that you can take the call. After the call ends, music playback resumes automatically.

Video Software Access (3.15)
In this test, we time how long it takes to get a video playing, starting from the closed and unlocked state and ending at the moment a video starts. We load test video files onto every phone to evaluate phones for this section of our review, but the W350 wasn't able to play any one of them, which will be discussed more in the Video Formats section below. So to do this test, we navigated to a demo video that came with the W350 out of the box that played without any problems, taking an average time of 6.34 seconds putting the W350 second-to-last among our comparison phones. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Video Controls (7.0)
Video can only be played with the flip open, and the D-pad provides control over video playback, in addition to the soft menu keys. Once a video is playing the left and right buttons of the D-pad rewind and fast-forward when pressed and held, and skip backward and forward to the previous and next video. Both the D-pad's center select button and the left soft menu key can start and pause playback. The volume keys on the right of the phone adjust volume up and down, and the right soft menu key brings up a menu where the video window size can be adjusted to full screen to to auto-fit the window.

The W350's demo video playing

Video Software & Organization (3.0)
Stored videos can be viewed in the My Stuff folder and they appear in 2 x 2 thumbnails navigated using the D-pad. This view can be changed to lists with thumbnails or without. Videos can also be sorted by name, date, type, or size. In any view, entering letters via multi-tap with the key pad will search the files and highlight the closest matching file. Folders can be created to further organize videos to your liking.

The W350's video album software

Videos can be moved, copied, or renamed directly on the W350, though no other editing can be done. Files added to the memory card are automatically identified as videos and shown in this folder.

Video Sync with PC (0.0)
As with music, the W350 does not include any software in the box with which to sync videos. Here again, Windows Media Player will work with PC users as long as a Memory Stick Micro is inserted in the phone, or the Sony Ericsson Media Manager software can be downloaded from Sony Ericsson's site. Mac users are restricted to USB dragging and dropping or Bluetooth file exchange.

Video Formats (0.0)
Unlike the Sony Ericsson W580i, the W350 was unable to play any of our test files in any format. It's disappointing that the W350 is so limited in this area compared to its big brother and every other one of our comparison phones that were able to at least play some of our test files in common formats.

Video DRM (0.0)
The W350 does not support any of the popular video DRM formats for any video file types.

Video Playback Smoothness (0.0)
To evaluate video playback smoothness, we normally view specific test files on the phone and check for any lagging, skipping, or other issues. Since the W350 was unable to play any of our test files, we were unable to evaluate this area and the W350 earns no points here.

Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The W350 is not capable of direct video downloads to the device itself.

Video Streaming unscored
Video streaming standards are all over the place, so we don't score this area but at least see if a device is capable of it. Like all of our comparison phones, the W350 is unable to stream video from any of the test sites we tried.

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