Sony Ericsson W350 Cell Phone Review - Software
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Marianne Schultz Published on November 12, 2008 Comment on this |
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| The W350's operating system is straightforward and easy to navigate, though the lack of a dedicated home key can make backing out of a deep menu systems a bit annoying. It can run Java apps that are available free on the web or purchased through AT&T. Web browsing is not the best experience with the W350's tiny screen, but its browser is still capable and offers features not available on other comparable phones. | |
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OS (3.50)
The W350's operating system is a proprietary one and we evaluate these using a limited points range based on their ease of use, stability, and other factors, such as intuitiveness. Smartphone operating systems, like the Palm or Symbian operating systems, earn standard scores in this area.
The main menu
The W350's OS was stable for us during our review period and fairly easy to use. The most irritating issue we encountered was the need to use the back button repeatedly to return to the home screen - without a dedicated home key, or even having the clear key assigned to this function, it could take several presses to back out of deep menu levels to get back to the home screen. Simply closing the phone and opening it back up did not help, either - you are simply returned to the last place you were when you re-open the phone. Yet all in all, the W350's OS is on par with other competing non-smartphone operating systems found on our comparison phones, each with their quirks and issues, but still functional to make most tasks easy and even a pleasure at times.
Home Screen Score (5.0)
The W350's home screen presents the information you'd expect to provide an overview of the phone's status. In the top left is the signal strength indicator and connection type symbol, and the battery icon is in the top right. Icons showing Bluetooth status, missed calls, and new text messages appear at the top of the screen as well. At the bottom right are the time and date, just above the label for the right soft menu key. There is no way to display upcoming appointments or tasks on the home screen, though it is possible to set a single note from the Notes application to appear on the home screen. Overall, the W350's provides basic information to let you know what's going on with the device itself, but it won't provide you with any useful information at a glance to help you keep a busy day on track, though it's not a large screen to begin with.
The home screen
Extensibility (3.0)
Java applications like Google Maps and Opera can be installed on the W350, and AT&T offers a few applications through their AT&T Mall, to which there's a link in the main menu. Like the Sony Ericsson W580i, 3rd party applications cannot be installed and run natively on the W350.
Customizability (4.0)
As with the Sony Ericsson W580i, the home screen wallpaper can be changed and themes can be applied to change the icon sets and overall look and feel of the interface. No changes can be made to the fonts globally and menu items cannot be re-arranged.
OS Responsiveness (6.0)
Overall, the W350's operating system was pretty snappy, and the only time we encountered any lag was when opening the video player application - this took long enough for us to wonder whether or not the key press had even registered.
Browser Features (7.0)
The W350's browser handles WAP and HTML pages, as well as Javascript elements. It cannot handle frames, Java, or Flash. Images are supported, as are cookies, passwords, encryption, and RSS feeds. This is a decent offering for a feature phone, though you'll have to look elsewhere if you want tabbed browsing and other advanced features.
Browsing Interface (5.5)
Full web sites are compressed horribly on the W350's tiny screen, so WAP or mobile-specific sites will become your best friends to avoid such painful sights. There are options to show the text only on sites, view pages in full screen mode so that the spaces normally saved for the status bar at the top and the labels for the soft menu keys at the bottom are used as well. There's also a zoom function that allows you to use the up and down buttons on the D-pad to zoom in and out to view more or less of a page at once. As on the Sony Ericsson W580i, there are keypad shortcuts assigned by default to get you quickly to bookmarks, the zoom view, and more.
Viewing the Wirelessinfo.com site on the W350
The browser's history is saved between sessions, a nice difference compared to the Nokia 5310 that erases its history every time you close the browser, though it can't be searched.
The browser's history
Bookmarks are easy to save and can be organized into folders, and links to them can easily be sent via text message or Bluetooth. Pages can even be saved for off-line viewing. Clearing cookies, passwords, and the cache can be done manually. Overall, getting around the browser is easy and there are decent features to make quick browsing a piece of cake.
The browser's bookmarks
Browser Access (6.67)
Since browsing speeds are heavily depending on the cellular network signal strength and speeds, we don't do a timing test for browser access. Instead, we count how many key presses are required to access the browser and navigate to a website, counting the entry of the URL as one press only. On the W350, this took 6 steps and was greatly aided by the fact that the center select button of the D-pad takes you straight to the browser, where only a few more steps were needed to enter the URL.
Gaming (3.0)
The W350 comes with demo versions of 4 games out of the box, including Tetris by Electronic Arts. It would be nice if the W350 came with at least 1 full version of a game. As it stands, you'll have to spend some money to download a game to help you kill time with your phone.
The pre-loaded demo games
At the top of the list in the Games menu within the Entertainment folder, there's a link that takes you right to the games section of AT&T's store. Here, games are sorted by category, and more demos can be downloaded for free, though we didn't see any free full versions of games right off the bat.
With the D-pad and numeric keypad, game control is a snap on the W350, allowing you to bowl virtually and race hotrods with relative ease.
Calculator (2.50)
The W350 has a calculator, found in the Organizer folder in the main menu. It can perform basic arithmetic functions and save results to memory for follow-on calculations. Though for nested calculations and scientific and financial calculations, you'll need to look elsewhere.
The calculator
Alarm (7.0)
The W350's Alarm application, also found in the Organizer folder in the main menu, offers 5 alarms that can be customized to suit your needs. Alarms can be made recurring for any day or number of days in a week, and the alarm can be chosen for each alarm separately. You can also set a picture for an alarm, though we're not quite sure why this is even an option for an alarm, and you can change the name of each alarm so you can tell which one is which at a glance. When an alarm goes off, it can be dismissed immediately, or snoozed in 9-minute intervals, which cannot be changed. This is decent alarm functionality, though it would be nice to see more recurrence options beyond days of the week.
The alarms application
Document Software (0.0)
The W350 does not include any software to view and/or edit documents directly on the device.
Other Software (0.0)
The W350 does not include any other software that significantly adds to its functionality.
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