This is Sony Ericsson’s approach to bringing the Walkman experience to the mass market. Apparently that wasn’t the W550/W600, with its better screen and camera (leave that stuff for Cybershots ). The W300 uses a humble 1.8″ 126×160 pixel screen with not-so-humble 262.000 colors, and as you know, the camera is just VGA without flash and 4x digital zoom (although SE’s VGA cameras can interpolate images to megapixel resolution without much quality loss). The external screen, while it is 101×80 pixels and monochrome, shows a cool orange on black background design rather than the old black on gray or blue. The star in the package (and advantage for music users against the W550/W600) is the Memory Stick M2 slot (up to 1gb cards available soon), and the 256mb card included in the box; the internal memory being just 20mb. The side volume keys integrate a play/pause music button, I wonder how tactile they feel; how easy or not is it going to be to press the actual key you want to press. Other features include Radio FM, MegaBass, Bluetooth (doesn’t seem to support A2DP), Infrared, EDGE, Quadband GSM connectivity, and the usual Walkman stereo headphones/handsfree, in either black or gray depending on the color of the handset: Shadow Black or Shimmering White. We’re all fearing that it’s going to be a brick, but despite the bulky looks, at 90 x 47 x 24 mm it weighs the same 94 grams and it’s “only” 7mm taller than the tiny Z520 (which in some way it’s replacing); same width and thickness. But the Z520′s loop antena was huge compared to the W300′s, making it look a lot smaller than in numbers, so let’s wait till Cebit comparison photos for the veredict. Not the most beautiful SE design lately, but it certainly doesn’t hurt anybody to see external memory support in a low/mid range handset, don’t you think? Available all over the globe from Q2 this year.

W300 Official Page
W300 Press Release

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