The W350 brings Sony Ericsson's Walkman brand to the Pay-as-you-go mobile phone user. This mobile looks very distinctive and is small and light. Indeed at just 75g there aren't many mobiles you will come across that weigh less. At just 104mm tall, 43mm wide and 11mm thick it is comfortable in the hand and should fit neatly into smaller pockets.

This mobile phone sports an unusual physical design. It looks like a slider but in fact has a front portion which is hinged at the bottom of the phone and pulls down to reveal the number pad. When flipped up and sitting flush to the rest of the fascia, this section contains front-facing music playback controls and vertical scrolling keys.

This is all pretty neat, but the flip-section is thin and flimsy. We found it was easily bowed and it could be vulnerable to getting broken or maybe simply snapping off.

There isn't a lot of built-in memory for music fans to store tunes. The mere 14MB will need to be expanded upon if you want to listen to music seriously. The Memory Stick Micro slot can be found under the battery cover and is easy to get to without the need to remove the battery.

The headset has a proprietary connector at the mobile phone end. It connects to the side of the phone and like all Sony Ericsson's headset connectors is very chunky. It looks incongruous against the slim and light phone and makes it impossible to slip the phone into a narrow pocket. There is a 3.5mm connector just past the microphone so you can use your favourite headset if you want to. Battery life for music playback was above average and there is an FM radio.

The screen is very small, measuring just 1.8 inches across the diagonal. It is short on pixels too, offering just 176 x 220 where most other mobiles these days manage 240 x 320.

This is a tri-band phone, so if you want 3G you'll need to look elsewhere, and the camera left us a bit cold. It shoots at just 1.3 megapixels which is well below par even for an average mobile phone these days.

Should you wish to use the web there is a browser here, along with an RSS reader, but the screen is really too small for this to be a serious, frequently undertaken task.

Verdict
This Walkman branded handset certainly does play music and it has a novel design. But a lot of compromises have been made in order to reach a low price.

Company: Sony Ericsson

Contact: 08705 237237

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