Syfy Animo

I know it has been a long time since I post any new article in this website because I was very busy with work. Well now I have some free time, I am getting back up with Sony Ericsson F305 review that I have been using for the past 3 months.

Let’s start with the price it cost me RM 450.00 including the 1 GB micro SD and screen protector. With this price you are getting quite a lot of value too. It comes with 2 MP camera that take video and still picture, integrated micro stereo loud speaker, a large bright 2 inch screen, tri-band, Internet (WAP Push) accessibility, lots of Java games, FM radio and many more. The phone styling looks like “ipod” and with comes with a glossy smooth surface and available in black and white. Size of the phone is reasonably slim at 14.6mm that made it easy to put inside pockets. When considering all the features available and design of the F305 it is clearly targeted at youngsters that enjoy games and music.

The main highlight of F305 is the 11 preloaded Java games that vary from simple puzzle games to platform 3D action adventure. Among the 11 games 3 of the games require motion to play like the Wii so you will be playing Bowling with the phone rather than the keypad so make sure to put on the strap before playing, you would not want to throw away the phone yet . All the games performances are quite good and loading times are fast too considering when they are Java applications which require more processing power.

On the multimedia side, the most impressive part here is the integrated stereo loud speaker which is able to delivery very impressive treble and details but the bass is a bit flat for such a small speaker. Music playbacks are also good with clarity and detail but the FM Radio reception is just the only problems here. Don’t expect to get good reception inside building because can’t really expect those wired earphone antennas to be good with FM reception.

The 2 MP integrated digital camera for a phone camera standard it is consider good with low noise but quite pixilated due to the small sensor size and the performance video and image performance is acceptable.

On the usage side the buttons are smalls and will take quite a while to get use to and the buttons pressed feel solid. The 2 inch screen is so bright that I have to dim it down from the default setting and quite usable on a very bright daylight outside. The screen colours and contrast just look brilliants. The user interface is not really that intuitive or friendly for some frequent settings and have to do with additional clicks just to access it like the phone profiles and SMS otherwise it is pretty much direct access just the matter of getting use to and GUI performance is reasonably fast. The biggest complain here, since this is a slide phone I would expect to easily slide open the phone using my thumb but that is not the case because the phone is made of glossy smooth surface and nearly flat button surface, it is not easy for my thumb to get a good grip and with my sweaty thumb made matter worst so sometimes I have to end up using 2 hand just to slide open. Only after lots of practice then only I am used to slide open the phone but still feel the grip is lacking. The handset speakers (not the integrated loud speakers) sound clear but loudness is a bit short of supply even a max volume. It is good for quiet environment but for noisy environment I have to put it close to my ears to listen and I am not the person who likes to put the headset near the ears for long time due to heat after long usage.

Overall the Sony Ericsson F305 is very well spec cell phone just suffer from a few usage issues like the sliding grip, user interface access, headset speaker not as loud and lack of indication (especially making calls not sure whether connection have been establish so have to keep hearing from the headset and no dim display for any updates so I have to slide open find the updates). I have left out the Internet access using the F305 in this review because I felt it is useless to surf the web with the tiny screen and using the keypad and should be kept for emergency use only. Note that the phone USB cable is not included in the package and have to be purchase separately, bad Sony! But l really like the F305 battery life of 8 hours talk time and 400 hours of standby which means I only need charge the phone once a week or sometimes longer and the battery life can be shown in percentage like 45% battery life left rather than a bar indicator that does not really give people the confident on how long the battery will last but to view the battery life percentage you have search in the phone status menu. Also not forgetting it is also reasonably low SAR at 0.67 W/kg. If you are able to adapt and get use to the minor usage issues, this phone does offer a lot features and the specs are very impressive but I just wish Sony Ericsson can include Outlook email PC sync up with the phone calendar that would be very nice to have.

Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Posted in: Gadget by Animo / Tags: Cell Phone