Unlocked Mobile

Poor signal/daily charging
This is a great little phone EXCEPT for the fact that it drops calls left and right (it's not the service......my husband and friend have the same as I have with no problems) and you have to charge it constantly!

pink stinks
My mom and I both tried this phone. My husband tried it in black. All three of us had problems both sending and receiving calls. Half the time it didn't even register that we had missed a call. Other times it took us directly to voicemail without alerting that caller that they were being called. Tried Sony's recommendations--downloading updates via a usb cable sony sent, and a new charger. Tried AT&T's recommendation to "Turn it off while you shower and then turn it back on afterwards so it can receive updates from the tower." Nothing helped. I guess you get what you pay for--this was the free phone offered by AT&T when we set up our plan.

OKAY
I've had this phone for under a year. It has some great features for sure! I really liked the pink color and I am over 30. From the begining, everyone I spoke to on the phone said they could not hear me unless I spoke loudly into the bottom of the phone which was quite annoying esspecially in public. Then one day no one could hear me at all. I tried everything including reseting the phone, nothing worked. I am now in the market for a new phone in less than a year, what a waste.

Complete piece of garbage
Only let AT & T give you this phone if:
--you would rather not be bothered by irritating calls unless your phone is 100% charged
--you prefer to charge your phone every single day
--you prefer to receive messages and texts several hours after they are sent
--you like having really small buttons, making texting difficult
--you would rather not have information from voice mails available on screen--you have to actually listen to the voice mail just to find out who called!!!

That's right, this is the cell phone that while fully charged sometimes sends calls right to voice mail while turned on, then informs you of a missed call hours later; this issue increases in frequency when not 100% charged. I have had two of them and am battling AT & T to get something else. The worst thing is that, despite its obvious flaws, if you are a light user you don't realize the missed calls thing until you've had it for a while.

Additional problems: changing the volume on the speaker is a challenge--you can only do it while a call is in session and it is a very small button on the side of the phone--no setting on disk; you cannot see incoming caller id without opening the phone; the battery life is pathetically short; and the camera is utterly, totally worthless.

This phone would have been a stellar performer in, say, 1985. Now it just sucks. Contrary to another reviewer's opinion about it "not" being "terrible overall," I think that yes, it is indeed terrible, overall and every other possible way.

Low-end hardware, some good features added.
The SonyEricsson Z-series, and some of the T-series, are their lowest-cost models. They typically have shorter battery life than the K- or W-series models, slower processors, and lower sound quality (but still OK). On the up side, they are often a little fancier-looking. The z310 is typical in those areas.

I think the z310 is OK, but I was more satisfied with the w200, so I will compare this phone to that.

Email client:
- I really like having this, and not all low-end phones include it. The w200 has it as well. Email pictures and sounds to friends instead of using MMS (which will degrade them into smaller files).
- It's not instant email delivery like a Blackberry, but it is faster to check than using a web-based email page.

RSS reader:
- It's integrated with the browser and messaging menu, and can update automatically. On this phone, it can basically only handle headlines, while better models can load a couple sentences or even a paragraph of the update. I guess it is afraid of using up memory. I don't think any other low-price phones have this at all.
- The w200 does not have the RSS reader integrated, it's a Java application that has to be "opened", so the z310 actually wins here.

Display:
- Pretty good for STN type. 128x160.
- It's about the same as the w200.

Outer display:
- Hard to see in the sun. Limited area for displaying info, and various icon alerts disappear after a while. The w200's main display is better for checking the time.

Menu:
- The menu looks pretty good. It appears to be the same setup as the w200, which is pretty good. An improvement over previous z-series models.
- On both phones, the main screen conveniently includes the time of your next alarm, as well as any running timers.

Sound:
- Both the ringer and the earpiece are loud enough to be good, but have a slight muffle at the high end. The w200 doesn't ring quite as loud, but sounds a little clearer.

Battery life:
- SonyEricsson rates the z310 at 7 hours talk, 300 standby. The w200 is 7 hours talk, and I think 370 standby. It seems like a bigger difference than that, so I wouldn't recommend the z310 if you make a lot of calls. Previous z-series, as well as the older t290, also fell well short of the battery claims. The w200 seems to do a lot better.

Java applications:
- Opera Mini and Google Maps, which I consider the two most useful Java applications, both run in their most recent, full-featured versions.
- However, now and then when I try to download a file from a website using Opera, the z310 will tell me it can't handle that without closing a Java application (ie, Opera Mini). The w200 seems to handle it OK.

Media files:
- It can play MP3, MIDI, and even AMR (mainly only good for voice notes).
- It can display standard graphic file formats, including PNG which many phones can't use. I prefer PNG for phone graphics (and any other application) because it can be converted and resized with much less noise and artifacts.
- It can't play 3GP videos. It doesn't just lack the recording ability, but can't play them either. It doesn't have much memory to be recording or downloading videos, but it would be nice if you could at least watch a short clip a friend sends in MMS. The w200 can record and play video.
- Any sound file can be selected for ringers, alarms, or message alerts. Other SonyEricsson and Nokia models also do this, but many Samsungs only allow new ringers to be downloaded.

Organizer features:
- All the standard stuff--calendar, tasks, notes, timers and stopwatch, calculator, converter.
- It also has a voice memo, but as SonyEricsson often does it has been placed under the Entertainment menu for some silly reason.

Camera:
- Common cheap VGA (aka 640x480, aka 0.3 megapixels) on both the z310 and w200.

Memory:
- 14MB. The w200 has 156.

EDGE data speed:
It isn't as fast as a lot of other EDGE phones, and it doesn't have a huge amount of memory for downloading things anyway. Even though the w200 only has GRPS, normally a good deal slower, the z310 is not providing as much of a benefit from EDGE as other phones do.

Keypad:
The keypad on the z310 is not so great. It's a layer of plastic/rubber stuff over the metal contact plates, and my fingers give out faster than with the w200's proper button setup.


The z310 isn't terrible overall, and I will probably use it for a while until I get bored with it. But if I had to use just one phone, I would rather have the w200.