Why You Can Trust CNET Sony Ericsson S312 review: Sony Ericsson S312
The S312 is a budget phone with a shiny screen that will appeal to magpies and narcissists across the land. It's small and lightweight too, as well as offering good call quality and satisfyingly clicky keys. If you don't have much to spend and don't mind having few features, it's worth considering
If you fancy the Sony Ericsson Xperia Pureness but you can't stump up the funds, the Sony Ericsson S312 may be just the ticket. It's a light, inexpensive phone with a shiny screen for gazing at your reflection.
Sony Ericsson S312
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
You can snag the S312 for free on a £15-per-month, 24-month contract. It's also available on a pay-as-you-go deal for around
£50, and can be had SIM-free for around £90.
Mirror, mirror, on
the phone
The S312 seems to have been inspired by the Pureness, and, for such an
affordable phone, it's pretty good-looking. The silver screen is very shiny, so don't
think of investing in the S312 unless you like looking at yourself. All that
shininess makes the screen harder to see in bright conditions, but it does make the phone stand out from the crowd.
Unlike the Pureness, the S312 has a full-colour screen underneath the gloss, with a straightforward user interface that won't upset anyone used to using a Sony Ericsson phone. The low resolution and blocky text betrays the phone's price point, however, as does its light weight. There are some fun features present, though, such as jazzy-looking animated screensavers.
Listen up
The phone will play your MP3s, and there's also an FM radio, but
there's no standard 3.5mm headphone jack, so you'll have to make do with the
plastic earbuds in the box. You'll also have to invest in a Memory Stick Micro memory card if
you want to store more than a few tunes, because the S312 has only 15MB of built-in storage.
Two-button treat
A memory card will also come in handy for storing photos and videos when the S312
tempts you to get snapping with its separate dedicated buttons for launching the camera
and video modes. We found the 2-megapixel camera refreshingly speedy at grabbing a
shot when we pressed the shutter button, but the phone takes a few seconds to write
the picture to the memory. The photos themselves are on a par with those of other
low-end phones, but the LED photo light does help brighten things up on dark
and stormy nights.
The keys on the keypad aren't separated, but they have a satisfyingly clicky feeling, and we had no trouble tapping out numbers and texts.The calls we made came in loud and clear, too. There's even a Web browser but, with no 3G, we wouldn't want to spend too much time surfing the Net. We appreciated that the S312 comes with Opera Mini pre-installed, because it's far superior to the native browser. But it's not the default browser, and it's buried in the applications folder, where it's rather hard to find.
Conclusion
If you like shiny surfaces, want a phone that's light enough to wear as an earring and are operating on a budget,
the Sony Ericsson S312 could be a good choice,
especially if you've been pining for an Xperia Pureness. A handful of fun
features and dedicated buttons for the camera and video modes keep things interesting, but, overall, the S312 is best suited as a second phone for nights out, or as a handset
for those who don't care much about phones in the first place.
Edited by Charles Kloet