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By Joseph Hanlon, CNET.com.au
Mar 17, 2008

After the success of last year's S500i Sony Ericsson seem to be on a good run with low spec pre-paid phone models, and the T303 is set to extend this trend.



Upside
Look at it, would ya? The T303 is as cute as a button, an absolute pre-requisite for a phone without features. From the pictures we've seen so far the T303 appears to be well designed, with all the keys, above and below the slider, being well spaced and easily accessed. This will be the first thing we'll test when we see the T303 in the CNET labs.

Part of the phone's chic design is a mirror-finished screen similar to the LG's Shine, amongst others. Sony Ericsson seem to be fully aware that you can make a phone cheap and cheerful without making it drab looking.

The T303 packs a 1.3-megapixel camera under the slider, although there's no flash. The phone will also play your music and tune into your favourite FM radio stations.

We knew Sony Ericsson were scraping the bottom of the barrel for selling points when we read "predictive text" and "alarm clock" on the main features list. These are both useful specs, but not necessarily the kinds of features you dedicate press release real estate to unless you're desperate.

Downside
The absence of 3G support is this first of many features to jump out at us. Considering the popularity of the quad-band GSM S500i we don't think the slower data speeds will put too many in this market off the T303i.

Another gentle let-down that probably won't impact on its performance in stores too greatly is the handset's QQVGA (128 x 160 pixels) screen resolution. If you haven't seen a QQVGA low res display recently imagine a time-travelling phone from the '90s that bends the fabric of space and time with the sole purpose of reminding us how crap phone displays were back in the day. This won't mean the on-screen text will be illegible, it just won't look very sharp or sexy.

What really shocked us was no expandable memory. The information we've received from Sony Ericsson states 8MB of internal memory, which is fine for holding the operating platform, but without an M2 memory stick reader is there really any point in have a music player or a camera?

Overall
The T303i will be trading on its looks, and by its looks alone we predict the T303 should be reasonably popular. With the low end specs we're guessing Sony Ericsson will keep the price low, in the vicinity of AU$100-150. To ask people to pay more than that for this handset would be pushing the friendship.

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