Sony Ericsson R306 Radio (R306i / R306a
/ R306c)
Discontinued 24th January 2008
The Sony Ericsson R306 Radio
is not a radio, despite the name and its looks.
Instead, this is an inexpensive clamshell phone
that looks like nothing else we can think of.
If
you look at the R306, it's hard to tell just what it's
about. On the front are five buttons with "up",
"down" and "1", "2" and
"3" on them. Flip it around, the the R306
has a 1.3 megapixel camera. So what is it? A radio?
A camera? Both? But it says "Sony Ericsson"
on it, and they only make phones, don't they?
The design philosophy is interesting,
and it applies to both the R306 Radio and its sibling
R300 handset. Not everyone can afford a phone with a
multimedia player and expandable memory, and if all
you really want is a radio then why not make the radio
function easy to use by including dedicated keys?
So, when closed the Sony Ericsson R306
resembles a small handheld radio with built-in stereo
speakers. But we understand that it opens up into a
pretty conventional clamshell phone with a standard
numeric keypad and basic 128 x 160 pixel display on
the inside.
There's
no MP3 player on the R306, although it does support
MP3 ringtones. However, it does include Bluetooth, a
wap browser, speakerphone and Sony Ericsson's TrackID
technology to help the phone identify the music that
is playing. There's no expandable memory, but the R306
can record radio transmissions onto its internal 5MB
of memory. Stereo wired headphones are included in the
standard sales package.
Despite the novel radio features, the
Sony Ericsson R306 is not a hugely sophisticated phone.
Apart from keeping the price down, this simple design
also helps with the battery life - the R306 has an impressive
9 hours talktime and up to 17 days standby time.
The battery should be able to support 27 hours of radio
playback.
Underneath is all, this is a tri-band
GSM mobile phone. The R306i (international) and R306c
(China) versions are 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz devices,
and the R306a (Americas) is an 850 / 1800 / 1900 MHz
device.
No guidance on pricing was given, but
this should be a pretty low cost phone. You will have
to wait a while for it though - Sony Ericsson say that
the R306 will be available in Q3 2008, in Coffee Black
and Champagne White colour combinations.
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Sony
Ericcson R306 / R306i /
R306a / R306c at a glance
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Available:
|
Q3
2008
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Network:
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GSM
900 / 1800 / 1900 (R306i
/ c) GSM 850 / 1800 /
1900 (R306a)
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Data:
|
GPRS
|
Screen:
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128x160
pixels, 65k colours
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Camera:
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1.3
megapixels
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Size:
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Medium
clamshell 90 x 48 x 16mm
/ 93 grams
|
Bluetooth:
|
Yes
|
Memory
card:
|
No
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Infra-red:
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No
|
Polyphonic:
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Yes
|
Java:
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Yes
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Battery
life:
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9 hours talk / 17 days standby
|
|
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