Sony Ericsson S312

Available now
7th April 2009

The Sony Ericsson S312 appears to be functionally almost identical to last year's S302 model. It's a fairly basic 2 megapixel "snapshot" phone with a flash, a 2" 176 x 220 pixel display, Bluetooth, an FM radio, multimedia player and expandable memory. As with the S302, the S312 is a lightweight phone with good battery life, and presumably it offers good value for money too.

Although cosmetically the S312 is prettier to look at than the S302, the other differences are not very obvious. One feature that the S312 has is a dedicated "video record" button, which is quite handy. Also, the camera shortcut keys light up when the camera is active. Additionally, the S312's FM radio now has RDS.

Sony Ericsson have managed to squeeze another hour's talktime into the phone, giving an impressive 8 hours talktime and 16 days standby time. Surprisingly, the S312 is only a dual-band GSM 900 / 1800 device, where the S302 was quad-band.. will this make a difference to most consumers? No. The S312 is about a gram heaver than the S302 at 80.1 grams.

No guidance was given on price, but the older S302 is currently around €100 SIM-free, so expect the S312 to be a little more at launch. It isn't an exciting phone, but the good looks and low price will give it a certain amount of "shelf appeal" in retail outlets when it becomes available sometime in Q3 2009.