Sony Ericsson w300i

Maybe my preference is borne out of an appreciation for dependable function over sleek form factor - I'm so caught up in Nielsenism in my work, that it carries over into my purchasing decisions. Perhaps I'm carrying over the Biblical principle of looking past outward appearances to the heart and applying a sort of Christian aesthetic to what I buy, picking something that works over something that just glitters.^[1]

Or maybe I'm just cheap.

Whatever my motivations, it's clear that I like things that work well and are beautiful, like the iPod.When product designers achieve this through simple elegance, I'm impressed. Make it cost-effective, and they've just about won me as a customer.

So that was the mindset I had when I started looking for a new cell phone after my trusty Samsung C207 died somewhere in Kansas during the Race Across America. I briefly toyed with the idea of getting an unlocked MOTOFONE, which meets all my ideals for a well-designed product - developed for third-world countries, it's a low-cost option with great battery life, great sound quality, great screen visibility, and not much else. Fancy that, a phone that's a phone, as opposed to a phone/camera/toaster/cure for cancer! Unfortunately, the phone isn't available for retail in the US, and I opted out of purchasing one for convenience's sake.

This basically left me with the four or five "free" phones my provider offered as upgrades. A quick comparison of average user reviews oh Phone Scoop revealed two clear leaders in the pack: the LG CU400 and the Sony Ericsson w300i, which both had high, near-identical user review scores (both on Phone Scoop and CNET), and both met a few base criteria: great call quality, great battery life, and clamshell form factor (I got annoyed by how often my otherwise-reliable Samsung would unlock in my pocket and connect to the Ringtones website, leading to costly data usage charges on my bill). It was funny how many of the reviews lauded the phones for not being RAZRs. I have a half dozen friends who own RAZRs, and it seems almost every one has some sort of complaint about the phone, so I treated not being a RAZR as high praise.

In the end, the Sony Ericsson won out, mostly for its significantly longer battery life between charges, a reported 16.7 days on standby(!). The LG's battery life is respectable at 12.5 days, but I kept running into user reviews that said the CU400's longevity was exaggerated.

Having had the w300i for a few days, I'm happy with my choice. My biggest concern was the user interface -- it's ironic that someone as big into good interface design as myself would pick a phone that received a decent bit of criticism for its UI. The lack of dedicated "Call" and "End Call" buttons is a little weird, but only took minutes to get used to, as did the much-maligned "fishscale" design of the buttons. Many people complained of frequently misdialing numbers; I've yet to do so (of course, I might be a slow dialer). The call quality is fantastic, almost on par with land lines. I was most surprised at how clear people sound through the included headphones. The phone also has its share of nice touches that show some forethought -- the Walkman and audio alarms work even if you have the phone on silent, for example. Seems obvious, but my last phone's alarms would only vibrate if I kept it on silent. The built-in camera and MP3 player didn't really factor into my decision, but they're decent. The former, in particular, was poo-pooed in reviews, but is good enough for my purposes -- taking pictures when my Canon isn't handy.

So final conclusion? The w300i isn't a RAZR. And boy I'm glad it isn't.

¹:This isn't so much an inherent or Christianity-borne preference as it is a philosophical bias trained into me by a career of designing usable interfaces and reading Signal vs. Noise. Like most everybody else, my instinct is to opt for prettiness, rather than reliability over prettiness or reliability and prettiness. Form over function is a choice that comes from learning to think like a user, instead of a buyer. As buyers, we tend to opt for more glitter (read: "features"). The New Yorker had a fascinating article about this, and Don Norman caused a little stir explaining it in usability circles by stating "Simplicity is Highly Overrated." So perhaps, my faith doesn't so much create this tendency in me as it affirms it.