Sony Ericsson R306 Radio is quite unusually set to revolve around one single thing - listening to radio on-the-go. Its built-in radio tuner works in both FM and AM. The lower midrange R306 Radio delivers on other fronts too - it packs a 1.3 megapixel camera plus Bluetooth and USB connectivity. It's compact enough but also offers two surprisingly capable stereo speakers. How's that for a flashback to the time when family life revolved around the radio. The dedicated external radio keys complete the feature set of that nifty little fella. You are welcome to tune in and see what it's like to spend some time with it.

FM/AM radio tuner with RDS and TrackID

AM tuner has two modes: 9 kHz (Americas and Japan) and 10 kHz (the rest)

Dedicated external radio controls

Tri-band GSM support

1.9" 65K-color TFT display of a 128 x 160 pixel resolution

Secondary monochrome external display of a 96 x 32 pixel resolution

1.3 megapixel camera

5MB of internal memory

Bluetooth

USB

Radio broadcasts recorder in MP3 format

Stereo speakers

Optimized design for desktop placing

External display has low daylight legibility due to the mirror finish

Radio is not that usable without the headset plugged in

Standard headset jack is huge

RDS readings not shown on external display

Stores 20 stations only for AM and FM bands combined

TrackID doesn't work with the radio

Announced in January 2008, Sony Ericsson R306 Radio is among the first handsets to drive heavily on the built-in radio tuner that is usually just an extra feature in most other handsets. When closed, the R306 certainly looks the part with dedicated radio keys and vintage radio looks. The Sony Ericsson R306 Radio is also unique for offering an AM radio tuner.

Anyway, the R306 Radio is a lower midrange handset and all specifications match that tag. We won't be expecting miracles from it, but by the sound of it (pun intended), we think that it just might deserve some attention.

So, tune in to our show as we explore the Sony Ericsson R306 Radio right after this jump.

Sony Ericsson R306 Radio has a stand-out design. The clamshell measures 90 x 47.9 x 15.8mm when closed and weighs 93g. The 15.8mm thickness is far from slim by any standard but the chubby clamshell handles quite well.

The body is made of plastic but a few shiny silver elements here and there certainly make a difference.

The display is a 65K-color TFT unit with a resolution of 128 x 160 pixels. It measures 1.9 inches in diagonal but the low resolution has taken its toll on the appearance of the user interface.

The keypad is utterly flat and the space between keys is too much, so in the end tactility suffers. The D-pad is quite large too, but the confirmation center is small, rigid and not sufficiently elevated - the overall result is far from user-friendly. The upper direction of the D-pad is a fixed shortcut to the radio.

Around the D-pad there are two context keys, two receiver keys, a correction C key and a Shortcut key (much like the Activity menu key in more sophisticated Sony Ericsson handsets).

On the right-hand side of the Sony Ericsson R306 Radio there are no controls whatsoever. But there's a reason for that - on that side there are a couple of small rubber knobs that allow the R306 to stand on your desk (or any other even surface for that matter).

On the left-hand side you can find the volume rocker, the dedicated radio key and the regular Sony Ericsson Fast port.

On the outside the Sony Ericsson R306 is covered in matt black plastic that doesn't catch fingerprints easily. The centerpiece on the front panel is the glossy film coating of the external display. Below it there are five shortcut keys - a couple of them are used to switch between stored radio stations and the other three are used for quick access to three custom selected favorite stations.

Removing the battery cover is easy enough - it comes off with a slide, unlike most recent Sony Ericsson handsets with their pry-to-open rear covers.

Underneath the R306 cover is the standard Sony Ericsson BST-38 Li-Ion battery with a capacity of 930 mAh. It's quoted at up to 410 hours of standby time and up to 9 hours of talk time.

Holding the R306 in hand definitely gives a lightweight and compact feel. The plastic panels are quite nice to touch. Unfortunately, when it comes to ergonomics and the simple task of opening the clamshell, the R306 loses some points. The R306 Radio is really hard to flip single-handedly - you have to use both of your hands every time.

The R306 display is nothing special really. It's a low-end TFT display capable of displaying 65K colors and it offers the rather low resolution of 128 x 160 pixels. We are so used to QVGA resolution now that everything below that feels… well, insufficient.

Other than that, the display contrast is not on par either but backlighting is ok. You're also not to expect anything fancy from it under direct sunlight - legibility certainly suffers.

Moving ahead to the backlighting of the keypad we've got to note it's a bit uneven but it's not that much of an issue.

The external display of Sony Ericsson R306 Radio is a kind of a mixed bag. Due to the high-gloss finish it's almost unusable in broad daylight - and we don't even mean direct sunlight here.

The secondary display shows info about the current station you've tuned to or, if the radio is not on, you can spot the clock and battery and signal status. And finally, the incoming call ID is also displayed here.

Sony Ericsson R306 Radio has a scaled-down version of the regular Sony Ericsson interface. It lacks in looks and its functionality is nowhere near the standard offering. It is similar to what we saw in Sony Ericsson T303.

Although there's no Flash Lite theme support, there are several upgrades over the core functionality of the UI, compared to the low-end peer Sony Ericsson T280 we previewed not so long ago. The major improvement is the tree soft key layout, which we love the most. Other than that, there is "My shortcuts" menu, tabbed settings, smart search, TrackID, etc.

The phonebook stores up to 1000 entries with a total of 2500 phone number fields available. As usual, you can choose whether the SIM contacts or the phone contacts should be default for the phonebook. Displaying both lists simultaneously is impossible. On a different note, a nice option allows you to auto save to SIM any new contacts that you're adding to the phone memory.

Contacts can be ordered by First or Last name. They are searched by gradual typing of the desired name.

Contact details include up to seven different phone numbers plus an email address, web address, custom image, ringtone and message tone, postal address details and, finally, a note and a birthday. So basically, with the Sony Ericsson R306 you get the same phonebook as with its bigger brothers.

When it comes to making calls, a nice feature is the Smart Search, which lists all available contacts in the phonebook starting with the digits typed on the standby screen. The search facility looks up both letter combinations in names, and phone numbers that start with the digits entered.

The Call log is divided into four different tabs. They are: All, Answered (Received), Dialed and Missed. When there are several calls made to a single contact, only the last one gets displayed.

The Sony Ericsson R306 Radio scored quite high in terms of loudspeaker performance. We shouldn't forget that it has two front-facing stereo speakers to deliver it. A nice surprise, even if it's purely an observation, is that the R306 had more bass than any other handset we've reviewed recently. It's obviously an attempt to get that key radio feature right on all sides.

R306 Radio has basic messaging functionality, with no email client onboard. What you get is text, picture and voice messaging. The Manage Messages function is not available but, luckily, sorting messages by category is at hand.

All messages use one Inbox. No matter what kind of message has been received, it goes to the shared Inbox. When composing a message, the character counter will alert you when you're 10 symbols short of the 160-character limit. The T9 dictionary goes without saying.

Users may opt to sort messages by category list, if a specific category has been defined for a message. Categories are fully customizable as well. You can also delete all messages in a given category. 

Furthermore, messages in categories can have their own sorting with Contact, Date, and size the available filters to choose from. Much like in Sony Ericsson W890, in the general inbox there is no indication if a message has been assigned a category.

Composing a picture/MMS message uses the same interface as most of the latest Sony Ericsson phones. Opening a new Voice message automatically starts the voice recorder. After the message has been recorded it can be sent immediately or played first.

The multimedia department is among the weakest points of the compact Sony Ericsson R306 Radio. There is only 5MB of onboard memory and no microSD expansion. There's no music player either, but at least you can use MP3 files as ringtones.

Images on the Sony Ericsson R306 Radio are only accessible via the File manager. Unfortunately, the viewing options are quite limited - there is no zoom function and image browsing is quite sluggish. Images can be sent via Bluetooth or MMS. Moving/copying/renaming are among the few other usable options.

Interestingly enough, the file manager couldn't open the 1.3 megapixel images produced by the camera. It returned an error message alerting of insufficient memory. Now this might be a simple bug of our pre-release handset but we don't know for sure.

Photos taken by the camera in 1 megapixel resolution open up just fine. But the presence of both 1.3 megapixel and 1 megapixel options in the camera menu leads us to believe that this might just be a regular handicap of the R306 and not a bug.

The integrated FM/AM radio tuner of Sony Ericsson R306 Radio has memory for 20 stations and supports RDS. Unfortunately, the RDS info is not displayed on the external display - only the name under which the station is stored appears there.

As far as AM bands are concerned, the R306 Radio supports AM 9 kHz (North America, South America and Japan) and AM 10 kHz (Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia). That's pretty well covered, we guess.

Unfortunately, the 20 radio stations memory is used for both the AM and FM radio stations.

The radio application doesn't have any equalizer presets, however there's a concert sound effect available. Subjectively speaking, radio broadcasts sound much better with it when you use the headset - you can toggle between the Normal and Concert modes with a press-and-hold of the external Radio key on the left side of the handset.

When you channel the radio sound to the external stereo speakers, an additional sound effect becomes available. It's called Volume boost and it's really up to the task. The Concert mode doesn't sound as good on the external speakers. When the speakers are on, you can toggle the Concert and Normal modes with a SHORT press on the external Radio key. We really don't know why the inconsistency. The volume boost mode however is only available through the menu of the Radio application.

Other than the standard functionality, users can also record a broadcast from the radio much like with the Sony Ericsson T303 we reviewed recently. The recordings are stored in MP3 format - there aren't any complex settings - you only have to choose between Normal and High quality mode. The High quality delivers a constant bitrate of 64Kbps@16KHz, but as we managed to confirm the recordings turn out with a quality inferior to the original radio broadcast.

Our biggest concern with the radio functionality of the Sony Ericsson R306 is the need to use the supplied headset as an antenna. Now that sounds like a regular deal on most other mobile handsets, but a radio-centric device like this one certainly calls for another solution.

In fact, you can turn the FM radio on without plugging the headset and it can even pick up some stronger radio signal but it's still a rather inadequate solution. If you hold it in your hand the reception gets a bit better to a… let's say… passable level. It's still not up to scratch for a radio-centric device.

That being said, we have the example of another solution that sounds much better - the O2 Cocoon we recently reviewed had a dedicated antenna cable supplied in the retail package - much like the one you get with your regular home stereo. With it you can still enjoy radio reception when your handset is docked on your desk and it can save you some of the mess that headsets usually create.

And finally, Sony Ericsson have created a custom headset for the Sony Ericsson R306 that makes things even worse. It has a huge jack - bigger than any other Sony Ericsson jack we've seen. And when we say huge we mean it - it increases the width of the R306 body by almost a half when plugged.

It has an aerial sign on it and its size suggests some sort of an enhanced antenna contraption - we don't know, and we don't really care either. The bulk you plug in for the radio to work properly totally ruined the experience for us. It gets in the way when you try to open the clamshell… It gets in the way when you try to press one of the keys on the left side… And did we mention it's darn huge?

Unfortunately, there is no TrackID music recognition feature in the radio application itself. There is a separate TrackID Java application in the R306 but you can't use it with the radio. It works only with external audio sources such as your home stereo or car audio system.

The TrackID application samples music through the handset built-in microphone and then connects to the Gracenote servers to try and get the artist and track names. We tried channeling the radio through the external speakers and then we started the TrackID sampling process but the radio audio gets muted during that short time of sampling. So essentially, the TrackID music recognition service is not available for the tracks you listen to on the radio.

Sony Ericson R306 Radio has a 1.3 megapixel shooter producing photos with a maximum resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels with no flash of any kind. The camera is placed on the back of the clamshell which makes taking pictures of your index finger a favorite pastime.

Among the few customizable things are picture size (1.3 MP, 1MP, VGA), picture quality (fine, normal), effects (black & white, negative), and the night mode. In the main camera menu there are two additional settings - the 2.5 digital zoom (in VGA mode) and exposure correction from -2/+2.

Image quality seems ok for a 1.3 megapixel snapper. The only flaw we found with the handset is that it can't open any of the 1.3 megapixel images produced by its own camera. You'll have to use the 1 megapixel images size in order to access the photos on your phone.

The camera can also record video but in really low sub-QCIF resolution that is only usable for MMS messages. We no longer publish video samples that are below QVGA resolution.

Sony Ericsson R306 Radio is a tri-band GSM/GPRS phone. The handset will be available in three versions: R306i Radio supporting GSM 900/1800/1900, R306a Radio for the Americas running on GSM 850/1800/1900, and R306c Radio for China with GSM 900/1800/1900 support.

You can rely on Bluetooth for close-range wireless transfers. Unfortunately, the R306 doesn't have support for the Bluetooth file transfer service, you only have Object Push but that's enough for exchanging files between mobile devices.

The Sony Ericsson R306 has a built-in WAP browser - it handles HTML sites but complex web pages are too much for the device. We had a hard time browsing gsmarena.com, and we even had issues with WAP sites but truth be told - our unit is still a pre-release one, so hopefully that should be fixed.

Sony Ericsson R306 Radio offers several time-management features such as a Calendar, Alarms, Tasks, Notes, Timer, Stopwatch, and Calculator.

The Calendar offers month, week and day views. When you enter a birth date in the phonebook, the phone prompts adding it to the calendar.

As far as alarms are concerned, there are five alarm slots available. Each one offers a lot of options - you can opt to repeat the alarm on chosen days of the week. Text and a picture can be added to the alarm, a custom tone too. Of course you can set up the radio to wake you up instead of a tone.

Tasks can be two types: simple Tasks and Phone calls. Notes are written similar to messages; the T9 dictionary can be used here as well. A nice feature is the option to display notes on the Home screen.

The Sound recorder has no limit to recording length, making the free memory available the only - and harsh enough - restriction. The Calculator is the regular Sony Ericsson application. It offers the basic functions, no bells and whistles. There isn't much to note about the stopwatch and timer either.

The Sony Ericsson R306 Radio comes with two games pre-installed. The first one is Johny Crash does Texas (in a stunt kinda way), and although it sounds like an XXX title it's in fact an amusing game. The second game title is the Mah Jong Quest which is a game of logic.

Sony Ericsson R306 Radio is to join the low-to-midrange company portfolio. It pretty much has the basics covered with 1.3 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, Smart search dialing. The advanced radio features include stereo speakers, RDS, TrackID, broadcast recording and the dedicated radio controls.

The scarce built-in memory and the lack of a card slot tend to limit it in many ways. We could also go on about a tad better display resolution and better imaging quality. But probably our most important grudge of all with this radio-centric device is the need to plug the headset in for the radio to work properly.

Now that's a common nuisance in all modern handsets, but on a phone that's supposed to be "all-radio" it becomes much more obtrusive. The huge headset jack makes things even worse. Some new design to deal with that would have been much appreciated. And in the end, a dedicated cable aerial such as the one of O2 Cocoon would have meant a lot less hassle.

Anyway, R306 is a low-ender after all. There will always be a market for down-to-earth entry level handsets. Plus, Sony Ericsson R306 gets its edge from the vintage radio looks that give it a distinct personality.