A sexy minimalist slider, Sony Ericsson T303 gives the low-end a new edge with looks and construction well above its rank. Even if not a full-house in terms of skill and style, the basic multimedia coverage and solid feel in hand are well worth it. The FM radio with RDS, MP3 player and the 1.3 megapixel camera make sure the T303 will be kept busy. After all, many will likely find it too sexy for a call-and-text device only. The smooth sliding, the sharp chrome-highlighted exterior and the diminutive size are still the undoubted winners when it comes to the attraction of Sony Ericsson T303. Way beyond any of the features it offers.

Very compact, sturdy build

Smooth sliding mechanism

FM radio with RDS

MP3 player, TrackID music recognition

Bluetooth v2.0

1.3 MP camera

1.8" 65K-color TFT display, 128 x 160 pixels

500 phonebook entries, photocall

Meager 8MB of built-in memory, no memory card slot

Poor screen quality

USB for charging and mass storage only

No zoom in picture gallery

No A2DP Bluetooth profile

Sony Ericsson T303 is definitely a phone for those who don't want to give too much thought to what pocket to put it in. With its dimensions of 83 x 47 x 14.7 mm it will fit even in the smallest of pockets. There are virtually a handful of phones currently on the market to come close to T303 in terms of compact size.

Its excellent build quality and solid feel in hand are strong advantages, considering how low-end phones usually suffer in both design and quality of materials used.

Sony Ericsson T303 will be available in two different color versions: Shimmering Silver and Shadow Black. Ours was the black variety. We were definitely pleased with its ergonomics, despite the extra compact dimensions. The controls and the alphanumeric keys are comfortable enough, while the unusually bare sides of the handset do add to its looks.

The Sony Ericsson T303 screen pays a dear price for the handset's compact size. It's a small 1.8" 65K-color TFT display of 128 x 160 pixels resolution. Above the display is the usual earpiece.

The control and navigation keypad below the display is quite comfortable. The large D-pad is neighbored by the two soft keys, the Call and End keys, and the "My shortcuts" and Clear keys. The D-pad itself is an amply sized square with silver trim. The loudspeaker grill is nestled underneath its confirmation center. The two soft keys also have the same silver finish. Tactility is excellent, save maybe for the flatbed My Shortcuts and Clear keys.

There is no thumb rest to facilitate sliding the phone up and down, but the slightly slanting surface under the D-pad works just as fine.

Speaking of sliding, let's look at the flatbed alphanumeric keypad. Keys are amply sized, considering the compact handset, and are well defined by thin rubber ridges. We were pleased with the keypad even if press feedback was a bit too soft for our taste. You won't have problems with accessing the keys on the first row either, an otherwise common flaw with sliders. The elevated chrome-highlighted lower rim of the keypad slightly impedes access to the bottom row of keys. On a different note, sliding is firm and smooth.

The left side of the T303 hosts only the Fast Port for connecting your headset, data cable or charger. Towards the top on this side is the lanyard eyelet.

Except for the tiny microphone pinhole at the bottom, the right and top side of the phone are pretty bare. The chrome lining of the sides contributes to the neat and attractive look of the device.

The centerpiece at the back is the Sony Ericsson logo. The rear side of T303 features a backwards bulge of surprisingly pleasant rubber finish to give the slider quite a good grip. The 1.3 megapixel camera lens is only exposed when the slider is open.

The rest of the rear is the matt plastic battery cover, which is easy to release by a gentle slide. The battery hidden underneath is a standard Sony Ericsson BST-38 Li-Po unit with a capacity of 930 mAh. It's quoted at up to 400 hours of standby time and up to 9 hours of talk time. Those are some serious numbers stated by the manufacturer but keeping in mind the small display and the fact that T303 is a GSM only phone, we may hope for 5-6 days of sparing usage.

The display is a 65K-color TFT unit, and it's the 128 x 160 pixel resolution that ruins the whole show. On-screen text looks a bit choppy and smudged. The other letdown is the small range of angles to allow adequate sunlight readability.

Despite those shortcomings, brightness is commendable and contrast is at the usual good level. The keypad backlighting of the T303 is solid blue and quite even.

Sony Ericsson T303 has a scaled-down version of the regular Sony Ericsson interface. It lacks in looks and its functionality is nowhere near the standard offering, yet it is much sharper than what we found in T280.

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.

Overall, it is nice to find several important features of the UI included in such a low end phone.

There are four themes preinstalled in the T303 - the first is not labeled, the remaining ones are Clarity, Gray Possession, and Silver charm. The animated .gif wallpapers are a welcome extra.

The phonebook stores up to 500 entries with a total of 2500 phone numbers 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. When adding a new contact, the first tab of fields offers 2 phone number fields. The second tab is for email addresses. The third is for assigning a picture, a custom ringtone, and a custom message tone. The fourth goes for postal details. The last, fifth tab, is for making an additional note and adding a birth date.

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 loudspeaker performance is average. Here is how the Sony Ericsson T303 stacks up against some of the other handsets we've measured in our speakerphone loudness test.

T303 has a simple 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 available.

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 W890, in the general inbox there is no indication if a message has been assigned a category. The same holds true for messages that are opened.

Composing a picture/MMS message uses the same interface as most 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 EricssonT303. The decent mp3 player is the severely limited by the measly 8 MB of onboard storage with no memory card expansion.

With that in mind, even the very basic interface seems too much of an effort. Not to mention the fact that there are even several filters for sorting your tracks. Now, how about that? When the entire music collection boils down to two or three songs, all you need is Loop. And Shuffle gives away a… well… sick sense of humor. At least they didn't bother making optional skins for the player.

Images on the T303 are only accessible via the File manager from the organizer menu. Unfortunately, the viewing options are also scarce. There is no zoom function, and image browsing is quite sluggish. Images can be sent via Bluetooth or MMS, set as wallpaper or played as a slideshow. Moving/copying/renaming is among the few other usable options.

The integrated stereo FM radio of Sony Ericsson T303 has memory for 20 stations and supports RDS. The TrackID music recognition service is not integrated unfortunately. We thought we can deal with that limitation by minimizing the radio on speakerphone and turning on the TrackID. Sadly this trick doesn't work either, since the phone can run only one java application at a time.

Other than the standard functionality, users can record a song from the radio in a normal or high quality setting. Again, the memory limitation makes this feature useless.

The Track ID works like a charm, as usual.

Sony Ericson T303 has a mere 1.3 megapixel camera with no video recording or autofocus.

Among the few customizable things are picture size (1.3 MP, 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 is well below passable. It feels the camera is there just for demonstration purposes. The average file size is 180KB.

The camera does not record video and the phone cannot even play clips.

Our beta version of the T303 comes with no preloaded games, but the final version will surely have some preinstalled.

Sony Ericsson T303 is a tri-band GSM/GPRS phone. The only wireless data transfer option is Bluetooth v2.0. The handset will be available in two versions: T303i supporting GSM 900/1800/1900 and T303a for the Americas running on GSM 850/1800/1900.

The built-in java browser is usable, but has its limitations. We had a hard time browsing gsmarena.com, yet small or mobile-phone-optimized sites worked out well. The fullscreen and the text-only browsing views are at your disposal in case you don't like the standard browser view. Other settings like smart-fit and history are at hand too.

Sony Ericsson T303 offers several time-management features: File manager, Alarms, Calendar, Tasks, Notes, Timer, Stopwatch, and Calculator.

The Calendar offers monthly and weekly views. When you enter a birth date in the phonebook, the phone doesn't prompt 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.

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.

Sony Ericsson T303 is a good enough attempt to fill in the low-end portfolio of the company. We can't frown at the modest, yet nice looking and compact phone, with quality finish and reasonable functionality. Design the undoubted highlight, Sony Ericsson T303 offers balanced performance for its class with Bluetooth, stereo FM radio, Smart search and TrackID.

We cannot overlook its major weakness, storage. The limited built-in memory and no card slot make the MP3 and the radio recording capabilities useless. We could also go on about a tad better display resolution and better imaging quality. The lack of PC synchronization is another potential downer.

By the way, it's easy to get carried away and that would be unfair to the affordable and unassuming T303. Overall, Sony Ericsson T303 is a tempting low-ender - it's sexy, it's mini, it makes sense.