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Radio has never ranked among key selling points for a cell phone. Many PDAs aren’t even equipped with FM tuners. Many new products are lacking RDS support. Sony Ericsson was the first company to pioneer the dedicated music segment of the mobile market by designing their revolutionary walkman series of music phones. There were no plans for a dedicated range of radio products, but finally SE came up with a couple of models bearing a strong focus on the FM functionality – R300 and R306.
Both new handsets are low-ranking mid-end phones, priced just above 100 euros. The stuffing is accordingly unimpressive – a modest 1.3 Mp camera, a small 128x160 screen and so on. The junior model is already selling for about 115 euros, the senior one is yet to begin sales in August for roughly 140 euros. The two are intended as affordable solutions for devoted radio fans. The well-developed FM tuner of many SE phones was given an AM support, a feature not found in any other model.
The key feature of the models is perfectly implemented. Three dedicated buttons allow to switch between three bookmarked stations, R306 in addition has two extra buttons serving for manual frequency adjustment and auto search. Since the senior model is made is a clamshell form factor, it has an exterior screen which lets tune the radio without unfolding the thing.
The traditional TrackID feature is there just as expected, supported by both models. You can bookmark favorite frequencies and do auto search, being another two stock functions. The radio equalizer menu, on the other hand, is another exclusive feature found only in these two handsets. You can use it to improve the sounding and volume while listening to the radio. In this aspect R306 beats any other mobile device found on the market. Both models sport a perfect quality of incoming signal.
RDS is expectedly supported. Radio broadcasts can be recorded in a file with two alternate quality settings. The function is implemented to be maximally user friendly. The most interesting feature of the two models is the mentioned support of an AM frequency range. Outside of the radio department, the functionality is very modest – typical entry level models. The two handsets even lack memory extension slots, which minimizes the practical usefulness of the broadcast recording feature. The models are based off the old A100 software platform.
We honestly recommend the handsets to all radio lovers who don’t care about anything else than the radio itself and GSM functionality. Also you don’t get any alternative if you want to listen to AM stations. A neat profile solution. Author: Ilya Solovev SMAPE.com
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Nokia
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