Sony Ericsson roundup: W380, Z555, W350, T280 preview

Sony Ericsson T280

The Sony Ericsson T280 is a low-end handset that doesn't nave any of the hip features the other mobiles in the bunch have. It's got a small display with a mediocre resolution of 128 x 160 pixels, but for a cheap priced-tagged device it does offer some goodies - a 1.3 megapixel camera, MP3 ringtone support, Bluetooth support and WAP 2.0.

Sony Ericson T280 official pictures

The Sony Ericsson T280 along with its camera-less twin T270 is expected to become available in Q1 2008.

Sony Ericsson T280 held in hand

Sony Ericsson T280 360-degree spin

Design and construction

Truthfully there's nothing special about the Sony Ericsson T280 besides the metallic body panels, the conservative design and the 1.3 megapixel camera. The 65K color TFT display is small - 1.7 inches, and it has a lowly resolution of 128 x 160 pixels. The T280 does warm the hearts of low-price-tag fans with Bluetooth support and MP3 ringing. You would probably be let down by the fact that the T280 can be charged via USB cable but there is no USB support, meaning that your only way of transferring music and images to and from a computer is via Bluetooth.

Sony Ericsson T280 compared to W350 • conservative but stylish design in metal • the earpiece

You can notice the body is made of mostly metal and we can testify it's fingerprint-resistant

The keypad of the Sony Ericsson T280 offers both nice tactility and ample space between the keys. The D-pad is comfortable enough to work with but the fact that there's no confirming center felt a bit awkward at first.

We find the Sony Ericsson T280 keypad pleasant to work with

The backlighting of the keypad is a nice blue color and it's even all the way around.

The Sony Ericsson T280 keypad in the dark

The highlight on the back, which has a brushed metallic finish, is the 1.3 megapixel camera lens and the loudspeaker grill. The back cover is again the pry-it-open type, which is even harder with this one since the back has a metallic plate that doesn't allow it to flex that easily.

The Sony Ericsson T280 is equipped with a Sony Ericsson BST-36 Li-Po battery with a capacity of 780 mAh. The manufacturer rates it at up to 300 hours of standby time and up to 7 hours of talk time. Unfortunately, we can't comment on those figures.

The camera lens and the loudspeaker grill • removing the back cover

The user interface fails to impress

The Sony Ericsson T280 has a scaled-down version of the regular Sony Ericsson interface. It doesn't look nearly as good as the real thing and its functionality nowhere near the interface described briefly on the previous pages. It's also runs a lot more sluggish than the other user interface.

The T280 user interface is nowhere near the regular

The file manager of T280 is really basic but it does the job alright. One thing we noticed about the pictures is that during browsing, the phone displays a downsampled variant of the images and only after you stop at an image it shows you the full-quality photo (with a significant delay though). Also there is no thumbnail view in the file browser.

The file browser is really basic and there's no dedicated image gallery

The Sony Ericsson T280 1.3 megapixel camera is as simple as it possibly gets. There is even no dedicated camera key on the side of the T280.

The camera is as simple as it gets

The Sony Ericsson T280 also has FM radio with RDS support. You can save up to 20 radio stations, the radio can also be used as alarm sound, as long as you've plugged the wired headset, which serves as an antenna.

The T280 radio has RDS support

So that's about our hands-on experience with the Sony Ericsson T280. Jump to the next page for some comparative camera samples and our conclusion.