14 DAY TRIAL // After the May FCC approval of Sony Ericsson R300, the Federal Communications Commission has now cleared another Radio phone manufactured by the Swedish-Japanese company, namely the R306a.
Being the American version of R306, Sony Ericsson R306a comes with 850 / 1800 / 1900 MHz GSM connectivity, hence it's ready to work on the "native" US networks.
Announced by Sony Ericsson at the beginning of the year, together with the above-mentioned R300, Sony Ericsson R306/R306a is a pretty basic device. Coming in a radio-like clamshell form factor, the R306a is definitely not for users who want a handset with advanced capabilities.
The best thing about R306a is that it comes with advanced radio-related capabilities: AM and FM RDS radio receiver and transmitter, dedicated external keys and stereo speakers with 3D sound enhancement.
The other features of R306a include a 1.9 inch TFT internal display with 128 x 160 pixels, a 96 x 32 pixel monochrome external display, Music player, TrackID, email, WAP browser, SMS, MMS, a 1.3 Megapixel camera with video recording, handsfree, Java MIDP 2.0, T9 predictive text input, calendar, calculator, stopwatch and alarm clock. The handset has only 5MB of built-in memory and no microSD card slot, hence users will be quite limited when it comes to storing content on it.
The radio clamshell weighs 3.3 ounces (93 grams) and, when closed, it measures 3.5 x 1.9 x 0.6 inches (90 x 48 x 16 millimeters). Sony Ericsson packed in the R306 a 930 mAh battery said to last up to 9 hours in talk-time mode or up to 410 hours in stand-by mode.
No word yet on whether a US carrier is interested in offering the R306s, but the phone might turn out to be a good addition to AT&T's or T-Mobile's line-up of affordable handsets. Thus, we could soon see it with the logos of the two operators on its case.
