Sony Ericsson T303, one of the latest entry-level handsets unveiled by the Swedish-Japanese company, was recently approved by the FCC, hence it can be used, from now on, in the US. However, this doesn't mean that the handset will get to be released in the States.

Of course, the T303 approved by FCC is made to work on the American GSM networks (850 / 1800 / 1900 MHz), but it seems that Sony Ericsson only wants to launch the handset in South America, in countries like Brazil and Argentina.

Presented for the first time back in March, during CeBIT 2008, the T303 is a small and lightweight slider that can easily pass as fashionable. When closed, the T303 measures only 83 x 47 x 14.7 millimeters (3.26 x 1.85 x 0.58 inches), so it's among the smallest phones ever made by Sony Ericsson.

The features of T303, as expected from an entry-level phone, are not too great, including: a small 1.8 inch TFT display with 65K colors and only 128 x 160 pixels, Bluetooth 2.0, MP3 player, TrackID, FM radio, WAP browser, T9 predictive text input, USB, voice memo, handsfree, calendar, calculator, stopwatch and only 8MB of memory, which cannot be expanded since there's no microSD card slot. A good thing is that the slider packs a 1.3 Megapixel camera, which will allow users to take quick snapshots when there's no better camera phone around.

T303's battery is quite a powerful one, as it's said to be capable of providing up to 9 hours of talk-time or up to 400 hours of stand-by time.

Although there's nothing official about a US release of Sony Ericsson T303, the handset might be soon offered by AT&T or T-Mobile for a price that can't be but affordable.