Although Sony Ericsson said, earlier this year, that its T303 fashionable slider was set for a release in the second quarter of 2008, we are now in the third quarter of the year and the phone is still not on the market. Well, it seems that the T303 won't come this month either, as it will be commercially available only starting August.

RegHardware reports that Carphone Warehouse, the well-known independent handset retailer, will be offering the new T303 next month, for a very low retail price: 60 GBP - the equivalent of 75 Euros or about 120USD.

This piece of news comes shortly after the FCC approved the 850 / 1800 / 1900 GSM version of T303 to be used in the US.

Although Sony Ericsson T303 looks really good, its features are according to its price, hence they're on the basic side. The slider offers the following: a 1.8 inch TFT screen with 128 x 160 pixels and 65K colors, a 1.3 Megapixel camera, MP3 player, TrackID music recognition, FM radio, Bluetooth 2.0, WAP browser, USB, handsfree, voice memo, T9 predictive text input, stopwatch, calculator, calendar, 8MB of built-in memory and, unfortunately, no microSD card slot. Weighing 93 grams (3.28 ounces) and measuring only 83 x 47 x 14.7 millimeters (3.26 x 1.85 x 0.58 inches), the T303 packs a battery that should be able to offer up to 9 hours of talk-time and about 400 hours of stand-by time.

Since the UK will get the new T303 in August, it's very likely that the slider will be available in most of the European markets next month too. This being said, if a cute, small, affordable and basic-featured handset is what you need, wait for Sony Ericsson's T303 to hit the shelves of a store near you.