14 DAY TRIAL // One of the latest-released entry-level Sony Ericsson handsets, the R300, is now available in India, the second largest mobile market in the world. The new R300 is said to be the first Sony Ericsson phone made "in India and for India."
Announced by Sony Ericsson in January 2008, together with the R306 clamshell, the R300 is a good-looking candybar that weighs only 75 grams and measures 101 x 46 x 12 millimeters.
The main features of R300 are FM and AM radio with RDS and recording function, dedicated radio buttons, 3D speaker, TrackID music recognition and stereo headsets included in the package. Furthermore, the handset brings the following: a 1.8 inch TFT display with 65K colors and only 128 x 160 pixels, tri-band GSM connectivity (900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz) with GPRS, WAP browser, email, a VGA photo camera, Bluetooth, handsfree, calendar, alarm clock, calculator and 8MB of internal memory that cannot be expanded (because there is no microSD card support). The R300 also packs a 930 mAh battery that should be able to keep it functional for up to 9 hours in talk-time mode or up to 410 hours in stand-by mode.
Talking about the new handset, Sudhin Mathur, General Manager at Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications India, stated, "We are witnessing unprecedented growth in smaller towns and cities and plan to increase our geographic presence in such places with the launch of the Radio phone R300. The growing popularity of the radio in the tier two and tier three cities has created a tremendous opportunity for penetrating such markets and we are confident that our new offering will be well received by our consumers."
The R300 has a retail price of around 4,395 INR (about 100 USD or 70 Euros) and mobile users should find it across India in two color versions: "antique copper" and "steel black".