For 500 baht per month plus 100 baht per month for the new AIS phone number and 250 hours per month internet access I thought the AIS GPRS service sounded like good value even if it is not as fast as ADSL or internet cable line. When I first got connected to AIS GPRS I was using a GPRS capable mobile phone and was quite disappointed at the slow connection speed and extremely slow download speed. Just doing simple things like email seemed to take forever. The AIS GPRS mobile internet service was miles away from the cable line speed and significantly slower than the dial up speed as well. Basically the AIS GPRS service without the EDGE capability was virtually useless so I decided to buy a GPRS EDGE capable phone and take advantage of the 3 to 4 times faster connection speed that I was told about at the AIS mobile shop.

After reading about the AIS GPRS EDGE mobile internet service it sounded like a considerably faster option so I bought a GPRS EDGE capable phone and had it programmed for use with my laptop at the AIS shop. The staff at the AIS shop were very friendly and they told me the GPRS EDGE service is much faster than the regular AIS GPRS mobile service.

When I got back to my apartment in Bangkok I noticed the EDGE GPRS seemed almost no different at all. I continued trying it for days at my apartment and then took my laptop to other areas of Bangkok to see if the EDGE internet service was any faster but I could barely notice much of a significant increase in download speed than with regular GPRS without EDGE.

I have also used my laptop connecting to the AIS GPRS EDGE mobile service in Pattaya which is another highly populated area of Thailand and the download speed in Pattaya seems even slower than Bangkok. To do simple things like checking an email on Hotmail would take a matter of seconds with a cable internet line. With AIS GPRS EDGE it often takes over 5 MINUTES just to get onto the Hotmail website and then longer to actually get into my inbox.

If you use the AIS GPRS EDGE service first thing in the morning before too many users are online on the Thailand network it is painfully slow. However if you plan on using your AIS EDGE service in the afternoons or evenings when many people are online you can forget about it. It is so slow at night that the server normally times out before you get onto the web page you are looking for.

The AIS GPRS service and the AIS GPRS EDGE service are so pathetically slow if you wanted to send someone an email on the other side of the planet you would be better off running or swimming to the other side of the world because you would get the message to them faster than by using AIS internet services.

AIS GPRS EDGE review-stuff.com rating 2 out of 10.

The keypad design is one of the only flaws with the Sony Ericsson W300i walkman phone. The keypad looks sleek and cool but the keys kind of overlap onto one another and sometimes makes writing a text message a bit difficult as you often hit the wrong key as you type a message. This isn’t a huge problem if you have small fingers but it you have big fingers it’s a bit irritating.

The mp3 player and walkman features on the Sony Ericsson W300i walkman phone are as good as some regular mp3 players with the sound quality being of exceptional quality. The built in speaker on the Sony W300i is not like listening to a stereo although for a small mobile phone it does the job reasonably well. The volume also cranks quite high on the W300i so if you’re out and about you and your friends could listen quite happily.

I found one very useful feature to be the GPRS function which has the added benefit of EDGE technology which allows you to access the internet with the use of USB cable, Bluetooth or Infra red connection. The EDGE feature of the Sony W300i mobile phone runs about 4 times quicker than a regular GPRS connection. My last phone only had regular GPRS but I can notice a significant increase in the download speed with the EDGE capability of the Sony W300i when I access the internet.

The Sony Ericsson W300i walkman phone opens up to a comfortable size to handle when making a phone call and is very light at around 100 grams and has the unique feature of a long thin hole which would allow you to wear around your neck or connect safely to your pants with a string. The W300i also has an external display with a number of small pieces of information available to see without having to open the phone like the time , battery power remaining, date and it tells you the number or name of who is calling you if you have that persons number stored in your phone contacts.

I liked the easy to use 1.3 mexapixel camera on the W300i although the picture quality is pretty standard as far as mobile phone cameras go these days. The Sony Ericsson W300i camcorder records video in mp4 format and has two resolutions. Editing videos is quite straight forward with the use of the Sony Ericsson PC Suite which comes on a disc when you purchase the phone or you can download it for free from the Sony website. The W300i I bought came with a 256 MB memory stick but bigger ones are available if you need more storage space.

Another impressive feature of the Sony Ericsson W300i phone was the 1,000 contact phone book. You can also store email addresses, street addresses, birthdays and other pieces of information. Some other interesting features you may or may not use on the Sony W300i are voice dialing which you need to preprogram, I thought this was pretty cool and also handy if you have a long list of contacts in your phone book. The W300i has a calculator, vibrate only or vibrate and ring mode, a stopwatch and a function to store secure information with password access. There is also a handy voice recorder which might come in handy for business people or to record your own positive affirmations to listen to while you are on the go.

Overall the Sony Ericsson W300i walkman phone is a great phone for the money, selling for about $180. It isn’t the most advanced phone on the huge mobile phone market but with its Bluetooth and EDGE internet capability, great call clarity and good quality mp3 player I think it’s a decent phone with an adequate amount of features for most mobile phone users.

Sony Ericsson W300i review-stuff.com rating 8 out of 10.