CNET reviews Sony Ericsson W380a and writes "The W380a’s 1.3-megapixel camera shoots photos in three sizes (1-megapixel, standard VGA, and QVGA). Other options include two quality settings, three color effects, a night mode, white-balance and brightness adjustments, multishot options, a self-timer, a 4x digital zoom (unusable at the highest resolution), and four shutter sounds (however, there’s no silent option). Photo quality was acceptable. Colors looked natural but the lighting was dim and smaller objects were blurry. Oddly, the W380a has a video player but it lacks a video recorder.

We tested the triband (GSM 850/1800/1900) Sony Ericsson W380a in San Francisco using T-Mobile service. Call quality was respectable, on the whole. The audio clarity was fine and voices sounded natural, but we noticed that the volume could be somewhat louder. We didn’t have any issues most of the time, but when we were using the phone in a noisy place, we had to make sure the volume was high. If you have hearing impairments, this may not be the phone for you. On the network side, we had no troubles getting a signal in the city.

On their end, callers said we sounded fine. Like us, they didn’t encounter clarity or static problems, but they also said they had trouble hearing us at times. In particular, a few reported that the W380a picked up a fair amount of background noise. Callers could tell we were using a cell phone, but that’s not unusual. Speakerphone calls were mostly clear, but the volume on our end was rather weak.

The Walkman music player offers the best performance through headphones. The W380a’s external speaker gives only moderate output, and our music sounded rather tinny.

The W380a has a rated battery life of seven hours talk time and 15.5 days standby time. In our tests, the W380a had a talk time of 8 hours and 57 minutes. According to FCC radiation tests, the W380a has a digital digital SAR rating of 0.69 watts per kilogram."