Phone rating:

In a nutshell: The best features of the Spiro are its Walkman player and FM radio. Other than that, it doesn’t offer a lot, even when you consider the price.
Best buy: £49.90 on PAYG from Mobiles.co.uk or £49.95 from the Carphone Warehouse.

Review: October 2008. Updated June 2009.

The most popular phones of 2010 may be touchscreen smartphones, but not everyone can splash out that kind of money on a mobile. Besides, if all you need to do is make calls, send texts, listen to music and connect to your mates on Facebook, you can do all that for fifty quid. And so the Sony Ericsson Spiro could possibly be your next phone. It does all the aforementioned, plus it has Bluetooth, a basic camera and is cute and compact into the bargain.

The trouble is, Sony Ericsson have cut rather a lot of corners to fit the pocket-sized Spiro into a pocket-sized budget. While we’re not expecting GPS or Wi-Fi at this price level, we are, frankly, expecting a better screen, a better camera and more memory. The memory in particular, at just 5 MB, is pitiful, making a microSD memory card an essential purpose and therefore inflating the price.

There’s one thing that the Spiro does well (in addition to making calls and sending texts), and that’s play music. With a Walkman 4.0 player, an FM radio with RDS, and a 3.5mm headphone jack, there’s nothing to complain about at all. Apart from the lack of memory, which we’ve already complained about.

The other thing that the Spiro does is access Facebook and Twitter. But it doesn’t do these well. With no 3G to provide fast internet access, and just a tiny little screen available, you’d be better off forgetting about these features. Forget the web browser too – it’s rubbish.

All things considered, the Spiro ought to be even cheaper than it is. Fifty quid is too much for what the phone does. For this price you could pick up a Samsung Genio Touch or an LG Pop. Even the older Sony Ericsson W595 seems to be a better buy.

Features of the Sony Ericsson Spiro include:

• 2 megapixel camera with 2x digital zoom
• Video camera
• Display: TFT LCD, 262,144 colours, 240 x 320 pixels
• Walkman® music player (MP3, AAC, eAAC+ formats)
• FM radio RDS
• TrackID™ tells you the name, artist and album of any song you’re listening to
• PlayNow™ lets you buy and download top ringtones
• Polyphonic ringtones / MP3, AAC ringtones
• Speakerphone
• Sound recorder
• Messaging: SMS, MMS
• Java games
• Torch
• Personal organiser functions
• Memory: 5 MB plus microSD memory card support (up to 16GB supported)
• Connectivity: Bluetooth, USB, 3.5mm audio jack
• Web browser, Facebook & Twitter applications
• Flight mode (offline mode)
• Vibration alert
• Size: 92 X 48 x 17 mm
• Weight: 90g
• Dual band
• Talktime: 4.5 hours
• Battery standby: 476 hours

Sony Ericsson Spiro Consumer Reviews

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Average rating from 3 reviews:

Reviewed by Chris from U.K on 2nd Sep 2010
I bought one of these phones from phones 4u in Penzance, it was awful, the screen keep freezing, half the apps wouldn’t work at all, it was a nightmare, I returned it the next day and had an hellish hour trying to get a refund, never again ! Stick to Nokia.
Rating:

Reviewed by catherine from uk on 31st Aug 2010
Have already had two of these handsets in a week! Text messages come through but when i open them to read theres no text there, had same problem with both handsets so this one is going back and im going to get another model. Also ring tones arnt very loud at all. Pure Rubbish!
Rating:

Reviewed by Kayla from Wales on 22nd Aug 2010
My friend has it and its pretty easy to use3, a good budget phone which is about £60. Good for people who like to listen to music.
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Sony Ericsson Spiro links

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