The Solo S350 phone is a low-cost Android phone that gives you unlimited free access to stream and download from a library of over 20-million international and local music tracks, for life of the device. In the not-too-distant future, users will also be able rent full length movies with Solo View.
The Bad
With a 3.5-inch display, 4GB of internal memory (1GB available to user and ships with 8GB external), 1GHz dual core processor and 512 MB of RAM, the Solo S350 has all the makings of a budget device. But that’s really no excuse for it to under-perform so much, as a phone that is. I have used better budget phones in its price range.
Typing is a chore, which I believe is more as a result of the poor responsiveness of the screen, than it is about the screen size – I have average-sized hands. Performance is way below par. Very often, if you switch to landscape view and then back to portrait, it takes forever, I mean shake-back-and-forth-till-it-responds forever to switch back. A poorly calibrated accelerometer maybe?
How about the user experience? Simple actions and functions you take granted on other Android phones are missing. You know how on most android devices, you can access the multitasking menu by long press of a hardware button or touch of a software button? Missing – the back button is your best friend on the Solo S350. You can’t switch primary browsing SIM without opening up the device and no amount of digging in the settings will unearth the data usage monitor. I thought that was standard since Ice Cream Sandwich, how is it missing? Finally, battery life is poor for any activity other than listening to music. Let’s move on to the really good stuff.
The Good
Solo Phone cares
First, can I just say that Solo customer care is awesome and I hope they can keep up that standard. I had issues with SIM card placement and setting up my Solo Music account so I visited their Service Centre in Computer Village. The assistants were very cordial and I got my SIM card issue fixed in bare minutes. My Solo Music account was fixed by the second day and I was ready to review the device for what is really is, nothing more than a music phone.
Free internet, yay!
You get free data with the Solo S350, for a year, from Airtel (500MB monthly) and Etisalat (100MB monthly), on the condition that your SIM is registered and you load minimum airtime of 1k per month, which you can use to make calls and text.
The Solo Music app
This is the only value proposition of the S350 in my opinion. The Solo Music app is pretty intuitive and clutter free. Signing up is a breeze and you can start downloading music immediately. Streaming or downloading a regular 4-minute track will only set you back about 2-3 MB, and there’s no apparent drop in quality as sound output is optimized. Very well-thought from Solo Phone. You’re better off downloading than streaming, as you get to re-listen offline, as often as you like. Downloads are DRM-protected so forget about transferring them to other devices (assuming you even know where to find them). By default, the app is set to download music only over Wi-Fi. You have to go into settings to enable download over mobile data. You can download full albums and playlists but not single tracks. So the only way to download single tracks is to add them to a playlist. A blue icon by the side of a track, album or playlist, indicates that it is available for offline listening. When you add new tracks to an offline playlist, they are instantly downloaded for offline listening.
You might not find all the music you’re looking for though. I couldn’t find any of Asa and Olamide’s main albums or most of my favourite OSTs. But I was happy to find most of Modenine and Eminem’s albums and my beloved tracks from the Rocky Balboa OST. In the area of local music, it appears the new school takes backseat to the old school, probably because most current artistes are yet to be on board with Solo Music. Though I can’t say I found all the old school Naija I was looking for. Bright Chimezie and Majek Fashek appear reasonably featured but I couldn’t find a single track from Onyeka Onwenu.
Missing tracks aside (that will hopefully improve), my only annoyance with the Solo Music app is that it often takes a while to switch between tracks. Sometimes you have to wake up the screen to get it to switch to the next track.
The Verdict
As my choice of title indicates, I think the Solo S350 is more music than phone. If you’re looking to get the Solo S350 solely as your daily driver and you don’t plan to use it much for the music, don’t. You will be frustrated. But if you want arguably the best solution to all your legal music download problems, look no further than Solo Phone. The Solo S350 will set you back only N18,500 15,990. That’s a pretty good bargain for all the free music access you get. And with an interestingly innovative video rental service coming soon, the Solo S350 is great value for end-to-end digital content delivery.
