Sony Ericsson T610

Author's product rating:   

Look & Feel	Good
Durability & Robustness	Strong
Battery standby time	Excellent
Value for money	Excellent
Range of features	Large selection

Advantages:	Brilliant phone customisation, Good size screen with 65K colours (STN screen technology aside), Navigation system, Downloadable Games/Apps, Range of connectivity options
Disadvantages:	Casing attracts fingerprints and smudges, Hard to view in sunny outdoor conditions, 2MB memory maybe too little, Back and Cancel buttons maybe confusing, Quick Access to WAP services can be costly if accidently pressed .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Mobile phones have jumped leaps and bounds in the last year and a half since I last purchased a mobile phone. The phone in question was the T68 from Ericsson and at the time it was nothing short of a miracle in terms of what it offered. It featured a full colour phone sporting a 256 colour display, tri band (which meant it could be used in the US/Canada as well as the rest of the world) and the infamous Bluetooth wireless technology. Not many phones at the time had those features and even if they did, they didn’t have all of them. The T68 quickly became Ericsson’s best selling phone and helped revived the brand against long-term rivals Nokia and Motorola. One facelift later, in the form of the revised T68i and after a re-branding/merger exercise between Sony and Ericsson, Sony Ericsson has recently released the T610.

Sony Ericsson has however launched the T610 into a different age, where mobile phones with colour screens are pretty much the norm, not to mention the tacked on or built in camera making people very snap-happy along with even more irritating polyphonic ring tones to annoy everyone around them. Nokia alone in the last year has made over 10 new models sporting colour screens, and other manufacturers such as Motorola, Siemens, Sagem, Philips, to name but a few, have all follow suit.

Most people already have a mobile phone, and are content with it and the market has long been established but manufacturers want to keep people interested in buying newer handsets hence all the new technology coming into phones, that each day that passes, make them more different from the original definition of a phone.

So amongst the crowded market of colour mobile phones, why should you buy the Sony Ericsson T610 and is it just another mobile phone people will forget in a year’s time. The T68/T68i became a bit of a legend, but can the T610 regain the crown for its predecessor?

Looks and Ergonomics
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The look of this phone is debatable. Ericsson started to make sexy phones in the form of the T28 and the T68 and got rid of its traditional blocky brick image and everyone rejoiced. At last they had stylish phones to compete with the market leader Nokia who had always had the winning formula in terms of mobile phone chic.

So what does Sony Ericsson go and do with their new range of phones (including the T300 and T100)? Make it blocky brick shape again! Sigh but I guess in comparison to the weird alien designs currently sporting on some of the latest Nokia’s, it’s not such a bad thing.

The T610 has a stylish two-tone finish, aluminium being its main colour although it is only really plastic. The top half of the phone is in smooth black plastic with a smooth surface which quickly attracts dust, smudges and fingerprints which probably explains why there is a wiping cloth in the box. The large screen itself suffers the same problem. In fact, the phone is too smooth for it's own good. Unlike other hard wearing scratch resistant plastic, the exterior of the T610 can be relatively easy to mark if not looked after with a bit of care.

At the back of the phone is where the built in camera lens resides. There is no aerial sticking out at the top of the phone as it resides internally like many of the newer phones on the market. The weight of the phone is 95g which compared to other phones may be a bit heavier, but its mainly due to the built-in camera.

Ergonomically, don’t let the boxy look fool you. The side of the phone is recessed so when you hold the phone, your thumb and fingers sit perfectly in the grooves. On either side of the phone, there are buttons at the top. On the left side you have the camera access button along with plus and minus buttons which generally control the volumes but can sometimes be used as up down buttons in some areas of the phones user interface. On the right hand side, there is a button to allow you to quickly access online services.

The keypad is fashionably small for this size of phone so may be uncomfortable to use for people with large fingers and thumbs. The mini joystick in the centre of the phone has survived from the T68(i) and is still a joy to use for navigation. As well as up and down, you can select left and right and press down. Sony Ericsson has done away with the Yes/No buttons on previous phones and opted for 2 soft keys on either side of the joystick, which closely the system Nokia has been using for years. The once trademark Ericsson on/off button which was integrated into the No button has been moved to the top of the phone, which also sports the Infra Red transmitter (though it isn’t visible amongst all that black). Beneath them, there are 2 further buttons, one back button and a cancel button.

Lastly, the connection ports at the bottom of the phone are exactly the same as the last few generation of Ericsson’s so older handsfree, MP3 player, radio and other accessory units will work on the T610.

Screen Quality
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In mobile terms, it’s been a long time since Ericsson release their T68 with the 256 colour display and the market has now moved onto mostly 4096 colour displays which offers sharper, less pixelated images. A few handsets have even started using 65536 colours and Sony Ericsson made the wise choice of incorporating it in the T610. This enables the phone to display high quality images although it is restricted to its 128 x 160 pixel screen.

There is one gripe I have with the screen though. It uses a STN display instead of TFT screen. The difference is STN is not as efficient as TFT screen and is not able to keep up with fast screen movements hence leaving ‘ghosting’ effects, a bit like an old laptop display. This should not really pose much of a problem unless you want to play fast paced games on the phone. The biggest problem however is viewing the screen in direct sunlight (i.e outdoors on a really sunny day), which at times, is near enough impossible to see without tilting the phone.

User Interface
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The interface sports your usual features such as phonebook, messages (including the infamous and rather expensive MMS), settings, WAP access, and simple cut down organiser software. I will go into more detail about the unusual features later on in the opinion.

The T610 uses an icon based interface intermingled with menu lists which first appeared on the T68 and has been improved on the T610. Criticisms of the T68(i) interface being slow have been addressed and the interface is far more responsive now and closely resembling the speed of the Nokias.

Apart from speed, the interface has been a winner due to its high level of customisation and different methods of connectivity. These enable the phone to be linked to a laptop or home computer (and some PDAs) to allow the user to download or upload pictures and ringtones, change themes (colour schemes), screensaver and synchronise phonebook contacts and organiser items. It’s not dissimilar to customising your Windows or Mac OS desktop. What the T610 lacks in terms of external customisation, it more than makes up for in the interface.

The mini joystick does really come into play when navigating around the interface as apart from select up, down, left and right, you can press it in to select the item, without have to press another key. The 2 soft keys underneath the screen change functions according to what screen you are currently on (a la Nokia). There is however confusion with the Back button and the Cancel buttons, as you never know which one to use, go back one or cancel? In places where you think it be obvious to use one, it opts for the other. The idea of using a back button is lifted straight from web browser technology though and is a welcome addition.

The downside to such a customisable interface is the network providers have also had their input into the interface and depending on which network you buy the T610 on, a lot of network features are programmed into the interface. For instance, with Vodafone, all the Vodafone Live online services are pre-programmed into the icons and quick access buttons. Likewise with T-Mobile, it is customised to access their T-Zones online service. The quick access button to the right of the phone can be too easily pressed accidently and connect to WAP services without you knowing, so a word of advise, is to switch the keylock on especially if the phone is in your pocket!

Not content with customising the interface, the network providers also stamp their logo onto the bottom of the phone underneath the keypad. I guess in a way, this is to deter and stop one network’s phone being used by other networks when they are stolen and seeming the increased level of mobile phone robberies, this can only be a good thing.

Sound Quality
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The initial bunch of T610 was dogged with reports of hissing noises in the background during phone conversations in the first few weeks of release. Reading various posts on technical forums on the internet, I decided to wait until they sorted out the problem. People with the Sony Ericsson T68 or T68i will know what I am talking about. It’s not as annoying as people make it out to be, but it is there.

Thankfully, after waiting about a month after it initial release, the version I bought has no such problems. The call quality is very clear though at times I find it not to be as loud as I want it to be especially in outdoor places. The phone holds its signal pretty good as well but that’s just a standard in this day and age of mobile phones.

The annoying beeping ringtones have been replaced by Polyphonic ones and in the case of the T610, 32 channels of it. Basically you can have MIDI quality ringtones instead of the annoying monophonic ones of older phones. It doesn’t make it less annoying though, and some of the pre-installed tones are pretty awful. I guess it all depends on selecting/downloading the right sounding ringtone. There is a fantastic normal ringtone resembling the old dial phones, which is pretty realistic. On the other hand if you are adventurous, you can play around with the Music DJ software built in to the phone, which allows you to compose your own polyphonic ring tone from a selection of 128 pre-installed samples of music ranging from techno to reggae. It’s fairly addictive even if you don’t intend to use it as a ringtone.

Other Features
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There are so many features of the T610, it’ll be impossible to list them all so I will just concentrate on the important ones. If you like a full spec, go to the official T610 website at the link at the end of this opinion.

Downloadable Games/Applications
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The T610 allows users to download games and application to the phone using either the Morphun or J2ME (Java) platforms. Unfortunately, not all games/apps for other phones (mostly Nokia) will work on the T610 as there isn’t currently a set standard between the different mobile phones. The games and applications will have to specifically have been written to utilise the T610 but there are many coming out daily so you never moan about your phone being boring. Of course, that is if you don’t mind paying for them by downloading via WAP services. There are many sites that do offer free games though.

Camera
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OK, the camera. What can I say? Just don’t expect too much. As far as most of the mobile phone cameras are concerned, they are still in the dark age of digital photography so don’t think about replacing your full blown digital camera just yet. If you want a decent picture, you need a camera with at least 2.1million pixels; most of the phone cameras have 0.6million pixels (640x480) so don’t even think about printing from them. Instead, think of them as ‘fun’ cameras, which you can just take a picture of something you would like to capture on the fly and send to your friends via email or MMS.

The T610 sports an even lower camera resolution than its competitors with image sizes of only 288x352 as opposed to 640x480 on most camera phones at present. Why they didn’t go for 640x480 baffles me. Maybe it was due to the lack of space to fit in a bigger digital lens into such a small phone. The phone uses the screen as the viewfinder and it keeps up well with movement and is not jerky like earlier camera phones. Like must fun cameras, the in built in camera doesn’t have an in-built flash so it is impossible to take photos in the dark, though you can buy a separate flash unit soon. Images taken in daylight and bright conditions come out pretty good especially on the phones screen. Think of the built in camera in the T610 as a novelty item and you’ll be fine.

Connectivity
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One of the strongest points of the T610 is the connectivity options. It has an Infra Red and Bluetooth ports built-in, as well as the option to connect a data cable to enable data transfer and phone synchronisation between the T610 and your laptop/home PC. I like the fact they give you the choice, unlike some other manufacturers (i.e. T720 from Motorola only gives the option of data cable).

Dynamic Memory
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The T610 has 2MB of memory which can be used across the different areas of the phone to store images, ring tones, games, screen savers, themes etc. and it is left to your own devices how you much of it you use. In fact any of the things you don’t want you delete to preserve memory, even the standard pre-installed images and ring tones. Still I feel that with the amount of customisation possible on the T610, it would have been better to have allowed for 4MB, but once again, I think it would have affected the size and the cost of the phone.

Battery Life
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The phone comes with a lightweight Lithium Polymer battery, which Sony Ericsson claims has a standby time of 315 hours and a talk time of 840 minutes. These are the maximum figures under optimal circumstances though, so depending on how you use your phone and network conditions, these figures are unlikely to be realistic.

I use my phone quite heavily, making at least a one hour phone call every day. Bearing that in mind, the phone still lasts for about a week on standby between charges. Obviously if you play around with the phones other features such as the camera and the games, this will eat into a lot of the battery life as the phone will need to light up the screen and the colour drains the battery. When the phone is not in use, it goes into a semi sleep mode where the screen just displays the time but with no light, which make its impossible to read but saves battery life.

Cost/Availability
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For such a new model, the T610 is relatively cheap for such a feature packed phone. Shopping around, the current price on contract seems to range from £149 right down to free. I bought mine on upgrade on T-Mobile for £99, which is a fair price to pay. It is available on 4 major networks. Like I mentioned earlier, the T610 is branded to whatever network you choose to buy the phone from. You can pay for a non-branded, sim-free phone but at the current market value, it will set you back £250-£300.

Conclusion
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Good Points
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Brilliant phone customisation.
Good size screen with 65K colours (STN screen technology aside).
Navigation system, especially joystick.
Downloadable Games/Apps.
Range of connectivity options.

Bad Points
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Casing attracts fingerprints and smudges.
Quick Access to WAP services can be costly if accidently pressed.
Hard to view in sunny outdoor conditions.
2MB memory maybe too little.
Back and Cancel buttons maybe confusing.

Generally, I feel Sony Ericsson have made another winning mobile phone with so many things crammed into such a small package. They may be in danger of putting too much into one phone and not splitting the features amongst many phones like Nokia does, but in my opinion this is a good thing. The fact that is sensibly priced from release will also help its sales. If you are considering a new phone with all the bells and whistles this should be a strong contender for your money. As for retaining its crown for best mobile? With so many other mobile phones coming out on a monthly basis, the T610 probably keep it for about 2 days. Such is the nature of the mobile phone industry. But hey, buy it for what you need it for!

(c) Ray Liu 2003

Links of Interest
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www.sonyericsson.com/t610/ - Official SE T610 page
www.myt610.com - Brilliant information regarding everything T610 and loads of free downloads too.
www.mobiledia.com - Has an in-depth review of the T610