Excuse me while I whip this out...
Written: Sep 17 '02 (Updated Sep 23 '02)
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Pros: Tiny, feature-rich, colorful and large screen for its overall size
Cons: Large screen provides more area to get oily, maybe a bit _too_ feature-rich
The Bottom Line: Very well made and useful phone. Convenient and stylish. A tech-geeks phone.
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| kenshin27's Full Review: Sony Ericsson T68 |
Recently, I was offered an Ericsson T68m for free so I jumped at the chance since it still sells for over $300 on eBay. Long story short my ol' T39 broke (still under warranty), Ericsson couldn't fix it, and they for some reason couldn't get anymore in stock to replace it, so they asked me if I wanted a T68 instead. Talk about an offer I couldn't refuse. Although it did take them over 3 weeks to get all this sorted out so I guess this was a consolation prize. =p
Anyways, the phone was in my grubby big hands for just one day before I sent it back out again to have the software flashed to the latest version (comparable to the newer T68i series). And yes, it does make a pretty big difference. Less bugs, snappier response, more useful pictures library functionality. Got it back in a few days and have been using it for a week or two now. Pretty darn spiffy.
It's Got the Looks...
Physically, the T68 fits right in the palm of my hand. About 4" long, 1.9" wide and .8" thick. Lot smaller than I had originally expected but despite its diminutive size, it still fits comfortably in my hand due in part to the slightly rubbery plastic surface that makes up the back of the unit/battery. Makes it much less prone to slippage which was my #1 fear. It's also a much more stylish phone than Ericsson's prior offerings (although I liked the T-series from the T28 on, most of their other phones were uninspired to put it nicely), looking more like something Nokia would put out. The Lunar Grey color scheme that my unit has makes it fit well in a corporate environment. It also comes in a Ziroccan Gold color which I don't like.
The most obvious feature of the T68 is the rather large 1.3" x 1.1" 256 color display. It's _very_ nice. It does fade out a bit if you're looking at it in direct sunlight but still more than useable. The only problem I have with it (along with LCD displays in general) is that it's prone to getting dirty. I don't have an especially oily face but I find that I often tend to wipe the screen down after each use since the screen will pick up all kinds of crud from the side of your face. But that's not a T68-specific problem and it's also one of the reasons I'm not overly enthused by the Handspring Treos. I just dislike having to put that big of a piece of LCD material to my face cause I know I'm going to spend too much time trying to keep the thing clean. But this bigger screen real estate was really quite a change from the narrow screens that I was used to with the T28 and the T39.
The second most noticeable feature about the T68 would be the lack of the right and left arrow buttons that was a standard part of all Ericsson phones. In its place is a single blue joynub in the center of the unit. I hesitate to call it a joystick because it's not much of a stick. =) Using this joynub is traverse around the menu screen is actually pretty easy. You can also push down on it to select your currently highlighted item instead of using the Yes button. This however, takes a little time to get used to though because at first it's hard to tell the difference between pushing down on the thing and pushing up. But once you get that down it's quite useful. And you don't need to worry about accidentally breaking the nub off because it's not taller than the keys around it so it doesn't stick out.
Then you have the standard big Yes and No silver keys on either side of the joynub. Right under those is the grey oval Options key (under the Yes) and the grey oval Clear key (under the No). And arrayed below that are the standard number keys which were larger than I had expected for a phone of this size. They're plastic, grey, oval and work just fine. The two big Yes and No keys can be a bit squeaky though when used and combined with the clicking noise that they give off when pressed, can get a little annoying at times.
Rounding out the phone will be the sliding switch on the upper left side; used to quickly display the phone status or adjusting volume or even moving up and down a submenu, two blinking status lights on the upper front corners (green on the left side for phone reception and blue on the right side for Bluetooth), an IR port on the upper right side and the standard charger, handsfree, accessories plugins on the bottom.
This the first phone I've had in awhile that doesn't have a keypad cover. I know a lot of people really don't like that but I don't see the disadvantage really in using the key lock feature. The difference in the time it takes to unlock the phone compared to just flipping the cover open is pretty minimal to me.
The phone also comes with I believe the HPE-14 portable handsfree. At least it looks a lot like the HPE-14. I've used it a few times while in the car and it works fine. Some issues with voice recognition which I'll get into later but I haven't had a problem hearing or being heard while using it.
But Can It Do Cartwheels...
This is one of those devices where the better question is, "What _can't_ it do?" Well it can't make you dinner and do your laundry but it can do just about everything else. Seriously though, the only thing it can't do is Java apps. Which like just about everything else on the phone currently isn't quite ready for primetime yet anyways so no big loss there.
There are now _nine_ main menu selections: Phone Book, Messages, Calls, Fun & Games, Settings, WAP Services, Organizer, Connect, and My Shortcuts. Most of the functionality is pretty much exactly the same as in older phones like the T39 so I won't get into them here. Not much to say about those. 'cept they're now in color. Look at the purrrrttty colors..... where was I. Oh yes, the Phone Book can now store up to 5 separate phone #'s for each contact along with their email, title, and company name. You can choose which fields you actually want to use though so the phone won't ask you to input info for fields which you don't want. You can record a voice to go with each contact for voice calling, assign a particular ring tone for a contact, and even assign a picture to the contact. So if you have all 3 things assigned to a contact, when that contact calls you, it'll speak the contacts name, ring using the assigned ring tone, and flash the contact's picture on the screen. Pretty neat stuff. As far as I can tell the phone itself can store up to 510 individual entries. Meaning each phone # would be a separate entry, etc.
Under Messages there's a whole slew of new functions that unfortunately can't be used yet or I haven't tried. SMS is the only function that I use here. MMS is now an option but unless your cellular provider supports it, it's pretty useless for now. Basically with MMS you can send little pictures and sounds to other people with MMS-enabled phones. Exciting I know. Email I have yet to use mostly because I don't see the need to get my email on my cell phone but that's only because I spend all my working days in front of a computer anyways so there's no point in using this functionality. Then there's Chat which isn't supported yet and Area Info which looks interesting but doesn't seem to do anything at the moment.
The Calls menu is the same as always. Just a place where you can see a list of missed calls or calls you've made or received and adjust options on how you want to handle your calls and the like. Nothing new here.
Fun & Games is pretty self-explanatory. The Themes submenu is where you store the themes that the phone can use. A theme being the color scheme for all the menus, the screensaver and the background image and such. People have created themes that you can download online or through WAP. For instance I'm currently using the Matrix theme which sets the background color to black and has an overall color scheme of greens, greys, and whites. The background picture is a snapshot of the cascading letters that anyone who has seen the movie before should recognize while the screensaver _is_ the cascading letters. So themes can be pretty handy in personalizing your phone.
Then there's My Pictures which is where you store your pictures (GIF format, 101x80 resolution, 256 colors). These are the pictures that you use for MMS or the background image or assigning to a contact, etc. You can either upload pictures to your phone from your computer through Bluetooth or download them via WAP. The phone comes with a bunch of pre-installed pics which are mostly boring so I wound up deleting most of those in order to save space. Speaking of which it seems like you have slightly over 1MB of space for all your pics, sounds and theme files.
There's also a Draw Picture functionality which I can't believe to be very useful since it's kinda tough to draw using the joynub. You can use the keypad to draw horizontally, vertically, and diagonally.
My Sounds is where all your ringtones are stored. As expected Ericsson includes a bunch of generic ones (although not as generic as on the old phones). Ringtones on the T68 are much better than on the older Ericsson phones. Better range of sound and you can even intersperse vibrations within the ringtone. There's also a Composer function where you can create your own ringtones on the phone. A through G tones with sharps and flats. And then there's Sound Recorder which basically works like a microrecorder. Just hit record and it'll record anything through the mic until you run out of memory or hit stop. I use it mainly to leave short voice memos to myself but apparently now you can use those recordings as ringtones.
And last but not least are the Games. The T68m with the updated software comes with _eight_ games. Out of which I only know how to play 1. =p And I'm kinda annoyed that the software update wipes out Tetris. I had missed Tetris when I switched from the T28 to the T39 and was excited to have it back but now it's gone again. Oh well, I guess Naval Fleet will have to do for now (You sunk my battleship!). The other games are Arimona, Contrary, Erix, Four Piles, North Territory, Q, and Yukon Struggle.
There's also a separate submenu for the CommuniCam but since I don't have it, can't say much about it. But I assume it just has a bunch of options that you can play with when you have the cam connected.
The Settings menu is pretty standard. Not much different than from the T39. You can pretty much configure every aspect of your phone. WAP Services is also almost exactly like what exists on the T39. There's a new Advanced submenu where you can clear your cache and passwords and cookies. The new Options key also comes in handy here while browsing WAP sites, making it easier to download pics and such.
The Organizer menu contains the rest of the PDA-like functions for the phone: Calendar, Notes, Alarms, Timer, Stopwatch, Calculator, and Code Memo. Calendar I've only glanced at cursorily and it seems to have the basic functionality that you'd want out of one. I'm sure I'll be using it more often when Apple releases their iSync software that will allow me to easily sync my contacts and calendar entries with the T68 via Bluetooth and also my Palm. Should be pretty handy. The only function from the Organizer group that I don't use would be Code Memo which I don't really need since I have the same functionality on my Palm already.
Connect contains the functionality needed to send or receive files via infrared and Bluetooth as well as preferences for syncing your phone data with the Ericsson software (on PCs). I've used Bluetooth to transfer images between my Powerbook and the T68 just fine and it works as advertised.
The last main menu option is the standard My Shortcuts menu that all Ericsson users should be used to by now. Basically you can place all your most used phone apps in the order that you specify under this menu.
So, overall, using this phone is pleasant. The menus are mostly quick and responsive and since I've always been an Ericsson user, I'm still not too sure why Nokia people complain about the user-unfriendliness of the phone software. It seems just fine to me and there are key shortcuts that can be used. The T9 predictive input works alot better on this phone than on the T39. With the T68 a popup menu will appear when you're typing in a word that displays a list of possible words for you to chose from. With the T39 you had to type up to the # of characters of the word that you were looking for and then hit 0 to cycle through the words that it had in its dictionary. Much quicker feedback this way on the T68.
I actually use WAP a lot more with this phone than when I had the T39. Something about the color screen just makes browsing the few WAP sites there are a bit more enjoyable. But I only visit the espn.com site on a regular basis anyway which is just as well since I only have 1MB of data that I can use per month with my calling plan.
Phone reception is generally pretty clear and I haven't had many problems using the phone. Then again I don't often venture too far off the beaten track so I'm not exactly testing the boundaries of Voicestream's cell service. The handsfree kit that comes with it works pretty well too.
Coming Down To Earth...
So what're the problems with this phone? Broadly speaking it's not the phone for everyone. Power users, gadget freaks, those who enjoy the technical cutting edge is the primary market for this phone. How many people besides those in the groups listed above use Bluetooth at this point in time? While I believe Bluetooth will be pretty big in the future, it's still relatively premature. I mean, yay, I can copy pictures and sounds between my phone and my laptop. Surely there has to be more to it than that. And with Bluetooth, why leave the legacy infrared port in? Not that IR was ever used all that much to begin with.
The voice recognition software can be quirky at times as well. I had to re-record all my voices through the handsfree kit when I discovered that the phone wouldn't recognize any of my original voices while I was using the handsfree. But after I re-recorded them with the handsfree, it worked alot better (even when I wasn't using the handsfree). And when using the handsfree along with the magic word function, the phone would apparently "hear" the magic word being said sometimes even when it wasn't. Maybe it's cause something I say in Chinese alot sounds like "Listen up Mortimer" or my father's voice confuses it but it's a little touchy. Plus there's no phrase to tell the phone that you didn't want it to turn on so you have to fumble around with the phone to put it back to standby mode.
The other problem isn't actually the fault of the phone but the fault of the network providers. Features that just aren't used at this time because the network doesn't support it: MMS, chat, area info. Out of these 3 I'm most excited about area info cause I think that could be pretty cool but I seriously doubt that it'll actually be used anytime soon in the US especially considering how touchy we Americans are concerning our privacy. MMS can be cute but with only a 256 color screen, the pictures aren't enough to write home about.
But, if you've got the $300+ dollars to spend on a sleek, hi-tech, gee-whiz cell phone, then by all means take a look at the T68. Nokia is recently catching up with higher-color phones of their own but I believe they're larger than the T68. I'll probably come back and add a bit more info about the organizer functions when Apple releases their iSync software at the end of this month. It's supposed to make it ridiculously easy for me to sync the phone with Apple's Address Book and iCal (calendar) programs through Bluetooth so it should be pretty exciting.
My review on the Ericsson T39:
http://www.epinions.com/content_36832644740
My mobile service provider:
http://www.epinions.com/content_39762890372
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): free
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Epinions.com ID:
kenshin27
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Member: Ben C
Location: NJ
Reviews written: 34
Trusted by: 17 members
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