My New T39m
Written: Aug 10 '02
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
| Clarity: |
 |
|
| Portability: |
|
|
| Battery Life: |
|
|
|
Pros: Extensive features, options, and accessories
Cons: Screen and buttons small depending on what you're used to
The Bottom Line: If you like multiple accessories, plenty of options, and more features than you may ever use, this phone is for you. It's small and weighs nothing!
|
|
|
| aswas's Full Review: Sony Ericsson T39m Cell Phone |
Orac1e's review is great and was very helpful to me, so I don't want to repeat anything he mentions. I'll throw in some other things that may help you.
I bought the phone off eBay. The seller was in the US, the phone was never used or locked, and came in the box with all of the manuals and parts. I paid around $210 including shipping... that's around what they are going for new on eBay right now. I popped my SIM card in and it knew me right away. However, the T39m doesn't make it so easy to get to phone numbers on the SIM. You have to go to Phonebook - Call From SIM (choice 5) and then find the number via a text search. As far as I can tell, you cannot enter a number and save it to the SIM... you'd have to COPY it to the SIM, and then I guess delete it from the phone if you only wanted it on the SIM. You can however mass copy everything on your SIM to the phone.
I had a hard time setting it up for WAP at first (I'm on VoiceStream/T-Mobile in New York). I had to be sent to their wireless data department and it took two calls to two different people plus a visit to a website where some user wrote down his settings [http://mork.home.mindspring.com/myvoicestreamhelp.htm] to get it working. But it works excellently now. I had heard WAP on this phone in NY was bad news and that VoiceStream doesn't support the T39m, but I found both to be false.
I don't have anything Bluetooth yet, so I can't comment on that. However, I did try an IR connection between the phone on the GPRS system and my Palm i705 which gets no wireless service in my house. After reading another website on how to set that one up :) [http://www.woggledog.com/?subject=GPRS], it worked excellently the second time. The Palm acted like it had a signal strength of around 30% while it usually has 0% in my house. I'm guessing that Bluetooth will be faster, but I'm not ready to blow the $129 on the Bluetooth card for the Palm when my Palm wireless service is great outside of my town.
I have a USB cable on order, and once I get that, I will update the review telling you what you can actually do. The software makes it seem like you can manage your address book and do text messaging, so we'll see. Another piece of software I downloaded from the Ericsson site makes it seem like I can upload my own picture for the phone. I got the cable on eBay for around $8 including shipping, which is a perfect price for an experiment!
The phone doesn't have room in the ports on the bottom to have say your headset plugged in AND the cable for charging. However, I will say that out of all the cables and plugs I've had, and I think I've had dozens of phones over the years, these are the most clever when it comes to snapping them in and taking them out. Lots of other plugs make you push a button down or just push to get it in, then push the button again to get it out. This one goes in with two plastic ends that squeeze and become smaller with the pressure. So it snaps in and to take it out, I can pull it or just start angling it. To me, this means that never again will I break off a plug IN the phone or break a plug because it was in my pocket when I bent. The plug seems like it would breakaway and remove itself rather than just break.
I appreciate all the counters the phone has. I hear it'll tell you how many SMS messages you've sent and received, which is important for people on networks where you are charged (or you get a few per month and then you're charged). It also tells me how much WAP/GPRS I've used, which is super handy because VoiceStream charges $2.99 for the first 1MB and then - get this - $10 for each MB after that! I will be making sure I don't go over that 1MB!
I also got the Chatboard (CHA-10) for this phone. That's a little thumb keyboard that snaps in the bottom and let's you type... great for those of us who HATE having to hit the 7 key four times to get an S. That Chatboard is easy to use but a bit awkward to hold as you have to get some fingers behind the phone to hold that too. At least that's how I'm doing it. It also tends to type only in CAPS but that's not so terrible considering how it's making things so much easier. I'd probably prefer all lower case over all caps but it's still not so bad. Again, I got this off of eBay. It's the real Ericsson part, and it cost me less than $10 including shipping.
That's my review so far and I've only had the phone a week. More after I've used it more, get more accessories, and especially after I roam to London in October. That'll cost 99 cents per minute incoming and outgoing so you DON'T need a global SIM card unless you want it.
I didn't test battery life, but I had to pick something from the pull down menus. :) I do know that I talked about an hour one day and the battery meter went down one notch.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 210
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
aswas
|
|
Location: New York
Reviews written: 7
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
I've been running a website development company located in New York since April 1995.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.