Ericsson's answer to the 7110 (Ericsson R320s)

Member Name: GAThrawn1

Product:	Ericsson R320s
Date:	02/09/01 (395 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Slim, light, features

Disadvantages: slow operating system, unresponsive keypad

The r320s is Ericsson's answer to the Nokia's popular 7110. On paper both phones have much the same features; WAP browser, big displays, infrared modems and so on. However, Ericsson have taken the a similar approach to the design of the r320s, as they did to the T28s, that is very light and slim. The r320s clocks in at just under 100g, making the 7110 feel much heavier at 141g. The Ericsson also packs in voice dialling and voice memo, both lackingon the 7110. Which is the better then?

On aesthetics alone, the two phones are very close. With the help of the Matrix the 7110 and it's active slide generally impresses lot of people. However, the r320s is a very nice phone to handle, it weighs practically nothing and is very slim. As other people have pointed it does come with the thicker li-ion battery, rather than the super slim li-poly, which means the battery does stick out a bit. The r320s does have a much larger display than the li-poly powered T28s plus it has the power sapping WAP browser so the decision to include the larger battery is a sensible one. It also means that when the phone is sitting on a flat surface the battery comes out as far as the back of the aerial so it sits perfectly flat. The phone is just a bit too long though, it would be a lot better if was just a bit shorter. The button layout is classic Ericsson, with a couple of additions. Below the screen are the larger 'yes' and 'no' buttons. However, instead of only having up and down buttons(or diagonal buttons as they tend to be) it also has left and right buttons. The 'c' buttons is shifted down a bit, and a voice memo button is added. On the top left hand side of the phone the small slider resides, this adjusts the volume during calls, starts the voice dialling and displays the battery life and current profile. On the other side of the phone you can find the ir port. The display is just the same as the T28, except it has been stretched
over six lines. The network strength is displayed as a series of rising bars at the bottom left, and the battery is displayed at the bottom right. In the main part of the display, the current operator name is displayed, as you would expect. One of the great features of the display is the blue EL backlight which few other phones have, which looks very good indeed.

The operating system is again much the same as the T28, although with the addition of the extra left and right buttons, as well as the bigger screen, it works that bit better. The infrared features have been smoothly incorprated into the system, and the WAP browser gets its own menu. In the standby mode, the yes button dials up a number, or displays the dialled calls list if no number has been entered. As always, the no button switches the phone off, switches it on and hangs up calls. The voice memo button takes you straight into the voice memo functions, allowing you to record a new memo or listen to previously recorded memo. A useful feature is the shortcut menu, you can choose which features you want in this list, so that you can quickly go to any function that is needed. Overall the menu system is very good, I have very little complaint with the design but unfortunately the implementation of this system seriously lets the phone down. Moving through the menu system is very slow, it takes several seconds at a time to select options which is far too sluggish. To make matters worse, apart from the yes and no buttons, which are hinged on the inside, the rest of the buttons are unresponsive, making it difficult to make quick keypresses. Overall, this means that trying to navigate the phone is a joke, I found myself getting increasingly frustrated by the delays in button presses. After a while I became slowly used to it but I kept going back to the 7110 or S35i, which are both much faster to use.

Although WAP seems to be treated as a failure and generally useless, it's a fe
atures that day to day I find very useful. The r320s was one of the first WAP phones and has clearly designed to work with WAP, unlike others which are phones with WAP rather that WAP phones. Setting up th WAP browser is a little more complicated than with other phones but most websites give very clear instructions, demonstrating how to setup the browser. With the large screen, the WAP browser works well, it's a little slower to navigate, as with the rest of the phone but the bookmark function works well and it's easy to simply go to a URL. My favourite sites are still google's html to wap converter at http:///wap.google.com (or.co.uk, or http://www.google.co.uk.wap.wml) and Yahoo, which is very handy for checking e-mail.

As for more traditionally features the r320s scores well. Call quality is very good, the only problem I had was a faulty speaker, which meant that there was a constant buzzing comning from the earpiece. Fortunately this was sinmply a fault with my handset, which was fixed by replacing the speaker. The battery is both an good and bad. Ericsson call it an 'intelligent' battery, this means that when you press press the slide down or up it tells you how many hours of standby time you have left and how many hours of talktime. Obviously it is giving the hours for optimum condictions but it does give you a good idea of how much longer you can use the phone before you need to recharge it. On the downside, the battery is identical to the one found on the T28. Since the T28 is such a small phone, the battery is very short. On the r320s this means that the bettery performance isn't great, compared to the 7110 which has a much bigger battery. If they battery was longer, there is certainly a lot of room on the back, the battery performance could have been much better. Overall, I would like to see other manufacturers develop intelligent batteries, I keep wanting to press a button and display the remaining time lef
t on the battery on my other phones.

Unfortunately, the r320s does not have the excellent T9 predictive text input system. The alternative is the 'chatboard', a small qwerty keyboard which clips onto the bottom of the phone. It works well, but it's an extra £25, plus it's not particularly convieniant to carry about. I have a Palm m100 and expected to be able to use the phoneSMS program, which allows you to download messages from the phone and send them via infrared. Unfortunately it didn't work very well, the Palm crashed, and the IR connection seemed to be unstable. The Palm works fine with the S35i and 7110 so I assume it's the r320s at fault. On the other hand, the phone does work well with Psion organisers.

I can't say I was particularly bothered about the voice memo feature, and to be honest it's not that great. It does allow you to record short pieces of conversation. If you find that sort of feature useful, then the r320s does it fine.

The r320s of course does all the normal features you would expect, phonebook, games, call register etc. These aren't really worth a mention simply because they all work well. Tetris has become a popular alternative to Nokia's snake but I personally like the solitaire game.

The Ericsson r320s is a good phone, and if the system was as fast as its competitors and the buttons were more responsive this would be a near faultless phone, if you can put up with these faults then you have a very slim and light, well featured WAP phones, which is relatively exclusive. A good phone, but personally I think the 7110 is the better phone.

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