Ericsson should take a leaf out of Nokia's book (Ericsson R380s)

Member Name: aeronaut

Product:	Ericsson R380s
Date:	03/04/01 (628 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Phone sized PDA/Phone combo, touch screen

Disadvantages: Slow, annoying 'features', unexpandable, easy to lose stylus, no high speed data

Well as a self confessed gadget addict, I had to be one of the first to get a R380s, even if it were only to see the gasps you get on the tube when you flip open the keypad to put it into PDA mode.

As a long term user of the Nokia Communicator product, I was intrigued to see Ericsson's first foray into the Smartphone marketplace, but after many launch delays it hit the market with more of a whimper than a bang.

The phone itself is a clever piece of Scandinavian design, it's roughly the size of an old Ericsson GH688 which makes it a bulky phone and unlike the Nokia phones it has no keyboard but instead makes use of a touch screen which is activated by opening the keypad out like a flip phone.

As a phone i'm afraid to say it also falls down in the two most important areas, signal quality is poor with digital artefacts audible even in strong signal areas and the speaker is far too quiet making it difficult to use in public places.

The PDA section uses Symbian's excellent EPOC operating system but the implementation in this case is poor to say the least. I have found the phone painfully slow to operate and has some major flaws that make the phone incredibly annoying to use. The most annoying of these is the backlight, when the flap is closed any keypress on the phone's keypad operates the backlight however with the flap open and in PDA mode the backlight stays on while you are pressing the screen but if it is allowed to go off the only way of activating it again is to close the flap, press a key and open it again! What on earth were Ericsson thinking when programming this 'feature' into it.

Functionality wise, the phone has a address book, email client and appointment book. This is coupled with PC Suite software which allows you to synchronise with Exchange, Lotus Notes and various other email clients as well as having a full POP3/IMAP4 implementation. All these applications work well but they
are not exactly feature rich or particulary intuitive to use. Curiously the phone only packs a WML browser which puts it immediately at a disadvantage to the Nokia phones that have a full HTML/WML implementation, with a full width screen I would have thought that Ericsson would have given support to HTML as well. Another big flaw is that there is no ability to add new applications nor is there an easy way to upgrade the firmware.

The PC suite software is limited to interfaces with Outlook, Notes, Lotus Organiser etc, however I found this software bug ridden and encountered many problems getting the software to work with Windows 2000.

The phone has all the usual features expected of a high end modern GSM handset, it has a vibrating alert and voice dialling/memos and these work well enough. However it does lack the features found in more recent phones, notably there is no predictive SMS messaging and no support for GPRS or HSCSD so data transmission is limited to 9,600bps (in the UK).

Design wise, it's not an ugly phone it shares a very strong Ericsson family feel and is almost like an overweight version of the R320s handset but it does look good especially when in PDA mode. One big design flaw is that the stylus for the touch screen fits into the battery and it is easily lost because it does not sit securely into the battery. (Ericsson obviously realise this as they bundles 4 stylii with the handset)

Battery life is good considering it's feature set and the phone can hold out for around 3-4 days with normal use.

Overall, if Nokia did not already have several years experience in this market with the Communicators, the R380 could have been a good product, but unfortunately for them their Scandinavian cousins have a product that does everything the R380 does, but it does it a lot better. If Ericsson could do one thing though to make this phone a better proposition, it should fix the annoying backlight bug.

Summary: