Yesterday's technology works a treat (Ericsson R380s)

Member Name: Windsoar

Product:	Ericsson R380s
Date:	26/03/04 (170 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: multitude of functions, so cheap on ebay

Disadvantages: mono display, no camera

Well it's three years since anybody wrote a review on this telephone and that's because it's long since been replaced by the Sony Ericsson P800 and now the P900. I discovered the R380s by chance when I was browsing ebay. At the time of writing decent P800s from reputable vendors are fetching £200 on ebay and the P900 usaully fetches twice that. So I decided Icouldn't afford and I was browsing for a mobile telephone which could do much more than make telephone calls ..... and I found it in the R380s. I paid £30 on ebay and that's about the going rate in March 2004 for a handset that's in good-as-new condition.
For your money you get a large but lightweight telephone which looks like a telephone, works like a telephone and sits comfortably in the hand. But it also has all the functions of a basic PDA, links to your PC and talks to Microsoft Outlook so that you can carry a large address book around with you and synchronise it daily with your email and address book.
You can send email messages as well as simple SMS texts, and of course you can receive them. The stylus fits neatly into the battery (so neatly that it took me three days to realise where it was!) but the icons are clear and well set-out so that you can operate them with a thumb for easy look-up of numbers.
Four years ago you would have paid over ten times the price for this telephone, and its qualities reflect that heritage. It's not the latest must-have toy but it will do me fine for a couple of years until you can pick up P800s at give-away prices.

Summary: