The Ultimate Phone (Ericsson T20s)

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Product:	Ericsson T20s
Date:	30/06/01 (19 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Everything

Disadvantages: Nothig

Let's be honest with each other. How many of you use all the features you have on your mobile phone? I know most phones these days have got 20,000 different ring tones, vibrating alert, the ability to send text messages to 10 people at the same time, predictive text messaging, a diary containing 100,000 names and numbers (OK, a slight exagertaion, but you know what I mean!) oh, I nearly forgot, lots of games and some even have WAP, but how often do you use the vast majority of these features? The answer is probably not very often. A mobile phone is mainly used for making and receiving calls sending and receiving text messages. Anything extra is like the icing on the cake, very decorative, occasionally of use but ultimately ......

So, why did I buy the Ericsson T20 instead of any other phone, particularly if I'm a cynic and think all phones are the same?

Well, it's quite a complicated thought process, so bear with me as long as you can.

First of all, I like the way this phone looks. There's no getting away from it, this phone is cute. It's a little bit shorter than the ubiquitous Nokia 3210/3310, about the same width, and a little bit stockier. But it does look exceedingly cute and endearing. It has a coloured front panel that comes in a (small) range of colours. You can't change the facia like on the aforementioned Nokia's, but again, how often do you really feel the need to change the facia on your phone. Let's face it, what colour your phone is does not affect it?s performance!

The Ericsson T20 just looks a little bit different, and I like that. If I tell you I own a Mini Clubman Estate and a Morris Ital car, and I own an iMac, not a PC, you'll understand that I like to be a little bit different than the norm, so in the case of my mobile phone, anything that isn't a Nokia is a good start, and anything looking that bit different is a bonus, and the T20 certainly fits the bill.

>The second thing I was after in my phone (despite what I've said above!) is WAP capability. When I bought the phone I was quite excited about being able to access the 'mobile internet', thus needed (wanted!) a WAP phone, and yes, you guessed it, the T20 is WAP enabled. Having had the phone for a few months I can count on the fingers of my hands the times I have used the WAP facility, and those times were through sheer boredom on a long, quiet night shift. As you may have heard WAP is not all it cracked up to be and I certainly wouldn't buy a phone now just because it has WAP.

What else did I need? Ah yes, a vibrating alert. Not for any kinky reasons, I work for the Ambulance Service, and it would be a little bit embarrassing to have my phone bleeping out the Star Wars theme tune whilst I'm performing CPR on somebody's grannie. So I need the discretion of vibrating alert, and this phone provides that. OK, there a few calls important enough that I need to know about the straight away, but it looks more professional to not have my phone ringing every 5 minutes (if only I had that many friends!).

And that's about it. Apart from that I wanted a phone that could make and receive calls, send and receive text messages, and store a few numbers, and all mobile phones can do that, so I suppose I plumbed for the T20 based on how it looks, not the most objective way to pick a phone, but I seem to have got away with it this time.

Why?

Well, the phone performs extremely well. It is a flip front phone, and calls are answered just by opening the flip, which I find extremely handy (OK, my 'active flip' as it is known doesn't work any more after I threw the phone across the room in a fit of anger, but the less said about that the better!). The phone also holds a battery charge for a long time. I?m not going to go into the published stand by and talk time figures, because what the manufacturers claim and w
hat happens in reality are often two completely different things, but I only need to charge the battery every 5 days or so. Obviously if you talk to people more than I do you will need to charge the phone more often, but it certainly has the best performing battery of any phone I've ever owned or used.

It has a couple of handy extras (stop the presses, a mobile phone with a USEFUL extra!!!). There is a calculator, an alarm clock, a stopwatch and a timer, all of which can be surprisingly helpful, especially the alarm clock, brings my collection of devices used to wake me up in the morning to four, I sleep quite heavily sometimes!

The T20 has all the usual features you would expect to find in a modern mobile phone. There are 10 different built in melodies, and 4 that you can set yourself. Unfortunately you can't get new ring tones by SMS (one of the few advantages of having a Nokia phone) but you can enter the notes yourself, so you can either make up your own little ditty, or enter a tune that you've found on the internet. You can set up personal ring tones for different people, so you can recognise who is calling by the sound coming from your phone, and ignore as appropriate!!!

Another item missing is predictive text input. Unfortunately you do have to scroll through and type all the individual letters in every text message you send. In someways this is good as predictive messaging can get a little bit annoying if the phone never predicts correctly, but it does mean messages can take a little bit longer to write. On the positive side, if you find you are constantly sending the same or similar messages, you can set up some templates to save you typing in the same information every time. This is another one of those features I never use, but some of you out there might find it useful. You can also set up 'Groups', a set of people who will receive the same text message. Useful if you have a large group of friends you ne
ed to contact to say 'Be down the pub at 7.30!', but absolutely no use to me as I've only got one friend! (Altogether now, awwwwwwww!!!!)

What other 'helpful' and 'essential' features does this phone have? Top of the list must be Swatch Internet Time. You've probably not heard of this, but it was a scheme put forward by Swatch (surprise surprise, given the name!) to split the day up into 1000 equal units, rather than minutes, days and hours. Part of this idea was that Swatch time would have no time zones, everyone would run on the same time. Needless to say, given the lack of publicity and the fact that very few people have heard of it, this idea has not taken off yet, so this is one of the more useless features this phone has!

You can choose from 29 different languages for menu items to be displayed in. This might be useful if you happen to speak 29 different languages, but is of absolutely no use to me, as I only speak one. This is probably more a tool for the manufacturer, as it means you don't have to have differently programmed phones for different markets, you can sell exactly the same phone in many different countries, as rather than having to reprogramme the language in the phone, you just have to select the correct one.

You can choose to have Voice dialling of up to 10 numbers. Fine in principle, but it really only works in quiet areas, and it's a bit embarrassing saying 'Dad' or 'Bloody Mother-in-Law' in a loud voice just to make a call, and it does seem to take longer to use the voice-dialling than it does to find and dial the number from the memory. Still, good way to show off to your friends, and if you are really evil you can set it up to respond to all sorts of dastardly statements when dialling certain people, such as 'W$%ker' when dialling your boss etc.

What else, I'm running out of features, I've been through all the ones I use. Ah yes,
it's a dual band phone. I won't get too technical here, but dual band means the phone will work on two different frequencies, 900 and 1800 Mhz. This won't affect you in this country, unless you want to change network from say Vodafone to Orange (these networks run on different frequencies). But it is very useful if you want to use the phone abroad, as subject to a roaming agreement, you can use the phone on a greater number of foreign networks than a single band phone. Again this is probably a feature that is more useful for the phone manufacturer than the consumer, as it allows them to make one hone for use on all networks, rather than one model for use on 900 Mhz networks, and another for use on 1800 Mhz networks.

There are the usual selection of rather useless games. It doesn't have Snake, but there is a pac-man clone, which you can use to while away a few seconds waiting for the bus.

One final thing (don't groan, this won't take long). There is a QWERTY keyboard available you can attach to the bottom of the T20 to help make writing text messages and accessing WAP pages easier. You don?t get one of those with a Nokia! They cost around £20, and if the phone looks cue, these things a really, really, really cute!

The phone can be picked up for less than £10 with a contract if you shop around (drive a hard bargain, I managed to get mine for free and have two cases and a hands free kit thrown in!) but it is a bit expensive to buy pre-pay, at anything over £100 depending on the tariff.

Beyond all this there isn't much more I can say (there probably isn't much more TOO say, I've been wittering for so long!) The important points to remember about the T20 are:-

1. It has a great battery life
2. It has a vibrating alert
3. Most importantly it looks really, really cute.

Apart from this, most phones really are all the same. Chose what's best for you. I really like th
is one, but there is plenty of choice out there. Do some research, think what you want in a phone and choose wisely.

Good luck!

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