Excellent easy to use phone (Ericsson T28 World)

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Product:	Ericsson T28 World
Date:	19/04/01 (60 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Size, sturdy construction, ease of use, and excellent call quality.

Disadvantages: It doesn't display the exact time in call log, unless call made the same day.

When this phone first came out a few years ago, I fell in love with it while perusing through the Ericsson site. This phone is terrific, and I have owned many cell phones. If you are interested in those that I have owned and have an opinion on here is a list of them:

Motorola Lite II
StarTac 6000, 6500, and 7797
Nokia 5160, 5190
Nokia 6160, 6188
and currently am quite happy with a Nokia 8260 and an Ericsson T28 !

What I find to be the most attractive feature of the T28, is it's size and the voice dialing capabilities of the phone. I have had many phones but this is the first with the voice dialing capability and I have to say I love it !! It has never once made a mistake dialing any number I have assigned a voice tag too and for those of you who think that it is a rather useless feature, it has proved to be a very handy thing to have when you are driving and just have to hit the flip on the right side of the phone and say the name of the person you want to call ! The T28 currently has 10 slots available for voice dialing, and it would be nice if it had more, but for me 10 has proven to be more then enough.

Unlike most of the phones on the market these days, the T28 does not come equipped with the T9 text input logic program, but for those of us who rarely write e-mail on their phone or find no need to write lenghty responses to short text messages, I would hardly let it be a deciding factor. With the Ericsson, one can simply use the volume slider on the side to toggle between the second and third letter on each keypad, it takes a few minutes to get use to, but once you have are familiar with the system it is almost as efficient as the Nokia 8260 text input system. Although were I to choose which of the two I would want to write any messages on, the Nokia 8260 would still win hands down.

As for the call quality of this phone, I recall reading one article where the gentleman stated that he has never ever
not being able to receive a signal, well in my situation, that is not the case, at times the T28 has difficulty keeping in touch with the network when I am in my basement, but I have found that around campus the phone works wonderfully. In many of the buildings where the 8260 registers no service, the T28, is sitting quite happily at a very healthy 3 bars of signal strength, this brings me to my next comparison point between these two phones.

With the T28, even though I have being speaking to friends and clients when it shows 0 bars of signal strength ( but still registers the network ), the phone is CRYSTAL CLEAR, as opposed to the 8260 where if there is one bar of signal strength you can expect the people on the other end or yourself to have difficulty maintaining an ongoing conversation (some static, cut off sentences). I am sure that most of this has to do with the coverage, but I definitely prefer the T28 to make the calls on. The flip also helps as it places the microphone closer to your mouth, and when folded up, it is locked into place, so you do not have to worry about it getting damaged at all when dropping the phone, and although it does not look like it, trust me, you can drop this thing ( just an aside, the toughest phone on the market IMHO has still got to be the StarTAC, no contest with ANY phone on the market ). Between the 8260 and the T28, the 8260 definitely does get scuffed up rather quickly.

Now, here is one argument that I have heard against the T28. People argue that the standby time is nowhere near to that of the Nokias or the new StarTACs. This is true, but with the T28, one simply has to slide the volume switch when at the main screen and the phone will tell you how many hours AND minutes of talktime you have remaining and will give you an approximate indication to the hour of how many hours of standby time you have remaining. Unless you talk on the phone more then two hours a day. The battery life should be more then ad
equate. I will admit though that it is nice having the 8260 where I just charge it up once every three days with plenty of time to still talk on it. I still have yet to find the PERFECT phone... one day one day, but for now, many on the market are terrific.

Some other features that the T28 is capable of are:

-conference calling up to 5 people
-the ability to screen phone calls by the numbers, and to let others through.
-caller groups
-Up to 5 customized ringtones which you can program into the phone yourself.
-a nice blue screen =) nice graphics at the beginning.
-and the phone (at least mine did) comes with a SUPER thin lithium polymer battery and two adapters so that you can charge the phone on both the 110/220 V systems worldwide.
-100 numbers in the phones memory plus whatever your SIM card is capable of holding, ( the 8260 holds 250)

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