Going retro with the Ericsson T68(i) (Ericsson T68)

Member Name: tomshanks

Product:	Ericsson T68
Date:	27/06/05 (596 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small, light and now inexpensive, Excellent battery life, A piece of technological history

Disadvantages: Menus very slow, Text messaging very difficult, Multi-media functions now disappointing

Upon its release in 2001, the Ericsson T68 was the most advanced mobile phone available in Europe. With its colour screen, Bluetooth, joystick navigation and relatively small size (similar to that of the Nokia 8210), it was quite literally a revolution. There were other phones which matched it size, and naturally phones which had a number of its features, but none of them encompassed the size of the T68 with its amazing feature set. Initially little more than a toy for extremely wealthy businessmen and gadget enthusiasts, these days a T68 can be had for about £25 on Ebay. Many, such as the one I owned for a time last year, have experienced the software upgrade to T68i specification, which adds things like a slightly different menu and the ability to send and receive MMS messages and use a camera attachment.

On a personal level, I prefer the looks of the original T68, which meant that what I had was the most desirable combination. The rubberised back, holding another first for the time, a lithium polymer battery, enables the user to keep a good grip on the phone with one hand, and the styling of the front, with its recessed screen and unique Ericsson speaker grille, is still distinctive and marks the T68 out as a classic. Despite the age of most of the T68s out there these days, the design has merely mellowed over the years, partly due to the small size and high specification, but partly due to the fact that Ericsson, in a final flourish before the merger with Sony in 2002, got the design right first time. The Sony Ericsson ‘corporate look’, introduced for the T68i when it was released as the first evidence of the merger, softened the Ericsson individuality, and abolished the rubberised back, both mistakes in my opinion. Fortunately, the T68 battery was still compatible with the T68i, so if a user wanted a rubberised back with the new type of phone, it was still possible. Strangely, the design appears to have come full circle, after deviating for the T610, T630 and K700i models, and now the new K750i owes a lot to the T68, especially its standard black/grey colour scheme. The fact that these phones is a similar size shows how much progress has been made in the last four years in terms of reducing the size of handsets: very little! But were any of the new features which the T68 bought onto the market any good?

The 256 colour screen, although excellent at the time, now looks rather appalling. Many people neglected the fact that Mitsubishi had released their 256 colour screen model, named the Trium Eclipse, at least a month before the T68. At 101x80 pixels, the colour screen on the Ericsson was a pretty standard resolution for the time, and indeed this was shared with many other models which also had attachable cameras, such as the Siemens S55, and Sony Ericsson’s own T300. Unfortunately, this was all blown away by the arrival of the first mobile phone in Europe with a built-in camera, the bulky and rather ugly Nokia 7650, which had a 176x208 pixel 4096 colour screen. However, this pales into insignificance beside the Eclipse’s screen. I used to own one of these phones, and the screen is still big by today’s standards, at 120x143 pixels (bigger than the screen of a Nokia 6230, for example). Bearing in mind this was released before the T68, the claim that Ericsson was the first manufacturer to have a colour screen on the market seems to stand on shaky ground. Actually, the Siemens SL10, released in 1998, had a colour screen, but there is no sense in bringing that up, as it was a pitiful three colour affair. So if the colour screen was not so good, what else was there?

Bluetooth and infra-red functionality, both of which the T68 contained, were both things which had been done before. However, since Ericsson had initially had the idea to develop to the technology in the first place, some credit can be given to them for it. The first phone ever to have Bluetooth was the R520m, which appears to be about twice the size of the T68, so on that point alone, the T68 was certainly an improvement. The Bluetooth system on the T68 is actually fairly simple to operate, and unlike some later phones, like the Sharp GX30, it is a fully functional data exchange system. I managed both to transfer pictures and use a headset with the T68 with no problems at all, and an interesting feature not carried other to other makes is the flashing blue LED to remind the user that the Bluetooth is activated. This compliments the standard green GSM LED, which tells the user whether or not he or she has a signal, something sorely missing on a lot of today’s modern phones (although the dynamic light function on the Siemens CX65 can be set to display when NO signal is being received, for example). There is also infra-red, but this can only be used to transfer contacts, which is a pain. Thus, on the connectivity front, it appears that the T68 still scores very well indeed. Getting one of these for someone who needs an inexpensive and reliable Bluetooth phone to use with a headset whilst driving makes a lot of sense. There are also other functions well implemented on the T68.

Although Alcatel and Panasonic had introduced something similar to the 3x3 icon-based main menu used by the T68, Ericsson were the first to do it in colour. Rather than the half-hearted attempt at making menu design which was seen in their contemporary monochrome models using greyscale, the main menu really does look attractive, and the joystick is still rather good. This was not a new innovation, but five-way navigation does make any similar device much easier to use, and thus it is easy to see why so many other manufacturers have copied this very effective system. Disappointingly, the 3x3 system disappears after the main menu and the traditional lists which have graced so many Ericsson products in the past remain. For some, used to Ericsson, this is fine, as not too much has been changed from the days of models like the old T65, but others, not used to having a handset which does still have a good deal of functions in sometimes unusual places, this may be a problem. This is where more conventional phones like the Siemens S45 and Mitsubishi Trium Eclipse, which have fewer features, but infinitely less complex menus, certainly do win hands down. However, none of these phones remain as widely used as the T68. Motorola may have introduced the very useful tri-band function on their Timeport series, but Ericsson took this technology and implemented it in a phone which was altogether smaller and more user-friendly with the T68. It is here that we come to the reason behind Ericsson’s strategy with their revolutionary handset: to take the best of the available technology and put it in a handset which was to be attractive, small and light, but also would satisfy the demands of the most dedicated gadget enthusiast. It certainly fulfils this brief, and reveals that Ericsson were more than capable of coming up with market-place winners by themselves before the merger with Sony. But what of the T68’s abilities as a phone?

Michael Oryl, editor of www.mobileburn.com, one of the most respected mobile phone review sites on the Internet, explained that the T610 model, the replacement for the T68(i), displayed disappointing reception in comparison to his old T68i. From my own experience, I would even go so far as to say that the even T68, which seemed to drop signal fairly often, was a disappointment in this respect. If this is bad, I cannot imagine what the T610 must be like! Certainly, the Siemens and Sagem models which I have owned over the years on the same network as I used the T68 (Orange), have given consistently better results. The reception is thus fairly average, but it must be said that the call quality of the T68 is very good, as with a lot of earlier Ericsson models. There are also separate keys for adjusting the volume, which are most welcome. Unfortunately, Sony Ericsson did not get round to introducing speakerphones in their handsets until the K700i, but of course there is always the possibility of using a Bluetooth headset if this is a problem. Battery life, by contrast, is incredible. With a phone that must have been 18 months old, I would have expected the battery life to be appalling. This was simply not the case, and the T68 would certainly outlast anything I have at the moment. Text messaging and navigating the menus is not quite as impressive.

The other Ericsson phone I have owned, a T65, was responsible for wiping my sister’s entire phonebook because of the confusing menu. The T68 (and all subsequent Sony Ericsson models) also share this problem. With the entries on the SIM card, it is almost impossible to do anything with them, and there is no function for adding individual entries to the SIM card. Instead, the phone must be allowed to copy all the SIM entries onto the phone to use the contacts in anything like a normal fashion, and then in order to get the phone entries onto the SIM card, the phone can only copy all its entries onto the SIM, wiping any numbers that existed on the SIM in the first place. No other manufacturer has phones which behave in this way, making it very impractical to change phones indeed. As I seem to change phones every two to three months (I bought another new one today), this is the major downside of Ericsson ownership from my point of view. Text messaging is another.

The technology of text messaging has certainly matured since the days of the T68. Ericsson appear to have crippled their top-of-the-range handset with a system so slow to use, it is a wonder any serious text messengers did not send their T68s back to the shop within the first week. Nokia certainly had this worked out years ago, but it is only now that Sony Ericsson really appears to have this sorted. At the time, however, putting up with a phone which used to be whole words behind the user whilst writing a text message was an irritation when used on my preferred Multitap method, and would have been unbearable when using the T9 function, which most people do. It did not help that all the text messages on the phone were wiped when a different SIM card was inserted, or that the button layout for text messaging left most of the punctuation and the space bar on the 1 key, but at least there was a character counter of sorts. Part of the reason why using the T68 for text messaging, even with the T68i firmware, was that the phone itself was inherently slow.

I have little idea what processor was used with the T68, but it was certainly not a fast one. The text message inbox took an age to open, and even something basic like opening the phonebook and making a phone call was rather time consuming. The message ‘Please Wait…’ must have been a familiar sight to many of the T68’s users. In all fairness, however, the T68 was made at a time when phone processors were very slow, and to create something like the T68 with all its functions and include a processor which did not make the phone have a £500 price tag would have resulted in some compromises. It is just as well that the phone only costs £25 these days in that case! The ‘multi-media’ functions on the phone do not seem to cause much of a stir these days, but with things like changeable wallpapers, different colour schemes, downloadable (albeit monophonic) ringtones, support for .jpg and .bmp images and a ringtone composer, the T68 was really quite a lot ahead of the contemporary competition. The only problem was that the text message alert could not be changed, although at least it could be accompanied with the vibration alert. An MP3 player and Megapixel camera were pipedreams when this phone was released, so it is amazing that such things did exist at all.

The T68 is an impressive achievement. Packed full of what was ground-breaking technology at the time, the phone can still hold its head high amongst much newer opposition, thanks to superb design, excellent call quality, impressive battery life and useful connectivity functions. What a shame, therefore, that certainly basic things such as text messaging, the phonebook and the quality of the ringtones was not better addressed. Still, this is one of the phones which any self-respecting gadget enthusiast should use at some point in their lives.

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