Great affordable phone (Sony Ericsson T610)

Member Name: lukeweb

Product:	Sony Ericsson T610
Date:	27/12/04 (274 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good interface, good button layout, good battery life

Disadvantages: not an amazing camera, no support for true sound ringtones, cumbersome joystick

This has been my first mobile since my old trusty Nokia 3310, and I'm very impressed. Although only having it for about a week, I'm very quick at finding what I like and dislike about things. The phone looks great - I have it in black and silver and they work very well together. The number keys are spaced out enough to avoid accidentally mashing the wrong keys, however they get slightly more fiddly towards the top. There is a little 4-way joystick which in the main operates quite well, but it can sometimes be a little cumbersome and cause the wrong buttons to be pressed. The two main function keys are also very close to the 'back' and 'cancel' buttons, which can occasionally lead to wrong presses.
The interface for the phone is very good. The bright colour screen is clear and easy to read, but can get dirty very easily. Luckily a very suave cloth for wiping the screen is included. The main interface is in the 12-icon menu, which leads to further menus for camera, alerts settings, connectivity options etc. Some options are duplicated across various menu structures which can lead to some confusion when hunting down specific settings.
The camera performs adaquetly. It's a lower resolution camera than many others available on the market, so I wouldn't recommend purchasing this phone if you're looking for hi-resolution photos. It is perfectly adequate for taking photos to assign to contacts, or for sending as a MMS.
Mobile internet and MMS works well, but you will probably need to download extra settings from the sonyericsson.com website before these function. This is not made clearly enough in the instructions, and I'm sure there are many people baffled by the lack of functionality straight out of the box.
Battery life appears to be good - follow the recommendations given and give a first charge of about 16 hours to callibrate the battery and avoid problems with short battery life in future. Unfortunately, in my anticipation I only gave the phone a four hour charge, and so the battery life has been somewhat reduced. I've been informed the best way to get back to a full battery life is to charge for 16 hours and discharge fully several times.
I want to drive home the point that this is not the centre of your digital entertainment world - it's a phone at heart, and so if you're looking for a music jukebox or games console, it's not here. There are a few java games included that are not incredibly inspiring with many more available for download, but I've yet to find one that really holds my attention.
One disappointing feature is the inability to use 'true tones' or recorded sounds as a ringtone. For a phone of it's generation, I'd hoped this feature was available as standard, but it does support poly and mono ringtones so you shouldn't be hard done by for choice. You can transfer all sorts of data (contacts, games, tones etc.) to and from a PC via Bluetooth or IR, which seems to work very well, so no need to pay a premium to download a ringtone - just transfer a MIDI file via Bluetooth.
Overall, this phone works really well. An attractive design and interface as well as clean, simple functionality with many of the extras expected, it is likely to perform to your expectations. The phone is only really let down by a few minor niggles. Definitely recommended.

Summary: