My Former “New Cell Phone?”
Posted July 18th, 2003 @ 05:48pm by Erik J. Barzeski
I think I'll be returning the T610 to T-Mobile very shortly (in about three days). The reasons? There are three:
- The screen is ass when I'm outside. Absolute ass. Even in the shade you can barely see it, and in any variety of sunlight, just forget it. I picked the highest contrast theme possible, and I still couldn't see squat.
- T-Mobile must have a crappy network where I am, because I get between zero and one bars of reception, sometimes two, very very rarely three. Dropped calls? Inability to place calls? Yeah, been there, done that all within the first day of use. Not a good sign. My Cingular phone maintains three to four bars at all times (even in the bathtub - don't ask).
- There's a third reason, I just can't think of it right now. So let's go with "because I said so." That always seemed to work for my mother.
This is a bit of a bummer because I really, really, really wanted to like this phone. I did. There's still a slim chance I'll keep it - calls I've placed with one bar have still gone through. The bluetooth support is nice, as is the Jabra Bluetooth headseat I bought - absolutely awesome (and good range!). The ringtones are pretty sweet too.
I guess we'll see… Hrmph. When the hell will Cingular get off their butts and go GSM in my area? I love my Motorola v60, but it lacks color, polyphonic ring tones, Bluetooth, and a few other nice things.
P.S. I'm attempting to synchronize my Address Book to the phone right now, but it's taken over 10 minutes already, so I'm not sure I'm doing that correctly. Hmmm. The Address Book button is dark blue and the phone has the <> double arrows to indicate synchroninzation is occurring. How long should this take? 😛
Donate Life
Posted 18 Jul 2003 at 7:59pm #
Ok, slightly less jealous now :). I have yet to see it in person...
On my T68i the sync takes a while--no worries.
Posted 18 Jul 2003 at 11:22pm #
There have been quite a few posts at MacOSXHints.com about iSync and the SE P800 in the past few months. Take a look over there and see if any of those issues might be applical to your phone.
Posted 19 Jul 2003 at 2:24pm #
Erik:
If the phone's unlocked, keep it, it will come in handy when travelling abroad or to Canada.
-- Hasan
Posted 20 Jul 2003 at 3:19am #
Well, Hasan, I don't do that.
Posted 20 Jul 2003 at 1:10pm #
Erik,
That phone is a disaster. Read about it on one of the phone sites. It has the worst screen of any phone Ericcson has ever made, and it will not keep a signal when other phones have no problems...
If you want color and all that jazz, stick with t68i. Something more advanced, go with the P800, which has gotten a lot of good press. The r520m is the model I like best (but then I don't want a phone that takes pictures, has a pretty screen or anything else: I want a phone that dials, uses Bluetooth for headsets and syncing and has a basic phone book).
A hint: buy unlocked phones from eBay, and buy a SIM card (or keep the current one) from T-Mobile. If you ever want to switch, you can then take the phone with you to any other GSM network. Make sure any GSM phone is tri-band.
Drop me a note if you need any more info...
Samer
Posted 20 Jul 2003 at 6:49pm #
I don't think it's as bad as you make it out to be, Samer.
Posted 21 Jul 2003 at 2:19pm #
This Wednesday I'm going to go back to T-Mobile in a local mall to return the T610 (and to the Radio Shack to return the...