Sindre Lia finds Sony Ericsson's T610 to boast a rich set of features, including a colour display, integrated camera and Bluetooth, as well as a mature and user friendly interface.
Sony Ericsson early brought advanced functionality to mobile phones with its T68 model - only to deliver an improved product, the T68i, slightly thereafter. The latter quickly became immensely popular and also the manufacturer's flagship, but with the advent of the T610, Sony Ericsson has finally entrenched itself as an important player in the market for experienced users. Not only does the recent T610 offer advanced functionality, but also an increasingly mature user interface where flaws hampering the T68i have been weeded out.
 | Sony Ericsson's T610 is certainly feature rich
|
The Sony Ericsson T610 comes accompanied by a user manual, battery charger, a camera mirror for taking vanity shots and - as a nice touch - polishing cloth for its display and camera lens.
The tri-band T610 offers a comfortable and steady grip at 102 x 44 x 19 mm and a weight of 95 grams. External features include a digital camera lens centered on the upper half of its back; a shortcut button to active the camera application and subsequently take pictures; volume control buttons - far up on the left side; an 'Internet services' shortcut button - far up on the right side; an excellent 16-bit colour display capable of displaying up to 65,536 shades at a resolution of 128 x 160 pixels; and last, but not least, a numerical keypad with comfortably sized, elongated buttons joined by Confirm/Cancel buttons and a four-way joystick centered below the display.
Joystick
As with the T68i, the T610 comes equipped with a joystick - and an improved one at that, featuring rounded edges. Interaction with the user interface through this has fortunately been given some attention, as a directional push whilst the T610 is in a screensaver mode now brings the user to the Homepage screen rather than activating a shortcut.
The joystick still doubles as a shortcut, however, offering quick access to 'Internet services', 'New Message', 'Phonebook' and 'Main menu' - and it can also be used to confirm actions.
The main menu of the Sony Ericsson T610 is icon based, and divided into 12 categories. The first row contains 'Homepage', 'Internet services' and 'My shortcuts' - all shortcuts to mobile Internet services. The second row plays host to 'Camera', 'Messaging' and 'Entertainment'.
Camera, messages and games
Choose 'Camera', and one is presented with the viewfinder - which fortunately updates quickly and is as such well suited for taking quick snapshots. This dialog offers the option of taking a picture, or enter an advanced setup dialog where users can switch between day and night modes, as well as High (288 x 253 pixels) and Low (120 x 160 pixels) resolution modes. (Click the links to view test pictures). Once taken, a picture can be sent via MMS or e-mail, stored or deleted. A small mirror to be attached next to the camera lens comes in handy when snapping vanity shots, and when it comes to storage the T610 offers 2 MB which is dynamically shared between images and J2ME applications.
J2ME applications and games are available through the 'Entertainment' icon, and the T610 comes bundled with five of the latter kind: 'Colourbug', 'Qbert', 'DeepAbyss', 'FiveStones' and 'Minigolf'. Choose 'Messages', on the other hand, and one is presented with the option to send and view SMS and MMS messages, as well as send and receive e-mail - all three of which are easy to use and lets users send messages and e-mails quickly to desired recipients.
The two final rows of the main menu offer shortcuts to 'Pictures & sounds', 'Phonebook', 'Calls', 'Communication', 'Organizer' and 'Settings'. Under communication, users control the Bluetooth and Infrared connectivity functions of the handset, along with synchronization of data, while 'Organizer' offers PIM applications such as a calendar, notes, alarms and a calculator. Incidentally, a note can be placed as a post-it on the Homepage of the handset - a simple, yet quite ingenious feature. And inputting text, be it in a note or elsewhere, works like a charm.
For those wondering where 'Profiles' can be reached, users first have to choose 'Settings', where this option, as well as settings for the screen, time and date, voice command and sounds and alerts are available.
Data connectivity
As has been briefly touched upon, the Sony Eriscson T610 offers both Bluetooth and an Infrared port, both of which are easily activated through shortcuts. Connectivity provided by these two options performed flawlessly throughout our entire review period, and courtesy of GPRS and HSCSD, the T610 is fully on par with anything else on the market speed-wise. An added bonus is the WAP 2.0 microbrowser, which enables the handset to open most HTML pages created with handhelds in mind, as well as simple web pages devloped for desktop browsers which keep graphics and text to a minimum.
With such an advanced feature set, the listed battery capacity of the Sony Ericsson T610 of up to 14 hours of talk time and up to 13 days of standby time sounds quite generous - as it also proved to be. During our review period, the T610 delivered approximately half the times on each account. On the bright side , audio quality proved quite satisfactory and then some.
Availability
The Sony Ericsson T610 is now available throughout Europe and sells in the 450 EUR range.
Conclusion
Equipped with advanced functionality such as a 16-bit colour screen, integrated digital camera, Bluetooth and a very mature and user friendly operating system, the Sony Ericsson T610 undoubtedly belongs to the top shelf of mobile phones for experienced users. Entertainment capabilities aplenty and the colour screen offer a good proposition for those after some fun, and for those on the lookout for connectivity features the T610 comes recommended - but keep its battery capacity in mind. To sum it all up, the T610 wouldn't be a bad choice for anyone on the lookout to combine a bit of business with a bit of entertainment.
What's positive: Feature rich both in entertainment and business departments; user friendly; good ergonomics
What's negative: Poor real life battery capacity versus listed capacity
| Features: | 9/10 |
| Exterior: | 7/10 |
| Ergonomics: | 8/10 |
| Performance: | 8/10 |
| Value: | 8/10 |
|
iSW Score:
8/10
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
_it00.jpg)
|
Archive
