Sony Ericsson T310

I was among the ones who believe that a cell phone is only meant for staying connected.

I used to say, ’’I dont need a cell, it is more useful for others who want to call me than vice-versa’’ and ’’If I ever buy a cell it would be a functional one- like Nokia 3310’’

But when I finally decided to look for a handset and found that Nokia 3310 wasn’t available anymore (thankfully!), I decided to learn to look beyond.

It took me three weeks to realise that I wanted a handset, which had :

A Colour screen: Which can make MMSing possible, plus a whole lo of things like wallpapers photos, and themes of your choice just like you have ‘em on your PC

WAP, GPRS (General Packet Radio Services), TRI Band GSM (GSM 1900 , GSM 900, GSM 1800 ): So that it is not a piece of garbage in your pocket when you go out of India

Camera accessory support: So that you don’t feel out of the world in next two years.

Polyphonic Sounds : That can upgrade your taste from the ringtones of kaanta laga , MI2 and various other bollywood hits.

And for those who still would love to believe that these are just catchy words and fancy technologies and after all a cell phone is needed to make/receive a call, there are a whole lot of features and options that are bound to prove them wrong.

Consider this, you have a contact who has three phones, one each at home and office and a mobile. You can save all of his/her nos. at one place under the same name and that too with just one entry! You can store an email address too along with the same.

While you press the “yes” key to call this contact, the three nos. would be listed and you can choose the one, which you want to call at that moment.

And of course you have a joystick, to help you scroll the menus, nos. play games ….

Next, when you get a SMS quoting a new phone no. or email address that you had asked for, you needn’t put in on a piece of paper before you store it in your phone book(by the way it can store 100’s of nos) . All you need to do is to select it with the joystick and “right Click” with a special key and store the same at the contact you want.

SMSing is simpler with ’T9’ technology which anticipates what you’re typing and you get the options that can be scrolled over with the same joystick. You can store more than 50 messages in your inbox and sent items.

Infra red port is another cool feature. Almost any data can be transferred to another infra red set. I got cool polyphonic tones from my friend for absolutely free!

Other cool features include , Business card exchange where you can load the

info about yourself and send it like a SMS to anyone.Sleeping display/Power save option that saves the battery and still gives you a clock screensaver .

One of the most exciting features is the sound recorder. Yes! You can record everything! The songs and the dialogs when you go for a movie , or your latest favorite song.

For the ones who travel abroad quite often, it has Automatic Time Zone (NITZ) setting which tell you the local time of the land.

You can E-mail with attachments, hide/ show your number, set different ringtones and pictures for different contacts, set reminders, backgrounds, screensavers, play java games and do a whole lot of other thing...

Priced at Rs 9995/- in the Sony Ericsson Showrooms , it is available at about Rs 8800/- with all guarantees and bills outside.

Truly hot stuff at that price!

I had a look over Nokia 3530. I found it ugly, bulky and nothing new in terms of technology except the colour screen. Nokia 6610 was definitely in consideration but my budget was just Rs 10K. while it was around Rs 16K. I checked out Panasonic GD68 and 75 too. They had similar features but not the class as Sony. The only other cell I could have bought was Nokia 6610 if I could ready myself to strach a little more....

Some of the network features that you get in T310 are as listed below.

Network features

1 Business card exchange

2 Call barring

3 Call divert

4 Call hold

5 Call transfer

6 Calling Line Identification

7 Closed User Groups

8 Conference calls

9 CSD, Circuit Switched Data (a.k.a GSM Data)

10 EMS (Enhanced Messaging Services)

11 Fixed Dialing Numbers

12 GPRS (General Packet Radio Services)

13 High Speed Data (HSCSD)

14 Ring signal exchange

15 SIM Application Toolkit

16 SMS (Short Message Service)

17 SMS Cell Broadcast two Line Service

Maximum Retail Price (MRP) - Rs. 9995.00 /- at co. showroom