The r320s is a fantastic, feature packed phone from our friends at ericsson. It has many great aspects, and the price has plummeted from nearly £150 to almost free on contract recently.
The r320 is a very well designed phone, however the shape may not be to everybodies liking, and it may seem a little big when compared to the T28 or 8210. It is only 15cm thick though, and slides easily into your pocket.
However, that is the only really down point in my opinion, and now i’ll tell you about (if I have time!) all its great features.
Firstly, the phone has a large, easy to read screen, with a backlight and easy to read menu system, which is almost foolproof. The menu can also be customised to suit the users taste.
It weighs only 100 grams, and you feel like its unoticable when it’s in your pocket.The r320s also boasts ericssons trademark aerial, which may not be everyones liking, but it does the job perfectly and offers great reception.
The r320s has voice activated dialling, making calling up your most frequently dialled numbers a cinch. It also has a WAP browser, which is reasonably fast and quite reliable.
It has a built built in modem, and also infra red data transfer as standard, along with an extra phone memory phonebook providing an additional 99 names and numbers.
The side of the phone has a sort of slider, which is very useful when navigating the menus and feels sturdy. This is similar to the Nokia ’navi roller’ as featured on the 7110.
One disadvantage is that like many ericsson phones, predictive text input is not featured, however text messaging is.
Battery life is quite good, with up to 425 minutes talktime or up to 118 hours standby time.
It boasts a powerful vibrate function, which can be enabled in silent mode or along with a ringtone. Speaking of ringtones, not many are supplied but the ones the phone does have don’t rival the choice of a Nokia but are decent enough. Do ringtones really matter anyway if it vibrates though?
The phone has last number redail, call holding and conference calling on it, as expected with most phones. These functions are only available if your network supports them though. I know for a fact that Vodafone (on contract) does.
It has a decent couple of games, along with an alarm clock, date display, stopwatch and also a timer. A calculator is added too, which is very easy to use.
A feature I particulary like is the ability to see how much battery life is left using the slide on the side of the phone.
Many people are unaware of this, but ericsson have launched an MP3 player for their phones, which retailing for about £129.99 is compatible with the r320s. It simply plugs into the bottom of the phone. The r320s is not compatible with the ericsson radio though, as its connectors are different. It is also compatible with ericssons latest venture called ’bluetooth’, which enables the user to make calls and listen to them without the need for wires.
It is also fax, data and speech compatible, and is an excellent mobile phone.