This review is for the SonyEricsson GSM phone T310. After deliberating for quite some days whether to go for GSM service or CDMA service, I opted for GSM service due to 1 single reason - the choice of GSM phone instruments available in India. For me, a mobile phone is not just a phone, its much more. In the past I have used 2 Samsung and 1 Sanyo phone (in the past 4 yrs- all CDMA). I had initially thought of buying Sony’s T100 (which is an entry level phone jam packed with features) but then the day I was going to buy it, this new T310 was launched, and just 1 picture of it on SonyEricsson’s website made me decide to buy it. So I had to come back empty handed as the retailer hadn’t received it yet, and I had to wait for 2 more days. Now about the phone : T310 is not the slimmest phone in the market, but its reasonably small and light weight (my sister is using Nokia 3315 and T310 is smaller and lighter than 3315). It has a colour screen (256 colours with 7-line display), 32-chord polyphonic ringtones, 3 built-in games, about 36 built-in pictures and 3 themes. However, the fun doesnt stop there, you can download new Games (the games are on Mophun platform), themes, ringtones (midi format), pictures etc and you can assign each phonebook entry with a picture and distinct ringtone so that you have a ’pusedo picture caller id’.
The phonebook can hold 250 entries, and each entry can hold Residence, Office, Mobile and Fax number along with picture and distinct ringtone. It has a 2-line service facility but this is operator dependent. T310 is a Tri-band phone so you can use it anywhere in the world. Among productivity tools, it has an inbuilt calculator, alarm clock, event manager, stop watch, timer, 10-minute sound recorder and an in-built modem. It supports multiple profiles and so I can switch between profiles depending on whether I am at home, at work or in a movie hall and so does my wife when she is using the phone. So you need not change the theme, screensaver, ringtone, color or vibrating alert everytime, but just do a profile switch. It has a WAP browser and is also GPRS capable (network dependent). It supports MMS and so you can send and receive MMS (network dependent).
The camera is an accesory to this phone, but provision is done to support it. As I mentioned earlier, you can download and customize the phone depending on your style with a USB/serial cable (got to buy it separately) or thru Infrared port (almost all laptops have infrared port). I am using the phone for about 3 weeks now, and last week I used the infrared port to download 3 games, a few movie themes, movie ringtones and some pictures from laptop onto the phone and it was very easy. The phone has about 1 MB of memory for games, pictures, themes, ringtones, MMS etc but since there are pre-defined items, only about 1/2 or 500 KB is free (you cannot delete preinstalled items). So when I downloaded the above items, it used up about 400 KB of memory. So now my phone is customised to have ’Matrix’ theme, with my wedding picture as screensaver and ’Pehla Nasha’ poly-tone (from JJWS). The sad part is that poly-ringtones are little low on volumes and so if you are in busy market areas, you may not hear if someone is trying to call you. But these are the ones that I downloaded, it maybe possible that the source itself had low volumes .. Sony has a editing software on their website and so I am going to try and modify the tones this weekend to boost the volumes. Most of the predefined mono and poly tones are pretty loud enough for anyone to hear it.
The company claims that the phone can give a standby time of upto 400 Hours and Talk time upto 11 Hours, but this is again network dependent. Being a color screen, it is bound to consume lot of power and so the actual battery times you get will be much less than claimed ones. Sometimes I play games for more than 1 hr and the battery still keeps on going. Ditto while talking (my STD calls do last for 1/2 hr and I had never faced battery problems or over-heating problems). I have the habit of charging it daily at night and so I havent exactly extracted the actual talk and standby times. And now about the most important part of a mobile phone - the reception. I believe that ’’a mobile is as good as the network its on’’. I am using Hutch service in Bangalore (review in Cellular Provider Section) and I am getting a very strong reception. The voice is clear to hear (in fact sometimes its little loud and I have to slide the volume key downwards) and the other person too has no problems in hearing me. Infact a couple of people have told me that they think I am talking via loudspeaker phone ! I haven’t figured out whether this is a complement or not !! For a price of 10 K (with bill), I believe this phone is a great deal. Atleast I know that even after a couple of years I won’t regret buying it and with the packed features that it has, it still will be in the limelight.