Lately my poor old Nokia has been flaking out on me at the most inopportune times, even when I only charged it a day before, so yes, I looked at the proffered catalogue. Do you have any idea how posh and clever phones have become lately? I swear there is one that doubles up as a toaster.
I hummed and haahed and decided I would probably go with the another Nokia, even though I hankered for a camera phone but then a day later my fella arrived home with a delicious shiny camera phone, not a Nokia, but a Sony Ericsson. Hmmm, I was jealous; this little tiny silver box could do so much. It could text, receive pictures, take pictures play games, oh and of course you could always use it to phone people,
So, yes, I submitted to my magpie instincts for shiny objects. By the end of the week I was the proud owner of a Sony Ericsson T610. All charged up and ready to go. Woohoo!
This phone is really easy to use. Or maybe they all are nowadays? I remember when the only simple ones were Nokia. But this is very nearly as easy as a Nokia, except for the fact that the key to make a space in a text is the hash key not the zero, so the first few messages I sent had + signs between each word.
One fun thing that I really enjoy is that I can assign pictures and ring tones to my contacts. So when my son rings me a photo of him flashes up and it plays a Blink182 song at me. This is great as it means that if any of my close friends call me I know immediately who it is so long as they haven?t withheld their number.
A very handy feature is the phone book, on older phones I had to have a separate entry for each person?s mobile, landline and home umbers. In the T610 I have one entry per name and within that are spaces for each phone number they have, and an email address too.
The battery life seems quite good; I only need to charge up twice a week and the charging is a very quick process, much quicker than my old Nokia. If I take a lot of photos or play games it eats up the battery, but if I am sensible it last quite nicely.
This phone is set up with Orange WAP and I can download more games, pictures and ringtones quite easily. I did have to be taught how to do this by a man admittedly, but now I am getting the hang of it all by myself. Orange regularly feature a ringtone that can be downloaded for free, but normally they cost a couple of quid.
I was lucky, on the day I was being taught how to download tones the free one was Match of the Day which was fine for me as I need to have a distinctive (irritating!) tone or I never hear/recognise my own phone! It also has a polyphonic something which means that the rings are actually quite nice to hear ? I have a selection of midi files on mine and the tunes really are recognisable. I don?t think my Match of the day tune is too popular as when I get a call at work everyone shouts at me, but I think that is just their bad musical taste.
The camera takes pictures very well for other people; my fella has a nice little collection of lovely photos. Sadly I have never been much of a David Bailey, but I have taken a couple of ok ones. Initially I didn?t take any as it costs 40p to send a photo and I got it into my head that all photos were 40p! My son curled up laughing at this because as he rightly pointed out to his sad old mother; it is 40p to send but taking a photo costs nothing and really doesn?t drain the battery that much. So now I have been snapping away and assigning photos of all my mates to their telephone numbers.
If you have an infrared connection on your PC you can send things to and from your phone to the PC. My fella has his texts saved on his PC and has sent pictures and tones from his PC to the phone. Also he has sent games, tones and photos to my phone via infrared too.
A chap at work has the Bluetooth headset thingy and it looks sooooo swanky! Very Mission Impossible. The Bluetooth system seems very clever; we bought a kit that negates the need for an infrared system on the PC so we can swap things from phone to PC. Included in our package is a handsfree package that doubles up as a FM radio. This is really cool, but to be honest I rarely use it as when I am on the phone I need to hold it up to my ear ? I have never got along with any handsfree sets as I feel silly talking to mid-air!
The only drawback I have found with this phone is that I haven?t noticed any covers available and I really miss my lovely blue daisies cover that I had on my Nokia. Having said that I picked up the cutest little leather jacket for my new phone for only a tenner in the Orange shop. The leather cover is very well designed and I don?t have to remove it to do anything except taking the back off the actual phone. There are small holes and gaps in the design so that the lens of the camera is uncovered, which means I can just whip my phone out and take a picture at a moments notice.
This phone is available free on many contract packages and if you can get it free I would definitely recommend it. If you have to pay for it, it is worth getting if the price is within your budget as it is as good as a Nokia. High praise from me!!