Ericsson's hook for the T68 is the splendour of a mobile screen capable of 256 colours. Is that enough to justify its price tag?

When the Nokia 8850 and Motorola V.66 first launched, both drew a chorus of awe over their class acts. It's been a while since Ericsson's inspired the same feelings in the mobile-touting public. Will the T68 be its next crown jewel?

All The Colours Of A Rainbow, And More
Jewel or not, the T68 is basking in a splendour of colours. Ericsson's latest mobile is capable of displaying up to 256 colours, which is more than adequate for a 101x80 resolution.

You get a preview of the colour the moment you switch on the T68. A black screen gives way to the image of a sun that surges up from behind the shadow of a planet, an interesting effect which scored a point in our books.

Having said that, the T68 doesn't appear to fully leverage its 256 colours. Many of the features, which have been ported over from previous phones, seem to be simply touched up with colour. While the use of full-screen background Gif images is excellent, there is only space to store one such graphic at any one time. The screensaver is unspectacular -- a white digital time display against a black background.

Still, the T68 is pretty good for a first attempt at colour. It does seem likely that future models will make better use of their colour displays.

Ericsson Design Makes Good At Last
Other than colour, the other thing that makes the T68 stand out is its appearance. Some users have never been big fans of Ericsson flip phones with their large protruding antenna. It seems with an internal antenna and a more Nokia-like design, the Swedish phone maker be onto a winner.

Looks wise, the T68 that we examined came in a silver face-plate framed by a speckled-gray body. The reverse side of the phone, including the battery backing, is encased in stylish black rubber. A similar model is available with a gold facing. All in, the T68 is an impressive looking phone. At 100 x 48 x 20mm, it's relatively compact -- slightly larger than a Nokia 8210. Our only gripe here is that unlike the smooth, metallic frame of the Nokia 8850, the Ericsson T68 feels distinctly more plastic. This may account for the phone's lightweight 84g mass.

The keypad feel is average. Ericsson features a unique mini joystick below the screen. While this protruding blue joystick looks out of place in the middle of the phone, it serves a similar function as a four-way navigation key in a smaller footprint.

This function was seen earlier in Alcatel phones such as the One Touch 701. With Ericsson adopting the same feature, we may see similar implementations in other brands.

During our tests, the joystick was sensitive enough to navigate through the phone menus, but wasn't precise enough when it came to playing fast games.

Everything But The Kitchen Sink
When it comes to features, the T68 packs a mean punch. The phone has virtually everything that its T39 sibling has, and a color screen to boot.

In a nutshell, the T68's significant features are:

• General Packet Radio System (GPRS)
  
• Bluetooth
  
• High-speed Circuit-switched data (HSCSD)
  
• Triple band technology (GSM 900/1800/1900)
  
• Enhanced Messaging Service (EMS)
  
• Infrared
  

The infrared feature is also a nifty addition. With it, you can transfer Gif files from your notebook to your mobile phone to use as a background image. In fact, this has proven to be so popular that a third-party T68 site dealing with background images had to shut down its Web site.

Other specified features of the phone are a five-line text display, 511 phonebook entries within the phone and SIM card, URL memory for up to 50 bookmarks, voice dial, and an organizer.

Minor Glitches
This phone is not without its shortcomings. There is the common Ericsson problem of having slow menus, which come to the fore when reading SMS messages and using predictive text input.

In two weeks of use, we experienced two occasions when the phone shut down by itself after being left on its own for a while. Another bug we discovered was that if you don't hold the "on" button, the phone blinks on for a moment and then shuts down again.

Great Battery Life, Reception Problems
As with most phones that come with an integrated antenna, reception generally suffers. The T68 is not an exception here, and we found the handset facing signal problems in areas with poor network coverage.

Pundits have earlier voiced concerns over the battery life of the T68, believing that a colour display would drain more power. However, the phone appeared to manage its power relatively well. While Ericsson expects the T68 to last up to 8 hours of talktime and 200 hours of standby, our tests yielded a good four days of normal usage on its Lithium-polymer battery.

Ericsson T68
Company: Ericsson
Price: AU$1165
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1300 650 050

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