The T200 is a cheap and cheerful mobile phone that attempts to marry some high-end features with a low end price. Is it a happy marriage? You'll have to read our Australian review to find out.

The Sony Ericsson T200 is a low-end net-enabled phone that illustrates Sony Ericsson's plan to attack the huge market-share Nokia has: make every phone multi-media enabled whether it has the capacity to use the feature effectively or not.

The phone is WAP enabled, has GPRS at up to 43.2 kbps and HSCSD (High Speed Circuit Switched Data) at 28.8 kbps. It has a normal black and white pixellated screen, so surfing the net is basically a WAP-like text affair unless you hook the phone up to your laptop. Of course, it does enable the downloading of backgrounds and exclusive ringtones from Sony, if that's the sort of thing that floats your boat.

Despite the two-tone screen, the T200 is also able to send and receive EMS, Sony Ericsson's version of multi-media messaging. There is even a camera accessory you can buy that attaches to the T200, enabling you to send photos to your friends. In its defence, you can get some pretty cool images using just the normal low-end screen- we're constantly getting berated for the slightly disturbing pictures on ours- and the ability to view images from your richer friends is a definite plus.

One really cool feature we've been waiting for, and hope to see on all phones, is the ability to link a picture (as well as a ringtone) with someone in the address book. It's somewhat fun, and easily enables you to ascertain who's calling. You won't be able to have as many pictures as entries in the phone book, but it's still pretty cool.

The T200 is a normal size mobile- that is 105x48x22 mm in size, and weighing 85 g. The layout of the phone is quite standard, with a four-way arrow button and a clear button in addition to the usual suspects. There is also a plain blue button, which takes you straight to the Internet portion of the mobile.

There are also two buttons on the side of the phone that are described as volume keys. Each button reveals a status page when pressed. To set the volume you have to go in through the settings menu, and then the volume keys work according to their name. However, the arrow keys work just as well in the menu, which makes the additional buttons somewhat redundant.

The menu navigation is in the standard Sony Ericsson format, with the left and right arrows taking you to a series of folders, each with menus inside.

The standard phone functions work well, with good call quality and easy to use SMS. No difference is made in the menu between SMS and EMS, but pictures and sounds are easily added by pressing the blue Internet button and selecting what material you wish to include.

The address book on the phone can hold up to 300 numbers, and there is a large selection of pictures and sounds on the mobile. The T200 has more games than any other phone we've seen, with five different games preloaded.

With its ability to be customised by the user and its relatively low price, the T200 is targeting people who want to be able to send and receive EMS messages, and possibly use some simple Web services, without wanting to decide between a mobile phone and a down-payment on a car.

Sony Ericsson T200
Company: Sony Ericsson
Price: AU$359
Distributor: Sony Ericsson
Phone: 1300 650 050

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