Sony Ericsson's designers have come up with a smooth and sophisticated mobile phone.The bottom half of the T610's body is aluminium panels and the top half is glossy plastic. Combined with smooth edges, the mobile is very attractive and also comfortable to hold and use.
Sony Ericsson likes to tout the process of taking and sending photos on the T610 "QuickShare" and they're spot on with that description. Only two key presses are needed to take a picture and from there you can either save it or send it off to a contact in the phonebook.
The numerical keys on T610 are evenly spaced, neat and small. But due to the relatively large gaps between the buttons, their small size should not be a problem for the majority of people. Most of the navigation is achieved through the miniscule joystick in the middle just below the screen. We have had issues in the past with joysticks on phones moving left or right when we pressed on it to select, but the T610 does a good job of getting the action correct. There are right and left soft keys, but in the case of the latter, it generally duplicates the selection key command.
You can find many of the T610's functions in more than one place through the user interface. For example, to set the wallpaper you can go to Pictures & sounds > My pictures > More > Set as wallpaper. Alternatively, it can be done by going to Settings > Display > Wallpaper. This makes it quick to find the whatever function you're looking for as it's generally in more than one place.
Text messaging on the T610 is aided with a drop down list of alternative word suggestions that appear if you use the T9 dictionary. You can turn this feature off if you find it gets in the way and you can choose to use multitap for text entry if you're not fond of T9.
A minor gripe we have with inputting text is that the T610 seems slow to respond by placing keystrokes into a buffer and this slightly delays the display of words. To further test what implications this has, we typed as fast as we could with T9 activated and realised it's good to see that not a single letter was missed. The problem arises by the time you're moved on to the next word and realise the previous word isn't the word you were after.
The MMS editor is intuitive and allows you to add timing to objects such as images and sounds. A handy feature is you can record your voice and insert it effortlessly as you compose the message.
Sony Ericsson's Web site allows you to download a lot of content for the T610. Games, themes, wallpapers and ringtones can all be downloaded for free.
Your own ringtones can be created using Music DJ by arranging samples over four tracks: drums, bass, chords and accents. Each of these tracks are broken up into bars which can be assigned a large range of samples in styles such as salsa intros, reggae verses, techno choruses and groove accents. The sound recorder can also be used to create your own ringtones.
Alongside the ringtone editor is the picture editor that can create new pictures and edit existing photos. You can choose from a variety of drawing tools such as pen, ellipse and rectangle and add interesting effects like mosaic, ripples, frosted glass and emboss.
The phonebook supports multiple entries for home, work and mobile phone numbers and a space for an e-mail address. You can also assign each entry a photo which displays when the contact calls.
All up, the Sony Ericsson T610 is a great looking device with a range of features to satisfy most mobile phone users. The battery lasted a decent amount of time during our tests, usually between three and four days. The Sony Ericsson Z600 is due to be released in mid-November and is is identical in functionality to the T610 but comes in a stylish clamshell design.
Sony Ericsson T610
Company: Sony Ericsson
Price: AU$845
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1300 650 050
what do you have to do to send a photo to someone as a picture message??? it always says communication error!!! help!