RadioShack
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"Smarter flip phone, give it a break" on by McBinky
Pros: Texting accomodations, camera options, slick design, front panel information
Cons: Proprietary connection jacks, low speakerphone and the weird media card it takes.
Summary: I'm not a phone nut and don't want the latest and greatest. Having said that, I think the reviews for phones are getting outrageous. Reviewers expect them to do absolutely everything. I don't.
Just a correction -- I meant to write that the call volume on the ear piece is loud withOUT distortion.
I had an old flip phone. I went for the new Motorola Cliq smartphone and data plan. A great device, but it was too smart -- and too costly, spending most of the day connected to its data plan while not being touched. I had it for 2 days and sent it back, opting for the Equinox. It seemed like a nice compromise -- a smarter flip phone. I haven't regretted this switch at all.
The outside display has a circular white light that lights up for incoming calls. There is another little colored light that can be customized based on the caller. This is nice if you keep the phone on silent a lot. It also reads gestures. Wave your hand across the closed phone and it stops the ringing.
For someone who texts only a few times a day, a QWERTY keyboard is nice to have, not a need to have. This phone displays a helpful little mini menu as you use the keypad input making it easier and quicker to find your letters or symbols. It has an optional conversation view of text messages, so they display like a chat session. I don't find the keypad clumsy or too slick at all.
It has some light mobile-only apps if you have a data plan, like Google Maps. What I found better is the Telenav GPS app. For a small, separate, monthly fee, you get a turn by turn voice-guided GPS with traffic. Though it won't replace my Garmin, I was impressed with it. It made a few odd suggestions, but it got me to my destination. I plan on paying for this feature. I tested it out and it worked fine in the NYC area. I like it for the the traffic updates alone.
The speakerphone (and thus the GPS directions read aloud) is not very loud and could use some improvement. I synched a stereo Bluetooth headset with no problems. It also has options for using it as a Bluetooth presenter or multimedia controller.
The shots from the camera look better to me than they did on the higher megapixel Cliq. The phone has a couple of camera setup options like panorama, night, decorative frames, etc. If these options were ever on my other phones, I never saw them and they weren't as easily found as they are on this phone. It has menus all ready to connect your photos to social sites like MySpace and Facebook.
Lastly, the call quality has been fine. I'm told that my voice is clear, and the incoming calls are also equally clear. The volume on the internal ear piece can get pretty loud with distortion.
If you're looking for something to replace every other device you own, this probably isn't for you. If you're looking for a smarter flip phone, you've found it.
Updated on Nov 28, 2009 -
"Nice phone from t mobile" on by lovetherazor
Pros: Sounds great while talking on both ends.
FM radio is great sounding
music player
Good camera
Nice feel to phone
Internet is good speed.
Good speakerphoneCons: Typical of Sony. No standard headset jack.
You can only use M2 memory card.
Wave sensor could of been better.
Still having trouble using it.
No flash with camera.Summary: So overall I think it's a good phone. I've owned an Ericsson phone a few years ago. I previously owned a T637 and loved it. Ericsson phones including this one are very well made and have very fun features. I like that they have a feature where you can reject calls with out having to touch the phone or ignore the call. I yet have to try the music player because I still need to get a M2 memory card. That is something that may irk people is that this is typical of Sony to make their phones one of a kind in this area. Everyone else seems to design their phones where you can use a micro SD card. Sony has to be different. Also they don't use a standard headset jack. So you are either stuck with the headset you are provided with the phone which is usually crappy quality. I do like the FM radio. It sounds fantastic and it doesn't drain your battery that much like some people say. I used the radio for an hour straight and still had all my battery bars. I checked my battery status and it drained maybe 5% of my battery. Also I have used the speakerphone and my calls sound very loud and clear while I use it. The Web2go is very affordable and reliable. For 10 bucks a month you can have very good web service. I also like that they preloaded apps like facebook and youtube. Youtube videos stream very well. I was shocked to see how little they jump or skip. I've used youtube on blackberries and I can't believe how bad they stream on a blackberry compared to a basic phone and for web that costs 15 to 20 bucks less then a BB. You can also upload a video to youtube right from your phone. That's pretty awesome. I do miss the qwerty keypad on my former phone the BB curve 8900 but I found a new friend in my Sony Equinox. I still yet have to try all the functions but when I do I'll update my review.
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"Never had a bad cell phone until I purchased this one." on by aching45
Pros: I can make and receive phone calls.
Cons: Received two defective phones in a row with different problems. Trying again with another return.
Summary: I just needed a basic phone and was talked in to getting this one by the salesperson at my local T-Mobile. She touted the battery life as one of its strong points. Not true. The battery is good for maybe a day and a half, which isn't too bad. However I don't talk or text that much, so this is a day and a half mostly in standby mode. Terrible. The salesperson also told me it had a good camera. Its only good if you are steady as a tripod. The slightest movement will give you blurry pictures. I had issues not receiving calls, so I reset the phone by taking out the battery (Which happened frequently, I might add). When I turned the phone back on, it would literally take 5 minutes to boot up. The charging was also an issue. Since the battery would drain so quickly, I would just charge the phone up every night before I went to sleep. However, the phone would frequently have a charging error or just not charge at all. That was especially annoying when on the second day, the battery started to die out and give me the constant annoying beep because I failed to notice that it didn't charge. I ordered a replacement phone under warranty from T-Mobile and when I got it, the boot up issue and the charging issue went away. Great! However, now when I receive calls, the caller ID on the outside display is blank. No number, no contact name. Nothing. I called T-Mobile customer service to see if it was just a setting, but they couldn't fix it. I am now in the process of returning this one and getting another replacement. They won't let me get a different model of phone (for free in place of this one) since I'm only in month 7 of a 2 year contract extension. We'll see how it goes this next time, but after this contract extension is up, I am changing to any brand phone besides Sony. This is the worst phone I have ever had. Period.
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"broke after only 1 year" on by joanjps
Pros: Beautiful pictures and video capability. Call forwarding options excellent. Good looking, altho I would have preferred blue for the skin protector. Has international capability
Cons: Unreliable. Still have to pay another year for something in the trash
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"May be I was lucky, but I think it's VERY good!" on by blaxand
Pros: Decent camera, gps, well designed menu, common sense logic, necessary software already in, short response time for GPS, not shock resistant, but still very reliable. Looks elegant, but really very utilitarian.
Cons: Slippery body, easy to drop, difficult to open with one hand when it's new or without cover.
Much better with protective cover on. No wi-fi.Summary: Use this phone for two years. Before I had Nokia, LG, Moto Razr 3, that was classics, of course, but my next one will be Sony Ericsson. Recently somehow paint on the top chipped out after sitting a few hours under the sun, the phone itself works fine. When it was new it was kind of difficult to open it with one hand, it's too slim to push finger between, also my hands are not big.
Got much better after I bough a cover. I am always in the car, all the time put it to the pocket,
then pull it out, usually while driving, a few times drop it, a few times to the rain puddles.
It's still alive. I am not very cruel to it, but don't care too much. Speaker is loud enough to hear even with car windows opened, although I use bluetooth quite often. In my opinion build-in GPS is VERY fast. At least if to compare to my last Tomtom. The only think I didin't like, if you didn't start GPS, you might need to quit Google maps for to turn GPS on, as assisted GPS takes minute or two to find current position. Would be good to have wi-fi, as it makes no sense to use SIP settings for to save
air time by using air time! May be depend on options in your current plan.
No problem with java software or games. And I practically don't use authentic software,
just Windows Explorer. I like this phone. It looks kinda cool, but it's very utilitarian, don't let appearance to full you. It's work horse in silk dress:-)
Now I want better camera, this one just 3 (!) MP, and I want wi-fi. Other then that I would use this one for couple more years.
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