Indeed, The Man (a.k.a., the folks at my office) -- with a little help from his ruthless agent (a.k.a., my wife) -- convinced me to get a cellular phone. I hate cellular phones with a blind passion, but it seems I missed one call too many from work. So, off to the Cingular store we went so my wife could add me to her account and I could get a damn phone. The cheap phones the Cingular folks usually pawn off as freebies on their customers were out of stock, so I got the Sony Ericsson T226 -- a phone the kid behind the counter told me was a lot better than what I would have gotten otherwise.
Fair enough. I want a phone on which I can talk and that's pretty much it. I really don't care about the features, but there are several included on this phone. The stuff that came with my phone was okay, but it wasn't that great. And, you have to set up the phone for an Internet connection if you want to download some better stuff.
First of all, the sound quality on this thing is pretty good. I can hear my wife ask me where I am when I'm driving without too much interference from road noise. Also, it can be heard well enough in a room with a few people and some background noise. The sound is a bit tinny, but it's not bad at all.
The reception is good, too. Whether that's a tribute to Cingular's service or the construction of this phone is anyone's guess. I haven't had a problem with dropped calls, but I don't make it a habit to talk on the thing for long when I'm in my car, either. If you do want to talk and drive, optional equipment which allows for "hands free" talking is available.
I don't have much to say about the battery life. I unplug the phone from the charger in the morning, carry it around all day and then charge it again at night. Since I don't gab away on the phone all day long, I'm not sure how long a charge lasts. It takes about 30 minutes to fully-charge the battery. That seems pretty quick to me. An A/C charger is included with the phone. Also included are instructions in English and Spanish, and the documentation is quite good.
The phone is also quite small -- about 4" tall and 1.75" wide -- so I can hide it in my trousers pocket and avoid the ridicule from people who know how much I hate cell phones. The phone is flat on the bottom (except for that stupid domed logo from Ericcson), so it would probably skip well across a pond. That may come in useful. I had a lot of fun throwing a cell phone of mine out of a car window once, so I'd guess I'd get even more satisfaction from drowning one in a lake.
Now, the small size of this thing comes with some drawbacks. The vibrate feature on this phone is a bit to slight to draw much attention, and I'd wager that has to do with the fact there's just not a lot of surface area to shake around and get the attention of the user. The small size of the phone, too, I think has something to do with the sound quality -- small phones require tiny speakers, and tiny speakers are tinny.
Now, for the features. One I like quite well is the ability to store called numbers after the call is complete. Let's say I call the White House and ask if I can expect another tax cut next year as I'd like to buy a new game console and stock it up with some great titles. After I got off the phone with Mr. Bush, the phone would notify me I called a number not saved in the directory and ask me if I'd like to add it. If I were to select "yes," I could enter the president's name (and e-mail address, if I wanted to) and call him back.
That's very convenient, but the method used to type letters and such into this thing is annoying. Of course, there's no typewriter keypad, so one must rely on the number pad for input. If I wanted to type in, say, "George Bush," I'd have to hit the 2 key twice for the letter "B," the 8 key twice for the letter "U" and so on. Another key is to switch between upper and lower-case letters. The problem is, you have to push the buttons very quickly to get the letter you want. In the above example, getting the letter "B" would require me to type the 2 key two times, very quickly. Half the time, I wind up with the first letter on the key because the things have to be hit very,
very quickly. That's annoying. Thank goodness the backspace is easy to use.
It would be far easier, I think, to be able to select letters from the directional pad on the face of the phone. However, the small size of the phone creates a problem here -- if you have large fingers, that tiny pad is difficult to operate and has the "action" button in the middle of it. So, I wind up hitting the action button far to often while I'm navigating around on the tiny directional pad.
And, that brings me to games. First of all, the games loaded up here are pretty rotten. There's a boring "video poker" game, a Go-like game which is okay but comes with no directions and an action platformer which is useless because of the tiny directional pad. Playing any game which requires any kind of precise movement is quite difficult because of the miserable little directional pad. You can use the larger keys on the number pad to move around if you want, but those are fairly small, too.
But, you can get some better games! Yes, if you want to log on to the Internet and download them. I have no comment on the quality of the games as I have no interest in surfing the blasted Internet on a phone. The games available may be wonderful, and they may not be any better than the junk included with the phone. I have no idea.
And, yes, the Internet crops up again when dealing with ring tones. All of the tones included are, in a word, rotten. I have no interest in hearing a bloopy, MIDI version of Cyndi Lauper's "I Drove all Night" when the phone rings. Nor do I care about the cheesy "Techno" or "Carribean" themes here. I just want a ring that sounds like. well, a phone. There's not one available. Just about everything accept the "Sony Ericcson" ring sounds too "cutesy." A friend of mine summed it up best when he was scrolling through my tones and said, "Man, these all just sound queer." But, you can download more ring tones! Great. It would have been better to include some standard, boring ones in the first place.
There is a record feature I find handy for memos, and it can also be used to record a new ring tone. It's very easy, however, to make a distorted recording as I discovered when I tried to record a ring tone via my Fender Strat and guitar amp. I have been able to record my three-year-old daughter yelling, and that's pretty good. You can compose your own bloopy music on a hard-to-use "composer" feature if you'd like, but I don't have the patience to mess with it.
Fortunately, the ringer can be turned up to a pretty high volume. I haven't missed a call because I couldn't hear my phone.
This phone comes with a small, sharp LCD screen. Oh, and it's in color. Why do I want color on a cell phone? I haven't quite figured it out, actually. There are some "themes" people can choose from, and they aren't too bad -- all seem to emphasize geometric shapes in a non-offense manner. More themes can be downloaded if you have an Internet connection.
Text messages can also be sent via SMS, and photos, sounds and larger data via EMS. Of course, an Internet connection from the phone is needed. E-mail is supported, too.
There's a scheduler in there, too, which one can use to keep appointments and such. It can be set to sound an alarm when the time for an appointment comes close. I haven't messed with this feature much as I tend to type in a lot of date on iCal on my Macintosh at work when I set an appointment, and there's no way I'm going to go through that considering the awful text input method used for this phone.
And, if you want to take pictures, a camera can be attached to this phone. If you want to shell out the extra bucks for the camera, of course.
Finally, the menu system is easy to understand and can be navigated simply. That's a great feature for a phone, because I often have to check voice messages and such and want to do it quickly. The software used has been quite stable, too -- I haven't noticed any major glitches yet.
All in all, this isn't a bad choice if all you want to do is talk on a cellular phone when you're away from a more traditional one. However, I feel like the better themes, ring tones and games weren't included, and I don't like that at all. I don't like feeling like I have to go through the expense and trouble of getting an Internet account in order to get some better ring tones and such which should have been included in the first place.
Update, Update, Update! May 6, 2005
Since this phone didn't survive the trip through the washing machine, it's been replaced by the superior
Nokia 6010. Grab one of those instead of the Sony Ericsson T226 phone if given the choice!
