If you, after reading this entry, will call me a total dork, go ahead. Why am I saying that?
Today, I dumped my SonyEricsson T68i phone in favor of the old phone I was using, Sony CMD-Z5.
Since I purchased the T68i for own birthday back in October, I felt it's way too much for my needs. It looked like a fine idea - being able to Bluetooth to the phone, GPRS to the Internet, and all that jazz, not to mention it comes from Sony, a company I like when it comes to consumer electronics.
However, after a few months of use, I was greatly disappointed with it. Maybe I am not a typical cellphone user, but I really couldn't find any advantages of T68i over my old CMD-Z5 that I kept in a closet.
T68i offers a color screen. Wow. Why in the world a cellphone would need a color screen? No, really. Other than factoring the price up a few dollars, I really see no advantages of a color LCD over a B&W one. Sure, you can set funky images as the background for your cell provider name, and get nice "screensaver" picture when the phone goes to idle state. But see, I use my cellphone to make and receive calls when I am on the go, and I don't use the screen for things other than looking up a phone number I am about to dial, or ocassionally to glance at it to see the time (if I managed to forget my wristwatch at home).
Second, T68i has a joystick-like stick to navigate menus and control the phone. My hands might be not the right kind, but the stick thing is way too uncomfortable in handling. It goes in wrong directions at times, and it often shifts to the left or right when you try to click it, making it select the wrong menu item. Painful. Even the up/down buttons on Nokia phones are more convenient than this. CMD-Z5, on comparison, has a jog-dial control, which is very easy to use with an index finger, since it is located on the side of the phone.
T68i has obvious software flaws at times. Since it has no flip thing, you have to turn on the keys lock thing to prevent ocassional input when the phone hangs in your pocket. Getting used to the whole "press C then YES to unlock the keyboard before doing anything" thing was pretty hard for me, being spoiled by the "open the flip and there you go" trick in CMD-Z5. But this isn't the point. The point is that even though T68i has keys locked, it still can be turned off from the keyboard. I've had too much cases when I go out, put the phone in my pocket, and then at the end of the day realize it turned itself off sometime during the day, and that I have missed any calls that were made at that time. Just great. This particular thing was driving me insane; I had to take out the phone out of the pocket every half hour or so to make sure it still is turned on.
Next, the menu system. This has to be related by the style of the input device on each phone (joystick on T68i, jog-dial on CMD-Z5), since CMD-Z5 has some sort of spooky looking rotating array of menus that slide into focus as you rotate the dial -- not the best implementation possible, but not the worst; T68i has a set of 4x4 icons (or was it 3x3?) that you access with the joystick. As I said before, joystick shifts to sides when you click it at times, so you end up selecting a wrong menu. Bad idea. And don't think T68i menus have anything in common with older Sony phones. It's an Ericsson menu, and the whole phone is an Ericsson phone, having nothing from Sony other than the name "SonyEricsson".
Games. Oh right, T68i has way more games than CMD-Z5 does. I've played them for about two times on both phones. If I know I will have to wait and have to kill time somehow, I either bring a book with me or a GameBoy Advance.
Answerring machine. For some reason, T68i, being all advanced, didn't implement that feature, even though it does have a voice recorder built in. CMD-Z5 has it, and boy, it is handy. Sometimes, when I am driving a car, I don't feel like answerring the phone, yet it will pick up the call for me and record a message. Maybe not essential to many people, but essential for me for sure.
So, as you may have figured, I am a simple person and don't use the most advanced features found in T68i. I don't need the organizer, or the timers, or the color LCD. My experience with T68i was frustrating, so I switched back to the phone I liked. Now I just wish it had Bluetooth and GPRS, so I can ditch the T68i completely. For now, it will sit on my shelf until I'll want to connect to the Internet from my tibook. Thank you, SonyEricsson, you're not for me.
Posted by slava at 06:56 AM
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Wow, the CMD-Z5 has an answering machine? Hell, I've turned my "divert to voicemail" feature off because it just wastes my time: Miss a call, call goes to voicemail. Chump leaves message on voicemail. Voicemail sends you an SMS telling you that Chump has left a message. You ring voicemail to hear Chump hanging up on voicemail. You ring Chump to find out what the hell he wanted. Chump was just calling to say hello. The answering machine sounds great - since it cuts out the middleman.
As a response to the joystick problems on the T68i, I was having the same troubles. I'd try to click and I'd just scroll up the menu. It turns out the easiest way to avoid this is to use the middle of your thumb to navigate. I was using the tip of my thumb before, but using the very middle (between the tip and the first joint) actually makes navigating a whole lot smoother and I'm yet to have that problem with clicking recur.
All said- the only reason I got the T68i was for the Bluetooth, which I guess is the same for every Mac user that buys one. iSync is great, and so is Clicker, but that's as far as it goes. By the time my contract is up, I'm hoping that there are plenty of other Bluetooth-capable (or whatever is coming down the line to stomp all over Bluetooth) phones available.
Posted by: Chris on April 9, 2003 7:10 AMGood choice.... another thing I hate abt T68 is its SMS alert tone... you called that alert? Shouldn't have changed from T39m... :(
Posted by: oeyvind on April 9, 2003 7:15 AMAnd the alarm! The number of times I have slept through that alarm...
Posted by: Chris on April 9, 2003 7:40 AMI like my Nokia 8290 a lot more than the T68i. It's UI is just so much nicer...
Posted by: Etan on April 9, 2003 9:32 AMI have a Motorola V60c. I love it. Does everything I need for a phone, and is incredibly intuitive. Only one huge problem. Even though it has a USB data cable, I have absolutely no way to sync it to my Mac. Starfish/TrueSync is only available for Windows. And apparently no one has any plans to port it to the Mac. So I'm screwed. I use Verizon Wireless, which uses CDMA, and I think still there are no Bluetooth phones with CDMA. I really hate this. I switched to a Mac about a year and a half ago and haven't looked back, but things like this really piss me off. I see that Apple seems to internally support things that 3rd parties would for Windows, which is good for keeping a customer base, but I think they are really limiting things by only supporting Bluetooth phones. This is really the only thing I still need Windows for and it really upsets me.
Posted by: Ken on April 9, 2003 10:00 AMI'll just add a quick "me too"... I miss my cheapo Qualcomm 810. Better menu system. Easier keylock. I didn't worry about scratching it.
But the T68i *is* still getting those "jealous of my cool phone" glances because of the nice blue backlight on the keypad.
Posted by: Rob W on April 9, 2003 10:56 AMI too ditched my T68i awhile back, for many of the reasons listed above, but also because of how slow the menus were when trying to dig down deep into options and settings.
That being said I have really missed having a bluetooth phone. Any chance anyone wants to part with their not being used anymore T68...cheap??
Posted by: kerry on April 9, 2003 12:58 PMWhy do phone companies make life so miserable for early adopters? I ordered a 7110 when I was writting wap applications and bought a T68 fresh off the presses. The phones just plain sucked. The OS on the T68 is just unbeleivable--it's an embedded system and it can't draw the menus as quickly as I can type them.
I've been trying to get a new phone (must be triband, gprs, bluetooth) for months now but there's nothing out there. Almost plumped for the p800 but then realised I'd be getting the sames fuzzy colour menus and slow speed:-(
grrrrr...
Posted by: dug on April 9, 2003 6:08 PMCall me crazy but I love it. It's tiny, sturdy and has great call quality. Never heard of answering machines for phones--the voicemail works quite well on mine however. I have thin fingers and have no problem with the joystick, and find it quite easy to navigate around quickly.
It's got its quirks as does any phone (the turning off in the pocket thing is lame, but I use it as a watch so I check it often).
For the price (-$30 after rebate) it's killer. I love the Bluetooth even though I don't use it for net access.
I can't wait to see the T610--the replacement for the 68i. Sony said it'll be on my doorstep in a few weeks, but you know how review units go. It's smaller than the 68i but has a bigger screen and even includes a camera (probably overkill if you don't like the 68i).
Posted by: Jon on April 9, 2003 6:48 PMI hear ya about the horrible UI on the t68i. One of the more annoying things that bothers me is that the "New SMS - Read Now?" message pops up regardless of whether the keyboard is locked or not. So if the keyboard's locked, you hit Y thinking you're going to read the SMS, you get the "Keyboard locked, hit C to unlock" message.
Unless I'm missing some functionality, that's gotta be about the worst UI flow I've seen on a cell phone. What on earth were they thinking?
And yes, phone configuration is a major PITA as well. Maybe some enterprising hacker can whip up a PC/Mac based configuration util with a couple of straightforward forms to fill out that then then IR's/BT's all the settings to the phone...
I, too, am hooked on bluetooth, but the t68i seems to be about the only thing out there in the US so far. I'll certainly be looking elsewhere when my contract expires too.
Uhh.. Slava. Have you tested the "turning itself off" thing out manually? If I lock my keypad and then try to turn it off, all I get is the "Keys Locked. Press C to unlock" prompt... no matter how long I hold down the "No" button.
Which leads me to reason- either we're using very slightly different instances of the same phone (maybe they fixed that bug in the software by the time I got my phone), or there's something else very wrong with your phone.
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