Despite its physical beauty, my love affair with this phone ended quickly. The software seems almost willfully frustrating, with nothing where you expect it to be and few options to customise (good example - if look up a name in your phone book, you can't directly text to that number!) The joystick control is used to bring the phone out of sleep mode, but moving it activates shortcuts (such as WAP) when you didn't want to.

Sony have improved on most of these annoyances with their later phones, so my advice to AVOID applies only to the T610 model.

For the usual price, Sony Ericsson T610 is a good phone with some nice features, but the camera isn't that good. You can barely make something out because of the quality, and it's not even VGA. Nonetheless, it's a good valued phone. You might have difficulties with the joystick after a couple of months of using it.

I found that the Sony Ericsson T610 was a very good phone, however I had problems with mine before and had to get it replaced. It wasn't a big deal, my sound just gave up. Overall, if your not fussed about features, then this is an ideal phone for you.

The Sony Ericsson T610 is a good, average mobile phone with a nice design. It hasn't gone wrong once yet. The only thing was that reception wasn't brilliant, but it was good enough. I'm sticking to Sony Ericsson's because of this phone, so I like it a lot, but it's getting old now, so it is time for an upgrade.

Maybe it's time that I bought a new mobile phone! I've had the Sony Ericsson T610 since November 2004, and for the last 5 months i.e. out of warranty, I have been unable to send picture messages, access WAP or use some of the other connectivity features. This is despite fairly constant re-programming. In its time this phone was a definite market leader, and I suppose I still keep it as my personal phone out of a sense of having got used to it, and after all it makes and receives phone calls and texts so what the heck. Mind you, I don't really need it to do much more than that anyway, which is another reason not to spend money on a replacement, and the fact that I have the use of another company provided phone anyway.

It's a shame that Sony Ericsson do not cater more for the bluetooth users, as the replacement phone for this model doesn't have bluetooth capabilities!

The Sony Ericsson T610 is a great mobile phone that has almost everything, and it is also easy to find downloadable content - for example pictures, ringtones, and themes etc...

Overall it's a nice phone.

The Sony Ericsson T610 is a good value, easy to use mobile phone, but it does have the occasional fault.

When you first turn the Sony Ericsson T610 mobile phone on, you can't get to the messaging section for about ten seconds. If you press the buttons loads of times, it remembers every move, so when it wakes up it will go through each of those presses first!! Once on though, it is fine, and the menu is good. However, if you have gone down too far and want to scroll up again using the joystick, it can be very fiddly, and will select the thing you don't want. In bright sunlight you can't see the screen unless you shade it a bit first.
The design is good, and the shell is tough. I have dropped it a few times, and nothing has broken, it is just a bit scratched.
It is pretty easy to use. The screen is strong. The reception is generally good, and it has a lot of features too.
I went through a period when the phone kept doing crazy things like cutting me off before calling, and in the middle of calls, and other odd things.
I recommend Orange.

This is a great phone if you need to update your old phone. Has nearly everything you need for a low price.

I struggle to find anything to recommend this phone. It hasn't suffered from any SIM card troubles, as other users have reported, but I would echo everything else negative that they have already said. It is poor design personified.

This phone is great to be precise, it's got a great screen and loads of great options. Ringtones, pics and themes are all great. The camera is fantastic, my first and best! I love the centre control- a joystick, it means I can easily navigate through the menu. Everything is easy to access and it has great memory. There are loads of shortcuts, to name a few:

Pushing the joystick left- new text
Pushing the joystick down- numbers
Pushing the joystick up- internet
Camera icon on side- camera

I was an avid Nokia user. And for some unknown reason, I decided to get the Sony Ericsson T610 as my upgrade. It was the worst mistake that I made. Unfortunately, I only discovered this after the 7 day exchange period had run out. The Volume is too quiet, the whole phone seizes up for no reason and you end up having to turn it off. And as for the tiny control button, it is so hard to use sometimes. It skips the icon that I want to use. Also the whole phone is very slow on a whole. Whenever you are trying to sent a text or even make a phone call, you could be typing away, but the text that is coming up on the screen could be 4 or 5 lines behind you. And sending it is even slower.

I am currently on my 6th T610 Handset. It cannot get a signal in most of my house but can get a signal under some tunnels.

Quite often I will call someone when I put the handset in my pocket.

The camera is OK for little pics.

The phone was free hence the score for value for money.

Sony Ericsson T610: I got my T610 for £90 with £11 free credit from Carphone wharehouse. The phone is quite good looking and isn't a "brick", very light infact. The phone is quite slow when switching between menus and sometimes your signal disappears for no reason. Sony Ericsson's seem to suffer from this defect though, my old T68i became totally U/S after about a month.
The T610 does have its good points and I love it very much. For a start it has Bluetooth, GPRS, WAP, a camera and an email facility. To get these features to work the settigs need to be downloaded from your network providers website. However once set up I could check my Yahoo emails on the go, use google, email photos to my PC. Highly versatile piece of kit if you use it properly and have a need for its features. Brilliant capabilities,excellent value for money!

The T610 should be redisignated the Sony Ericsson P.O.S!

Mine was an upgrade having been an avid Nokia user for quite a few years. The menu control structure is completely NON intuitive - everything takes three times longer to do with this phone compared to my old Nokia.

The phone would be usable by a Hobbit. The buttons are tiny and unpositive to use - you wonder if button presses actually register.

Operation of the device became unreliable after a few weeks moderate use.

Very Very nasty. Avoid this phone even if it is free.

When I first got the T610 phone just over a year ago I absolutely loved it. Was a massive improvement on Sony J70. It is simple to use via central joystick and picture menus similar in style to Windows/Palm OS. The camera was pretty decent at the time, but technology in this area is improving all the time so was quickly superceded. I find the bluetooth incredibly useful, means I can keep phone on me at all times, use it as a diary and synch it with computer and PDA (via computer won't synch directly) later. I am also a big fan of vibrating ring which this does well, very rare to not feel a call, but often miss texts messages.

The problems really come with it after you have owned it for a while. The central joystick, which is used to control nearly all the features wears out pretty quickly (after about 8 months I think) which means you have to sometimes press it very hard but sometimes can work normally which can be very frustrating.

Another critcism is the dictionary for the T9 text input. After you add words to the dictionary these immediately go to the top of the list even if they are only a word you wanted to use once. Another frustrating thing is that the dictionary tries to change the order of words to put the most used words at the top of the list, which would be a great idea if it worked. Often words that you have never used come to the top of the list eg my phone now insists on saying gu instead of it, and you need to put in the word you want about 20 times before it goes back to the top of the list.

Finally the battery seems to die a death after about 14 months, although it was initially very good.

In summary I'd say this is a very good phone for someone on a monthly contract who gets a free upgrade after a year. I may be being a bit cynical but I think phones seem to be designed to last a year now then break to force you to upgrade/change contract. As a pay as you go customer where you want your phone to last as long as possible I'd give it a miss.

The Sony Ericsson T610 is the best phone that I have every had, it was perfect for my needs I had it stolen but would still have it to this day if I could. I loved the joystick button it made things quick and easy, the shortcut buttons saved me loads of time. This phone is great!!!!

Got the T610 as an upgrade to a 8310. It's certainly a smart phone with bags of functionality. The trouble is that it's more difficult to do the simple things (lookup/edit a number or even make a call for that matter!) than most Nokias. These icon driven menu systems will surely be ditched once the gimmick factor has gone. If you want all singing all dancing stuff then this may be the phone for you. If you want a phone to primarily make and receive calls then don't buy one of these. After 3 months I have gone back to a Nokia 8210 (the wife's nicked the 8310 which was great by the way) which maybe shows how much I dislike this phone.

This really is the worse phone that I have ever owned. I will elaborate on the bad points:

The ring volume is too quiet. Although there is a vibro function, this doesn't always seem to work. I've had many occasions where the phone has been in my pocket and I've missed calls as I didn't know the phone was ringing.

The menu is fiddly to use. There is a shortcuts section but I rarely use it as it takes several movements to get to it. 1) Press joystick in front screen, 2) Move joystick left then up and press, 3) Choose shortcut selection. That's 3 movements to get to the shortcuts!!!! Many other options take many clicks to find. You try looking up an email address in your address book!

Doesn't hold addresses. Ok not everyone's requirement, but this is frustrating, and made even worse when I tried to sync my phone with Outlook and use the priority as the phone. Result - all my addresses got wiped in Outlook. Oh, doesn't hold birthdays either.

The camera is terrible in poor light (not great in good light). You can adjust the brightness using the joystick (not in the manual), but it's not enough.

When I go abroad, I have so many problems sending text messages. I was in Spain this month on holiday and the main network is Movistar. All my friends on their antique Nokia 6210s had no problems. I had to change network to Amena. BUT....to send a picture message, I had to go back to Movistar. Wierd!!!!!

The Sony Ericsson T610 is really easy to use. Or maybe they all are nowadays? I remember when the only simple ones were Nokia. But this is very nearly as easy as a Nokia, except for the fact that the key to make a space in a text is the hash key not the zero, so the first few messages I sent had + signs between each word.

One fun thing that I really enjoy is that I can assign pictures and ring tones to my contacts. So when my son rings me a photo of him flashes up and it plays a Blink182 song at me. This is great as it means that if any of my close friends call me I know immediately who it is so long as they haven't withheld their number.

A very handy feature is the phone book, on older phones I had to have a separate entry for each person's mobile, landline and home numbers. In the T610 I have one entry per name and within that are spaces for each phone number they have, and an email address too.

The battery life seems quite good; I only need to charge up twice a week and the charging is a very quick process, much quicker than my old Nokia. If I take a lot of photos or play games it eats up the battery, but if I am sensible it lasts quite nicely.

This phone is set up with Orange WAP and I can download more games, pictures and ringtones quite easily. I did have to be taught how to do this by a man admittedly, but now I am getting the hang of it all by myself. Orange regularly feature a ringtone that can be downloaded for free, but normally they cost a couple of quid. I was lucky, on the day I was being taught how to download tones the free one was Match of the Day which was fine for me as I need to have a distinctive (irritating!) tone or I never hear/recognise my own phone! It also has a polyphonic something, which means that the rings are actually quite nice to hear. I have a selection of midi files on mine and the tunes really are recognisable. I don't think my Match of the day tune is too popular as when I get a call at work everyone shouts at me, but I think that is just their bad musical taste.

The camera takes pictures very well for other people; my fella has a nice little collection of lovely photos. Sadly I have never been much of a David Bailey, but I have taken a couple of ok ones. Initially I didn't take many as it costs 40p to send a photo and I got it into my head that all photos were 40p! My son curled up laughing at this because as he rightly pointed out to his sad old mother; it is 40p to send but taking a photo costs nothing and really doesn't drain the battery *that* much. So now I have been snapping away and assigning photos of all my mates to their telephone numbers.

If you have an infrared connection on your PC you can send things to and from your phone to the PC. My fella has his texts saved on his PC and has sent pictures and tones from his PC to the phone. Also he has sent games, tones and photos to my phone via infrared too.

A chap at work has the Bluetooth headset thingy and it looks sooooo swanky! Very Mission Impossible. The Bluetooth system seems very clever; we bought a kit that negates the need for an infrared system on the PC so we can swap things from phone to PC. Included in our package is a handsfree package that doubles up as a FM radio. This is really cool, but to be honest I rarely use it as when I am on the phone I need to hold it up to my ear - I have never got along with any handsfree sets as I feel silly talking to mid-air!

There are only two drawbacks I have found with this phone. The first is that I haven't noticed any pretty covers available and I really miss my lovely blue daisies cover that I had on my Nokia. Having said that I picked up the cutest little leather jacket for my new phone for only a tenner in the Orange shop. The leather cover is very well designed and I don't have to remove it to do anything except taking the back off the actual phone. There are small holes and gaps in the design so that the lens of the camera is uncovered, which means I can just whip my phone out and take a picture at a moments notice.

The second bugbear is one that is more cross making - when you make or receive a call the details are logged in a list, but each number collects a pile of details. When you highlight a call, then it shows the date of the last incoming or outgoing call and if the call was made today it will show the time of the call, but tomorrow the time will not show. I did prefer Nokia's call register, which showed a whole long list of full details for each call.

This phone is available free on many contract packages and if you can get it free I would definitely recommend it. If you have to pay for it, it is worth getting if the price is within your budget as it is as good as a Nokia. High praise from me!