Sony Ericsson T230 Review

Overall Rating

Light and small

plasticky. Camera is attachable not built in.

I have had my Sony Ericson T230 mobile phone for about six months now. It was on special offer in Woolworths for £59.99 which was half price to their usual charge! I thought ' Bargain!!' and bought it!!

I have had a look at a few websites and the price which seems pretty standard is £90.00.

The phone comes with the usual charger, battery, a necklace attachment for carrying the phone and a camera attachment! There is a quick start guide and a full manual. They are very clear and easy to read.

The phone is around one and a half inches wide and four inches long. It is a tiny three quarter of an inch deep. The phone itself is very light, weighing in at about 99g. The standard casing for the phone is silver with a navy blue trim. It is quite smart but unfortunately looks a bit plasticky and does scratch very easily. As their is no case accompaniment, it is succeptible to wear and tear.

The first thing you have to do when you get the phone is charge it up, as with any new phone. The charger is comparatively smaller than usual chargers I have had. The only problem i have with it is the way it attaches to the phone. There are two plastic clips which do clip in to the phone quite easily but when it comes to removing them, I really did think they were going to snap off!! Not the best when you yank your phone when in a hurry! Which I usually am!

The phone was charged up within four hours and I began to familiarise myself with the new keypad. I was used to a Motorola so the Sony was a bit different.

The screen is colour and has polyphonic ringtones capability. The phone is Dual Band and GSM 900.
You have the usual Yes and No, Answer and End buttons plus a joystick style button with arrows. The menu is easy to navigate with the Phonebook, Messages, Call Records, Pictures and Sounds, Settings, Web, Organiser and Games.

Phonebook

For each contact you enter, you can attach a personal ringtone and even a photo, using the camera attachment.

For each contact you get the option of a home, work, mobile number and email address. They are all kept under one name rather than having the same person in your phonebook several times.

Messages

You can standard text, MMS text, email or chat. All of the services are easy to use. The email server has to be set up before use but this is very easy with the instruction manual! There is a predictive text facility but it is quite tricky to get the hang of at first! Or it was for me!.

Pictures and Sounds

You can use the stored pictures and sounds or create your own. The phone has a built in recorder so you can take notes or simply send a greeting to someone . You can also take photos quite easily and save those too.

The ring tones are quite standard although there are a couple that I love. Moonstar and Ice cream. These are really funky! You can also compose your own if you know what you are doing. The notes guide is also in the instruction manual.

Organiser

You can use the events manager, timer, stopwatch, calculator and alarm clock. Again quite simple.

Games

The games are called Deep Abyss, a mini platform game, Five Stones, which is a game similar to Four in a Row but with Five! and V Rally 2, a car racing game, originally an Atari game!

The Communicam is ok but attaching it is tricky It has the same type of clips as the charger and I am so scraed of snapping the pegs. The pictures are reasonably clear although I have seen a lot better. You can save the pics as wallpaper, standby screensaver or to attach to contact numbers. It is quite good fun. The camera is reasonably dinky with a slide down front to protect the lens

there is wap on the phone too but I can never get a good enough signal to go on the wap network.

The standby time is about 300 hours apparently with talktime of up to 12 hours.

Im a bit unsure about this phone. I can not make up my mind whether I like it or not. It is very light and small but I hate having it all scratched. It is easy enough to use once you get used to it. It is growing on me!! If you go into Woolworths they usually have one on the demo stand to have a look at. The dummy models do actually weigh about the same as the real thing too so believe it, they are light!!

I suppose a phone is a personal thing and everyone is diferent. Just have a go and see for yourself.

I hope this is helpful and thank you for reading!
Kerry xx