Ericsson T29 Review

Overall Rating

Great reception due to antenna, fine sound quality, GREAT voice dial, flip (easy to accept calls and hang up), great backlight, long standby time, nice included charger.

Flip is always a fragile point, antenna makes it stick in pocket, display a bit small, easily dropped by mistake, misses a few functions I'd really like.

THE FLIP-FLOP AND ANTENNA CONCEPT

Ericsson has always kept to their own style. This phone is no exception. Like all other "small phones" they have made, it has an antenna and a flip. Some people seem to hate the antenna and the flip - but that's everybody's personal preference.
It is a sober and clean "businessman phone" which does seem a bit fragile - and you probably should't expect it to handle too much misuse before it breaks. The fragile part is, of course, the thin hinged flip. It hasn't malfunctioned for me yet however, and I do not know of any friends who have had trouble with it yet - a definite improvement from the flip of cousin T28, which had its very large share of problems due to the button which ejected the spring loaded flip. This has been removed and replaced with a cool "activate spring when opened a little" feature.

QUALITY

When you grab the T29 in your palm, it feels as it is a QUALITY GSM. No loose parts which make noise if you shake the phone. The flip fits slightly loose in the hinge, but it's barely noticeable. As I have poked out before, one may question how long ANY flip will stand, but as long as it works, I shouldn't be complaining. One thing that can be a bit irritating with the T29 is that it is a bit slippery, and one really do not want to dump it in the floor by mistake.

HARDWARE

I am surprised by the fact how well Ericsson have succeeded in making a keypad this good for a phone this small. The keys are very easy to press. They simply do their job. The screen is easy to read too, high contrast, nicely illuminated by a beautiful green color should you need to use it in the dark. I have done SAR (radiation) testing by putting the phone close to a monitor, and I can tell you the SAR rate seemed to be pretty high (however, FAR away from the TERROR radiation the T28 emitted).

The sound reproduction quality is good, both outgoing (mic) and incoming (speaker), much a result of the good reception because of the antenna. This IS a phone that can be used in areas with bad coverage, too!

The included battery gives around 4 -5 hours of talk time and 110-150 hours of standby if you are somewhat close to a cell tower, which is fully acceptable.

A travel charger is included in the box too, of course! It simply plugs to an AC outlet and to the bottom of your phone via cable. This charger can fully charge the included battery in ~1 hour. One thing that is nice with it is that it does not make noise when plugged in, and doesn't get hot like fire either, so you can have it plugged in and sleep well still.

FEATURES

The T29s is somewhat feature-packed with the usual stuff that often is included nowadays, like voice dial, WAP, games, alarm clock, timer, stopwatch, SMS with picture messaging and melody composer (amongst a whole lot of other stuff). The least useful feature on this phone must be WAP, since I actually don't see the point of browsing online services on a 3-row display.

The VOICE DIAL feature is indeed very cool - something that Ericsson really has succeeded in implementing in contrast to Nokia. It works everywhere and for like ANYONE - even if the tag was recorded in your voice and someone else - even with a different gender - uses it in a noisy environment! Impressive.

The active flip is definitely a good feature as well! Open to answer, close to hang up. As easy as it gets...

Alarm clock does its job, as well the as timer/stopwatch. You can play games on this thing too (I haven't checked them much though since I rarely play games on phones). The included games are Tetris, E-maze (a Pacman clone), Ballpop (a Breakout clone), Erix (a weird game) and "Game", which is only included in later revisions of the phone. It is a shoot em' up game.

There is one thing I really miss however, which is the calendar. Even the bulky, cheap cousin A2618 has it. What else some people may miss is the T9 text input which can be useful when you are writing SMS messages.

FINAL WORDS

This is really a classic Ericsson scandinavian-style phone, which will fit businessmen and simple users who need a small and functional phone. It may appeal to young individuals as well, but because of the abscence of T9 text input, SMS writing is time consuming. The underlying idea of the phone is really starting to show its age, however.

Members' Comments onTobias.'s Review

• michael. on 1st Jan 2002

  i have an ericsson t29 and i fully agree with the comments which was given. however there is one item which really interest me is the mention of the sar reading on the t29. there is a comparisson of the t28 against the t29, what is the actual reading of the t29? i hope somebody can answer me asap.

• Tobias. on 5th Jan 2002

  A few words here on my own review. The number I have seen is 0,76w/kg, compared to the T28s 1,21w/kg on full output power.
  And the flip actually isn't fragile, bend it back much enough and it will jump out of place and just to reattach. Don't do this unless you have to, however.