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INDOGOLDS.COM
SONY ERICSSON T630
Review 1 | Review 2 IntroductionSince it was launched early last year, the Sony Ericsson T610/T616 has been a best-seller around the world, although it did have its flaws. The screen was poor in sunlight, and reception was not up to par. Almost 9 months later we have the T630 a new improved version of the T610 which promises to correct its flaws. Well, you all know it has a TFT screen, but what else has changed? Read on Physical Aspects The T630 is available in 2 colors, white and black, although black will only be available in certain territories. My review unit was white and the first impression I had of it was that it looked as if it was designed by Apple. The translucent keys and sleek design give it a cool retro look which cannot be conveyed by photographs alone. Sony Ericsson has designed the back of the T630 to look like a camera when you hold it to the side. They have also added little touches that really enhance the look of the T630 things like having a silver border around the display, or printing the Sony Ericsson logo on the back so that the "camera" look is complete. As with the T610, the build quality on the T630 is excellent. There were no squeaks, and the phone felt solid. For those of you had had a T610, one of the annoying aspects with it was that it would get fingerprint marks on it very quickly and would start looking dirty. This is not the case with the T630 which uses the same white plastic all around the phone. The T630 measures 102mm x 43mm x 17mm, making it slightly smaller than the T610. In reality, there is no perceptible difference. I'm not a big fan of keypads where there is not enough (or no) spacing between the keys. I have relatively large fingers so using them becomes a chore. That said, I had no problems using the keypad on the T630. This is because the keys are slightly arched up towards the middle and you only touch this little arched part when using the keys. The keys are backlit with white LED's and the whole effect looks very nice at night. The T630 uses the same joystick as the T610, which is fine by me I prefer a joystick over a D-Pad any day. Finally, we have the camera and volume buttons on the left side of the phone, and the internet button on the right side. The IR port is located at the top, and the wired connectors (for handsfree and charging) at the bottom. User Interface and Display First up, we have the brand new 65K color TFT display that has been upgraded from the T610's STN display and what an upgrade it is. This new display is more vivid and much brighter than the one found in the T610. The T630's display can now be seen in sunlight or under bright light, and even the screen saver clock is a lot easier to read. I had the chance to compare the quality of the Z600's TFD screen, and the Samsung E700's TFT screen with the one in the T630. Compared with the Z600, the T630's screen gives more color detail and blends the colors better. It's also slightly brighter. Side by side, the Z600's screen is noticeably larger, but also not as sharp. This could be because the pixels on the Z600 are larger than those on the T630, creating a sharper image on the T630. Samsung is known to be a leader in mobile phone displays and the E700 did not disappoint. I found the E700's screen to be better than the T630's because it was brighter and more vivid. Still, most users will be more than happy with the T630's display, and it's a major improvement with the one found in the T610. The user interface in the T630 is very similar to the one found in the T610 and Z600 phones, but it does have a few slight changes. The "My Shortcuts" icon has been replaced with the icon for the "My Friends" feature, which I'll go into later. Also, slight changes have been made to the menu structure to make things a little more intuitive. I found the T630 to be slightly quicker than a T610 when moving through the menus. It's still not as fast as some Nokia phones, but the speed increase is a nice change. Messaging The T630 supports SMS, MMS, e-mail, WAP Push, and Cell Info pretty much everything you need to keep you in touch with your contacts. It also supports the new "My Friends" feature that I mentioned earlier. Composing SMS and MMS messages is generally very easy, though it does have its glitches. I experienced the same slowdowns when composing a message using the triple-tap method as Michael did on his Z600. I also found some slight glitches in the T9 where the phone would get stuck while predicting a word for a few seconds. Luckily, these only occurred a few times over the period I had the phone so it wasn't much of an issue. MMS is very easy to use and worked really well. The great thing about the MMS editor on the T630 is that you can control almost every aspect of how the MMS is displayed down to the timing of various parts of the message. A lot of phones don't have this feature.Email sync works with IMAP and POP3 servers, and I had no problems downloading them over GPRS. One handy feature with the T630 is that you can attach an object and email it like you would do on a PC. While it can send attachments just fine, the T630 is still unable to receive even the most basic of attachments. I don't know why this limitation exists, but it would be nice if they could fix it in a future update. My Friends My Friends is an application that allows you to see what your friends, family, and colleagues are doing at any time of the day by checking their profile. This allows you to know how they want to be contacted for example someone may only want to be contacted by SMS while they are in a meeting or not at all while they are at lunch. Users can select various "Status" messages and can even have a profile with their picture and some information about them. The My Friends feature is operator dependant and unfortunately my operator in Australia doesn't support it. Slowly, phones that support these features are coming to the market so we can hope for operators to start making this service available soon. Multimedia The T630 has some pretty cool multimedia applications not found in most other phones. The "Music DJ" application allows you to compose your own ringtones by selecting various clips and joining them together. You can select from various styles of music and create your own intro, verse, chorus, and break. Ringtone fanatics will also be pleased to know that the T630 supports 32 channel polyphonics that allow them to load almost any ringtone and have it sound nice. I did find the ringtones to be slightly lacking in volume though. It would be a little hard to hear the T630 in a crowd, but it would also depend on what ringtone you used. The T630 also has a picture editor where you can draw a new picture or edit one already on the phone. While it isn't the most useful application on the phone, it's still fun to edit funny pictures of your friends and MMS them. Like earlier Sony Ericsson phones, the T630 supports themes that can change the look of menus and background. There are 4 themes available out of the box in the T630, and they all look very nice. You can even create your own on your computer and upload them to the T630. Finally, we have the sound recorder, which is great for taking notes when you are unable to write them down. You can use the sound recorder to record ringtones, but usually they are either not loud enough, or the quality is lacking. Camera Sony Ericsson has decided to make the T630 a more camera orientated phone that its predecessors, the T610 and Z600. To start off with, they redesigned the back of the T630 to look more like a camera when held sideways. They also introduced a larger mirror for taking photos of yourself. The placement of the camera button on the side of the T630 is also in the same position as a shutter button on the normal camera, making the camera phone experience much better. The T630 also benefits from the TFT screen photos come out clearer and there is no "trail" when you are moving the camera while taking a photo. While all of these improvements are welcome, the camera optics have not been improved from the T610/Z600. This means the T630 is still hardware limited to taking CIF (288x352) pictures. It can also take smaller 120x160 pixel photos for MMS messages and the like. Users also have the option of selecting various modes of photos night mode, sepia, black and white, and negative. I couldn't really see any difference between the photos taken from the T630 and Z600. Considering they have the same optics, this is not really a surprise, but I had still expected Sony Ericsson to improve the photo taking capabilities of the T630. Instead, Sony Ericsson has introduced a special "extended photo" mode which uses software interpolation to stretch a 288x352 pixels image to 640x480 pixels with "no loss of quality", according to them. Unfortunately this is not the case. Most of the photos that I took in this extended mode came out very pixilated and ugly even worse than resizing the photo in a simple photo editor on your PC. Furthermore, the extra software interpolation causes the phone to take a long time to process and save each photo. Do you want to be waiting 30 seconds for each photo you take? I didn't think so. Similarly, there are issues when taking a normal (288x352 pixels) photo where after you click the shutter button, it will take some time to allow you access to the menus. My final complaint is not with the camera specifically, but more with the T630 in general. After almost a full year of people complaining about the T610's small memory size, Sony Ericsson still kept the paltry 2MB memory capacity that is to be shared between your pictures, games, and ringtones. With the "extended" photos taking up to 70KB each, there is barely space for 30 photos without anything else loaded on the phone. Phone Functions One of the main complaints with the T610 was its poor reception. Michael famously tested the T68i and T610 on top of the Pyrenees Mountains and concluded that the T68i was better. While I was unable to complete a test as extravagant as that, I can say that it seemed better than my P800. For example, in areas where the P800 would suffer a significant loss of signal, the T630 would be able to hold the call and keep it sounding clear. Please note that this review was conducted on a 900Mhz network in Australia (Optus) so I am unable to confirm the reception for American users on the 1900Mhz band. We have had American users give good and bad reports about the T630's reception, but it might be best to wait for feedback from users in your area. The quality of the audio during a phone call was very good. Voices sounded clear for both the caller and receiver, and the T630 could get loud enough to hear the other person in a crowd. Unfortunately, the T630 lacks a handsfree loudspeaker function, which I find quite puzzling. The T630 uses the same speaker for ringtones and voice calls, so we know it is more than capable of being used at loud volumes. Why such a simple but effective feature was omitted is anyone's guess. The T630's battery life is pretty good. I got around 4 days of usage with 15 minutes of calls every night and Bluetooth disabled. With Bluetooth enabled, this fell to 2.5 days. Considering the extra strain put on the battery by the new TFT screen, I thought this was a respectable result. Applications The T630 features the same calendar system used in the T610 and Z600 - considered to be amongst the best on the market. You can sync the calendar with Outlook so that all of your appointments are organised, and also beam them between your PDA and other phones. Other programs include Notes, Alarm Clock, Timer, Stopwatch, Calculator, and Code Memo. The alarm clock even works when the phone has been turned off, which can be very handy. Code memo is a password protected area of the phone where you can store your confidential phone numbers, passwords, and other data. Finally, we have the fun side of the applications the games. My T630 had the following games Colorbug, Deep Abyss, Mini golf, and V-Rally. Out of these, I found V-Rally to be the most fun. In fact, I would rate it as one of the nicest games I've played on a small phone. The controls for it are excellent, and whenever you crash into something the whole phone vibrates. The rest of the games are a bit dull in comparison, but Minigolf is still good fun especially when you can play it against a friend over Bluetooth. Connectivity The T630 features a wide array of connectivity options Bluetooth, infrared, GPRS, and remote synchronization. With these, it is possible to wirelessly send pictures and ringtones to your phone, talk on a wireless headset, browse the web, provide access to the internet for other devices, and sync your emails on your phone for access on the go. The T630 features a WAP 2.0 Browser, making it possible to view more complicated WAP pages than before. I've also noticed that GPRS seems a little more stable and less likely to cut out, though I'm not sure if this is because of the better reception or some other reason. Also, the T610 and Z600 have had complaints about sound quality while using a Bluetooth headset. I managed to test the T630 with a HBH-60 headset for a short while and found no such issues. Audio was clear, and I never had any connection issues. Conclusion The T630 is one of the most well-rounded handsets on the market today. Its mix of great screen, easy to use UI, excellent connectivity options, and good looks make it a force to be reckoned with. While our 2 main gripes with the T610 were fixed, there are still a few niggling problems that remain. Overall, if you want a small handset with almost everything that can be put into one, you can't look past the T630. Here are some of the T630's specs:
Sumber : MOBILE BURN by Siddharth Raja on Thursday January 15, 2004.
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