A Great Entry Level Cell Phone
Written: Nov 23 '02 (Updated Nov 23 '02)
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Pros: Easy to use, full featured, and inexpensive. Good reception and sound.
Cons: No serial connector.
The Bottom Line: The reception and sound quality of the T206 is excellent and the extra features that are included are abundant. The T206 is built for the future.
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| mookiekong's Full Review: Sony Ericsson T206 Cell Phone |
After carrying around my work cell phone (a Motorola StarTac) for many weekends, I got tired of picking up calls for work on the weekend. I decided that I need a personal cell phone. I had a personal cell phone for a while before, but cancelled it because I thought I could get by with my work cell phone. I'm now a subscriber to MetroPCS in the San Francisco Bay Area. The phone that is offered from MetroPCS in this area is the Sony Ericsson T206.
I've used a few cell phones in the last few years. My first cell phone was actually a Sony phone. It was a brick to say the least. The following phones were SprintPCS phones -- three Samsung phones. For work I strictly use Motorola phones on the Verizon network. As I said my current work cell phone is the StarTac. I'll try to compare the T206 with the Motorola StarTac and the Samsung SCH-8500.
Features
The T206 has a boatload of features. There is the standard stuff on the phone: Caller ID and call waiting are part of the phone. The big display helps too because it is nice and readable. I discovered that there is three-way calling on the phone by accident. That is a nice feature to have. The phone has voice-dialing built-in and this is a very nice feature. Though, I’ve had voice-dialing on my SCH-8500, I never used it much there and I really don’t use it much on the T206. I really like the one button speed dialing feature on the T206. This is where I add people to my address book and assign a number to them. The people that I dial a lot, I put the numbers 2 to 9 on them and when I want to dial them I just hold down the number that is assigned and it dials.
The phone has other cool features. There is a built-in web browser on the phone so that one could surf the Internet in some limited way – I don’t use the web browser because currently MetroPCS does not offer this functionality on their network. The phone does SMS messaging for sending short messages between phones. I don’t use this either because no one that I know has a MetroPCS phone, so I have no one to message with. There is room on the phone for four custom ring tones. I can either program them in by hand (which is the way that I’m currently doing it) or I can download them directly to the phone via the built-in web browser. The phone supports animations which is pretty cool because I can have the phone display a custom animation when it starts up and when it shuts down. Also, the phone has pictures in it – so I can assign icons or pictures to different people in my address book. Quite helpful for the caller ID feature – since I can just glance at the icon and see who is calling.
Oh! And for those of us who get bored all the time while waiting for something there are three games built into the phone – but there’s no way to download more, but that’s OK they have my favorite. The games are: Naval Fleet (a Battleship clone), Emaze (a Pac-Mac Clone), and my favorite Klondike (you know, Solitaire from Windows!). They are all really fun, but I love Klondike the most – though the small cards make my eyes hurt and the way to play the game (with six buttons) is somewhat cumbersome.
Other extras include a calculator, a stop watch, a calendar (that is just a display, not one that you can add events to), timer, and alarm clock. There is also a facility to do voice memos, which is really nice, but I still haven’t found it useful. Maybe I will soon.
Sound Quality and Reception
Since my plan is an unlimited plan, I’ve put a few hours on my phone within the last two months. I’m up to about 30 hours on the phone – it is my “landline” nowadays. The reception on the phone is phenomenal. I get strong signals inside my work office – meaning I get about four out of five bars inside the office. This is compared to the two or three out of five that I get on my StarTac. My SCH-8500 gave about the same performance as the StarTac inside the office. I’m very impressed with the reception that the T206 gets.
Another test of the reception is inside my house. Whereas with the SCH-8500 and StarTac loses signal right next to my computer in the computer room, the T206 gets two or three bars and is enough to let me have a conversation. With the StarTac especially, the reception in this same area would be so bad that I would have to step outside of the house to get good reception. I would say that this T206 has the strongest reception of all the cell phones that I’ve owned.
The sound quality of the T206 is great. It is warm and not tinny like my other phones. The StarTac has a pretty good sound to it also, but it is very mechanical at times. The SCH-8500, like its sibling the SCH-3500 that I owned before it, was really tinny in the sound department – I think that the tinny sound quality of the SCH phones was mainly because of the flip design that Samsung decided on where the speaker itself was small and embedded in a very thin piece of plastic. The T206 sound is great. Everything sounds like it should on a regular telephone.
Look, Feel and Size
The T206 has a good look to it. The default face plate for the MetroPCS version is professional, yet somewhat boring. The good thing about the phone is that the face plates, like all fashionable cell phones nowadays, is interchangeable. The better news is that the T206 is pretty popular, at least out here in the SF Bay Area, and there are a lot of third party face plate and battery cover available -- on top of the four that come directly from Sony Ericsson. Currently I’m using the clear face plate with the clear battery cover.
The menu system for the T206 is pretty intuitive and easy to use. When compared to the Samsung SCH-8500, it is easier to use since the break down of the menus is well thought out. When compared to the StarTac the T206 (and even the SCH-8500) menu system is heavenly. For those of you using StarTacs, I feel your pain. The menu systems – especially the dreaded address book – on the StarTacs just plain stink. After using my StarTac for a year, I’ve finally figured out most of it, but some of it is still a mystery to me. Without picking up a manual the T206 menus and settings were intuitive and easy to use.
The T206 has a rubber strip that runs along the side of the phone. This strip makes it mighty hard to have the phone slip from your hands. I like the idea.
The size of the phone is somewhere smaller than the Nokia 3390. It is definitely lighter than the Nokia 3390. The phone measures at 4.4 x 1.9 x 1 inches and weighs in at 3.8 ounces. Pretty small and light, and is easy to carry in my front pocket when I don’t have my holster with me. The holster is an add-on. The only extra that comes with the phone when purchased is a hands-free mic/headset.
And the last word on looks is that the blue LEDs that are used in the phone to light the screen and keypad are really cool.
Buttons and Connections
On the face of the T206 are 16 buttons and one four-way keypad. There are the standard 12 number/pound/star buttons. There are two soft buttons at the top that change according to what menu you’re at. Then there is the quick menu button and a clear button. The phone has two connectors on it. At the bottom is the power-charging connector and on the left-hand side is the 2.5” jack for a hands-free mic/earpiece. The power-charging connector has a yellow ring around it to help people from getting it confused with the 2.5” jack. The microphone is to the right of the power connector and the ringer is on the right-hand side of the phone.
Technical Details
The T206 is a tri-mode phone running CDMA 800/1900 MHz and AMPs 800 MHz. The phone also supports high speed CDMA2000 1X standard which will allow the T206 to browse the web at 153 kbps. The phone supports WAP 1.1. The lithium-ion battery is rated at 850 mAh and Sony Ericsson says that this will yield 4 hours of digital talk time and a little less than two weeks of digital stand-by time. I’ve experienced just about those numbers when I’ve had my phone. Four hours of digital talk time definitely sounds just about right – it’s nice to see a company put out real-world numbers and not some theoretical numbers. The antenna for the T206 is internal and like I said before gets great reception – even when compared to phones with external antennas.
Last Words
The T206 phone is Sony Ericsson’s entry level phone, but by the looks of the incorporated features and design it almost feels like a mid-range phone. The reception and sound quality of the T206 is excellent and the extra features that are included are abundant. Also on a technical side of things the T206 is ready for the future. If your cellular service provider offers a T206 as a handset and you are even slightly considering it, I would recommend the phone without hesitation. With MetroPCS I had to buy a handset. The T206 is the handset for the SF Bay Area market and I’m glad that it is. It is a great phone and well worth the money spent when compared to the SCH-8500, but even more so when compared to the StarTac.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 160
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mookiekong
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Location: San Jose, CA, USA
Reviews written: 68
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Current Mookie Obsession: Apple iPhone 8GB and Fedora 8.
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