Caboose

It’s that time of the year again, when I was wandering past the Orange shop in Cambridge last weekend I realised my year was up and I could upgrade my phone.

The new phone had to have Bluetooth, IrDA and GPRS. That narrowed the selection down quite a bit and I ended up trading in my old T39m for a shiny new Ericsson T610.

A week later I’ve had a play with most of the phone’s features and I’m pretty pleased with it.

The first thing most people comment on is the squareness of the phone, quite a contrast with the rounded shapes of most current phones.

The display is a passive colour LCD. It’s clear and very bright indoors but not always easy to see in daylight. The colours are the best I’ve seen on a mobile phone, without the usual blueish cast.

This is a picture (the view from my bedroom window) taken using the built-in camera.

As you can see the pictures tend to be a bit blurry. I need to experiment a bit more to see how different lighting conditions affect the camera.

The user interface is pretty good, although I find the little joystick a bit fiddly. The supplied games aren’t great (Minigolf in incredibly dull), but you can download more from Orange, SonyEricsson or various other places.

One of my favourite features is the built in ringtone sample from an old phone, it actually rings. This is a nice change from most recent phones that only have a selection of really irritating tunes and no basic ringing noises.

So, on the whole, not a bad phone. Small, light, battery life seems reasonable and I can even use it as a remote control.