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Sony Ericsson T68i
Price: £199

Features
Performance
Ease of use
Value for money
Overall

Reviewed By: Andy Shaw

This review updated: 13/08/2002
Featured in magazine:
Issue 36, page 40
Manufacturer Contacts:
Supplier: T-Mobile
Tel: 0800 956 5000
Web Address: www.t-mobile.co.uk


Text messaging took off because it's a cheap, simple and private way of getting a message to anyone else with a mobile phone. Now mobile network T-Mobile has launched a new enhanced messaging service that lets you send a picture, taken through a clip-on digital camera, along with your message. T-Mobile is hoping it has the potential to rival the success of text messaging and start a new craze.

The main attraction of this camera and phone package is that you can take pictures and send them to other people. The obvious way to do this is to send it to another phone, though this also has to be capable of picture messaging and currently has to be on the same network. If you don't know anyone else with the service you can send pictures to any email address or to T-Mobile's picture gallery website. Photos can also be used to create phone screensavers or backgrounds.

The phone comes with a good set of mobile functions, and uses the colour screen particularly well with a wide range of addictive games.

The phone's camera gives impressive results and is capable of taking good-quality images in the right lighting conditions. It can take photos at resolutions up to 640 x 480 pixels, which you can then send via email, though picture messages are restricted to 101 x 80 pixels so that they fit on a mobile phone screen. This is still enough space to recreate a recognisable picture, though the lack of a built-in flash means that photos are far better if taken outdoors in daylight.

The concept of picture messaging is quite simple, but the Sony Ericsson phone is far from user friendly. Once you've got past the first layer of the menu system, which uses a screen full of icons, the subsequent menus are dense lists of text. Many of these have so many options that you need to scroll down to see the end of the list, and we found our most frequently-used functions were often placed in the middle rather than at the top. The vast range of options available for picture messaging means that even sending a simple text message can get complicated, with email-like 'cc:' options and other choices to contend with.

Picture messages cost 35p each to send, though you can buy 10 messages in advance for £2.50 (25p each) or 50 messages for £10.50 (21p each).

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