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Review Sony Ericsson T630

SonyEricsson T630, live pictures

Sony Ericsson decided to release T630 in order to make T610’s life cycle larger, and to attract new groups of users. We wrote that such model will be released in the same day the as T610 was announced, and predicted all functions as well. The only mistakes we’ve made were the terms of release, they were moved a bit further since T610 was still popular, and there was no need in releasing another model.

T630’s design reminds of Nokia’s models for the youth, especially Nokia 3100. Not looking at the fact that the phone looks more expensive, it still loses to T610’s design significantly. You can compare these two phones visually, T630 looks simpler, but I believe that there are people who will like this design. This model is presented with only one case’s color, and it’s white. Display’s edging, buttons and sides have silver color. Sony Ericsson believes that the main users of this phone will be rich enough youths and women. That’s where this type of design comes from, however another reason for releasing such design is preventing competition between T610 and T630. It’s not a replacement for T610; it’s another phone although it has almost exactly same technical specifications.

The first major change is TFD screen, it’s similar to the one used in Sony Ericsson Z600. The two displays are identical; however the presence of protection glass makes the difference. The picture looks good in both models, and it’s really hard to determine which one is better. T610 had STN type of screen, and you were actually unable to see anything when the display was encountering direct sunlight as a result. The TFD screen doesn’t have such disadvantage.

The keyboard is presented as one single block. The keypad’s buttons are big enough and stick closely to each other. Working with such keyboard is rather comfortable, no problems were encountered. The joystick is identical to the one used in T610, it’s comfortable as well. The backlight’s color is white.

Camera is located on the phone’s back, it’s identical to the one used in T610. From now on you can take pictures in VGA resolution (640x480 pixels). Here are some samples (1, 2, 3 and 4). But the cam’s physical resolution has not been changed; scaling method is used in order to get VGA resolution pictures. The quality of original picture gets decreased significantly. It’s better to edit the CIF-resolution image in any graphical editor, in order to get slightly better quality. This is why we can’t’ actually say that something got improved, the phone uses same optics, scaling doesn’t give any advantages. On the phone’s display all pictures look good, no matter what resolution they have, however you can’t expect good picture quality on your PC. None of the current phones can offer you this, that’s why I can’t really understand why people want to use mobile phone cameras as an alternative to ordinary digital camera.

A new mirror was introduced in T630, it’s bigger than the one used in Т610.

I won’t describe the phone’s features since they are identical to the ones we’ve seen in T610. We already have a big and detailed review of that phone, so there is no need to do it again. The only change is Instant Messaging support, it’s an analogue of ICQ and we can’t really predict if this feature will be in demand. It’s all up to operators to decide either this function will be supported or no.

Actually these are all differences the new phone has. It will go for sale starting from the beginning of January. Considering that T610 was a successful model in its segment, we believe that T630 will be popular as well. However more specific design, rather high price in the beginning of sales will not allow to repeat the T610’s success. It’s a ПЕРЕХОДНАЯ model that will keep the sales level before T650/T660 will be released (although these models were not officially announced). The starting price will be around 350-370 dollars. Buying this phone somewhere in April will be a better descision since it will cost around 250-260 dollars by that time. In my opinion buying T610 is still a better way to spend your money even though its display is worse. Currently it’s the most advanced phone in its segment. The only disadvantage is that this phone became really popular, and you can often see it around, which means you won’t be unique.

P.S. The most interesting part about T610 and T630 is that T610’s firmware can be upgraded to T630’s one, this means that the older model will get Instant Messaging support. But that’s all what you will get. We don’t know if this option will be official and available in Service Centres yet.

Click here in order to get detailed review of phone’s features.

Eldar Murtazin (eldar@mobile-review.com)
Translated by Alexander "Lexx" Zavoloka(Lexx@i-5.delfi.lv);
Text editor: Terry Pettitt (terry.pettitt@optimaltools.com)

Published — 08 January 2004

Have something to add?! Write us... eldar@mobile-review.com

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