Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Sony Ericsson T630 issues
Cellular Services came through and upgraded the firmware of my new T630 from R4C003 to R6C005, but there are still some issues. Most annoying is something that used to work on my T68i, but doesn't on the T630: Recording (and playing) voice memos through a bluetooth headset. I found this to be very useful while driving. If I thought of an idea, or a task I had to do, I could just tap the button on my headset, say "record", and the T68i would then start recording through the headset until I tapped the headset button again. The T630, however, does something stupid: Once it recognises the "record" command, it disconnects the headset and records through the handset. Useless. Same for the "play" command. I seem to recall that either the T39m or an early firmware version of the T68i did the same thing, but it was definitely fixed. So, why the bug reversion in the T630?
O2 isn't offering Wireless Village, I guess, since they deleted the "My Friends" application (one of the few bits of functionality that sets the T630 apart from the T610, as far as I can tell) in order to brand my T630 with an O2 icon on my desktop. (By the way, O2 blew it as far as publicising "O2 Active", their fancy WAP site. I had a compatible T68i for the past year +, and would have been willing to take advatange of their promotions on O2 Active, but never heard about it until I read the leaflet that came with my T630, and saw that all of the cool offers had expired. Still, it didn't come close to what's on offer from T-Mobile USA, which apparently is no longer metering GPRS usage for their voice plan customers!).
Once I weeded out old contacts on my G4 OSX Powerbook so that there were fewer than the maximum 510 on the T630, bluetooth syncing via iSync seemed to work OK for the most part. But:
I am not big into games (I play on my PC sometimes, but I've never played Nintendo, Sega, Playstation, or even GameBoy if you can believe it!), so I am surprised to find that one of my favourite features of the phone is the inclusion of the classic game Qbert, the only arcade game that I ever finished (way back in the 80s). Too bad there's only one other game on the phone; I downloaded some free games from the internet and installed them, but they only use a quarter of the screen, so they are too tiny to play, in my opinion.
Another plus is that the caller name feature actually works: If someone for whom I have a voice command phones me, then the recording of their name is played, which is especially useful while driving and wearing the headset.
What about the T630 and the internet?
Otherwise, the phone is a pleasure to use. The display is wonderful, the response is fast.
Cellular Services came through and upgraded the firmware of my new T630 from R4C003 to R6C005, but there are still some issues. Most annoying is something that used to work on my T68i, but doesn't on the T630: Recording (and playing) voice memos through a bluetooth headset. I found this to be very useful while driving. If I thought of an idea, or a task I had to do, I could just tap the button on my headset, say "record", and the T68i would then start recording through the headset until I tapped the headset button again. The T630, however, does something stupid: Once it recognises the "record" command, it disconnects the headset and records through the handset. Useless. Same for the "play" command. I seem to recall that either the T39m or an early firmware version of the T68i did the same thing, but it was definitely fixed. So, why the bug reversion in the T630?
O2 isn't offering Wireless Village, I guess, since they deleted the "My Friends" application (one of the few bits of functionality that sets the T630 apart from the T610, as far as I can tell) in order to brand my T630 with an O2 icon on my desktop. (By the way, O2 blew it as far as publicising "O2 Active", their fancy WAP site. I had a compatible T68i for the past year +, and would have been willing to take advatange of their promotions on O2 Active, but never heard about it until I read the leaflet that came with my T630, and saw that all of the cool offers had expired. Still, it didn't come close to what's on offer from T-Mobile USA, which apparently is no longer metering GPRS usage for their voice plan customers!).
Once I weeded out old contacts on my G4 OSX Powerbook so that there were fewer than the maximum 510 on the T630, bluetooth syncing via iSync seemed to work OK for the most part. But:
- I would have preferred flawless, in-order copying of contacts up to the 510 limit, and then halting with a warning message for any contacts beyond that, rather than what iSync and the T630 actually did: mixing up names and fields and not informing me that not all conatcts were copied.
- You have to underestimate the number of contacts to sync; I synced 377 contacts from OSX Address Book, but my phone says that I am using 463!
- A lot of my contacts are companies or other notes that don't have anything in the Last Name or First Name fields. Address Book has a box you can tick on a contact to indicate that the contact is a company, so that it uses the Company Name field for sorting, etc. Too bad the T630 doesn't seem to use this: all my companies end up at the end of my contact list, with ".." as the name. That would be OK, even desirable, if the companies were then sorted by Company Name. But no, they seem to be randomly arranged, making finding a particular company very time consuming. I guess I'll have to go modify all my company contacts, putting the company name into the First Name field or something kludgy like that.
- Since Address Book and the T630 both associate pictures with contacts, it seems natural for syncing of pictures to at least be an option. Apparently it isn't.
I am not big into games (I play on my PC sometimes, but I've never played Nintendo, Sega, Playstation, or even GameBoy if you can believe it!), so I am surprised to find that one of my favourite features of the phone is the inclusion of the classic game Qbert, the only arcade game that I ever finished (way back in the 80s). Too bad there's only one other game on the phone; I downloaded some free games from the internet and installed them, but they only use a quarter of the screen, so they are too tiny to play, in my opinion.
Another plus is that the caller name feature actually works: If someone for whom I have a voice command phones me, then the recording of their name is played, which is especially useful while driving and wearing the headset.
What about the T630 and the internet?
- WAP seems to work fine enough, but I have noticed that I am disconnected if I don't don't do anything for a minute or two. I thought one of the big selling points of GPRS is that you can stay connected, and thus have instant access when you need it, instead of having to dial up each time?
- GSM is another matter. I was annoyed by the fact that the T68i could only connect to my Powerbook at 9600 baud, even though I now that the phone itself is capable of connecting at rates up to 28k. Can bluetooth really be the limiting factor here? As a matter of fact, I can't find any OSX modem scripts for the T630. If there are any, perhaps they solve the problem?
- I decided to see how the T630 does accessing email on its own. I looked at the data accounts on the phone, saw one called "changeme.co.uk", and foolishly followed its advice. I took 10 minutes or so carefully modifying the account with my Freeserve server data. Unfortunately, there is no way to change the name of the account, so I'm stuck with "changeme.co.uk". I would have been better off if they hadn't put that dummy account in there.
- One reason why it took so long to enter my details is because of an annoyance that first showed itself with the T39m. The dummy account has something like "pop.changeme.co.uk" as the incoming server, so you would think that you should put "pop.freeserve.net" in its place. If you do that, as I did, you get a "Server not found error". I recalled that after several hours of frustration and fruitless tech support calls, a Sony Ericsson (then just Ericsson) tech support finally told me that you had to put the actual IP address, in numbers, in those slots. So I put in 195.92.193.154, etc. and sure enough, that did the trick. What a pain.
Otherwise, the phone is a pleasure to use. The display is wonderful, the response is fast.
