Compatible with Cingular cell phone service, the Sony-Ericsson T226 features a 512 color LCD screen (101 x 80 pixels) for the bright display of caller info, pictures, games, and more. It provides dual-band 850/1900 MHz GSM/GPRS service for excellent range and clarity.
The T226's mobile Internet browser lets you check sports scores, local weather and more using high speed GPRS data services. You only pay for data sent--not total airtime, so costs can stay low. For gaming, the T226's five-way "rocker" joystick gives the controls a real gaming feel. The phone comes with a variety of games, and promises more to download when you're done with those. The phone's audio abilities include a second speaker to boost its polyphonic ring tones that use up to 32 simultaneous notes. And you also get polyphonic sound with the games. You can even record your own voice and use it as a ring signal.
Other key calling features include: voice memo picture phonebook, contacts, WAP 2.0 support, alarm clock, backlight display, calculator calendar, call list, clock, e-mail, EMS (enhanced messaging), high speed data transfer, MMS (Multimedia Messaging), MMS templates, melody composer, mobile chat, phone book, picture gallery, SMS (text messaging), sound recorder, stopwatch, style-up covers, themes display, timer, and a viewfinder display.
For fun, you can use the attachable (but not included) Communicam MCA-25 to take pictures and load them into your phone, or send them via advanced text messaging email to your friends. Sony Ericsson also provides free downloadable software for you to edit your pictures and the Sony Ericsson MMS Home Studio for designing multimedia messages, which can contain things like a photo and a spoken greeting. You can also take pictures of your friends and attach it to their contact info in the T226's phone book so you can see who's calling. When that person calls, his or her picture is displayed on the screen. Or, save their shining faces in your phone as wallpaper.
1 Awful phone
I have another year and a half with this phone unless I break down and spend too much on another one... I've found the battery life to be pretty good, but that's about the only feature I like. The screen is hard to read (dark, even on the brightest setting), the sound quality is terrible--sounds like you're traveling through water and at a higher volumes, it's really harsh-sounding. The buttons are hard to use without looking at them and the voice activation feature only recognizes your numbers occasionally. It also doesn't repeat back your command, so you don't know without looking at the screen if it's connecting to the correct number--not too handy if you're driving. The car charger was $27 which I found ridiculously high... I HATE this phone. I wish there was an option for NO stars.
2 Umm....
I've had this Ericsson for a while now. I would say 10 months perhaps.... I have dropped it SOOO many times, I can't count anymore. The phone is crap after about 2 months. I couldn't afford a new phone, so I was stuck with this one. The buttons are very hard to handle. NOTE: If you like to text message, this phone isn't for you. My phone has nail marks on the buttons now from me trying to text message. The menu button it RETARDED!! There's only one way to get to the menu and it's through this little tiny blue button that's smaller than a grain of rice nearly!! The battery goes out in like a day if you talk on it for more than 2 hours. The battery will also occasionally like fiz and jig around a lot to where you can't even turn off the phone! You have to take out your jigging battery! The voice recorder only lets you record for a minute, which isn't a complaint, but just a statement.
Also, this is very important, if you don't hold the button down for 20 seconds to turn on your phone, it only shows you how much battery you have, then shuts off!! SUCH FAULTY DESIGN!!
In the long run, I wouldn't reccomend this phone to ANYBODY!! I finally have saved enough money to buy an unlocked LG L1400 Camera Phone. I guarrantee that the LG works just fine. My friends has had it for over a year, and it works beautifully!
3 Kinda crummy
I've had this phone for 7 months, and for all seven months have been pretty diappointed. I live in an area that gets fine reception on every other phone I've had. This phone, however cuts out just about every 3rd word from the person on the other end. I have to just figure out what I think they probably said for the conversation to flow and am constantly saying "what, what?". It has gotten to where I just don't even use it unless I have to. I use a land line when I can - very inconvenient. It seems rather sensitive too - I dropped it once from about 2 feet up and it wouldn't work for 3 days, which was when I took it to Cingular to fix. They were quite helpful. I realize you shouldn't drop a cell phone, but I've dropped most cell phones I've had numerous times, and none of them ever missed a beat.
I would not recommend this phone to any of my friends or family. I was thrilled when cingular sent me a letter the other day saying I qualified for a new phone. I'm sticking with Nokia or Motorola from now on!
4 Worst phone I have ever seen
This is just sad. First of all cingular is lousy and the phone frezzes all the time. I'am quiting cingular. Go to Virgin Mobile.
5 DISCUSTING
HORRIBLE SCREEN AND ATTACHABLE CAMERA, NO GREAT FEATURES AND ITS NOT INTUITIVE, THE ONE GOOD THING IS THAT ITS WITH CINGULAR AND THEIR GREAT COVERAGE
6 Unreliable phone
I have had many problems with this phone and with Cingular service. Sometimes, when my friends call, they do not get my voice mail, they do not get ringing- they get dead air (or sometimes one of those evil prerecorded messages like Message GL 23 blah).
As for the phone itself, it developed this problem of the sound going out. The person I was talking to could hear me, but I had complete silence from them. Then if I tapped the phone or made a noise, the sound would come back (so obviously, this was not just me having the volume down too low). The reception is also terrible in my area of Central Florida with this phone.
I got a different phone (Nokia 3595) and it has worked a lot better so far. Much better reception in my area, none of those sound problems.
Overall, I was very disappointed with this Ericsson phone. I had the T60d before and it always worked really well, but the T226 just is not very good.
7 Good phone bad service
I've had this phone for a year and for the first few months it worked perfectly fine. Then in May my text messeges started delaying by a few hours. A friend would send one at 6:30 pm and I'd get it at 2:30 at the morning! I told cingular about the problem and they said it would be back to normal within a couple weeks. Five months went by and it just got worse. Soon I wasn't able to even send anything. But luckily it works now but I'm not sure how long it will. Overall its a good phone. Its small and easily fits in my pocket or backpack. Its simple to use too. I like the bright color screen, and the ringtones are okay but I wish there was a better selection. You can also record stuff to use as a ringtone or make a personal memo. Like I said: Good phone, bad service.
8 Cingular is deceptive!
My review is on Cingular. I bought a phone w/service and was told I could return for full refund and only charged for any air time used. THEY LIE. THE PHONE DID NOT WORK IN MY AREA AND I CANCELLED THE NEXT DAY. THEY ARE CHARGING ME FOR ACTIVATION even though it never worked in my area. If you are uncertain you will keep the phone and service, DON'T BUY from Cingular. Amazon will also do nothing to reimburse.
9 T226 and Cingular a bum deal for me
I agree with Grant, but this happened to my husband in Texas. Cingular sold him the T226 with his plan, but the phone has never worked properly. They gave him a second phone but it didn't work either, and the tech said that those phones were phased out for that reason (?). But Cingular isn't interested in helping him upgrade without having to buy a new phone for $150! Every call he has made has been diverted to billing, or to someone's voice mail, so it's become obvious that they know this is a problem but don't care about helping--they are just waiting for everyone to quit trying to get help and buy another, better, $$ phone. We've been happy with them but after this are going to go to Sprint or some other service. I guess he will just keep getting a new phone every week from them--maybe they will get so sick of seeing him someone will take pity and slip him a decent phone. What a disappointment.
10 its ok
1. long lasting battery (you don't have to recharge it as frequentyly as some of the flip phones)
2. The screen color is not as great as what I was looking at online
3. Its kind of smaller than I thought it was
4. Nice ringtones
5. I would perfer Verizon, but Cingular has rollover minutes, and if Verizon had rollover, I would definitly get Verizon over Cingular. But Cingular is still an okay, phone company.
11 BEWARE OF BUYING THIS PHONE FROM AMAZON WITH CINGULAR.
BEWARE OF BUYING THIS PHONE FROM AMAZON WITH CINGULAR.
I tried buying this phone from amazon.com with amazon.com as the seller. I finished the checkout process and then in 5 mins, I got an email from amazon.com saying, "Your order has been cancelled because cingular needed some additional information, which we cannot provide." A ridiculous reason, to put it mildly. Couldn't they have asked me for that information? I later tried for a customer service phone #, but couldn't find one. All I found was an email address and I emailed them and got a reply (after 2 days) saying that they cannot do anything!!!
Later I bought another Cingular phone at Letstalk.com and during the checkout process, they asked me a lot of questions ("additional information" according to Amazon.com) and I got the phone without any hassles. I even ported my old phone number.
Such a ridiculous service could be expected of Amazon.com only. I don't understand why they sell cellphones when they don't know how to do it!!!
If anyone wants to contact me, send me an email at rphanikanth@yahoo.com
12 Great looking, not the features
**December 27 2003**
Once I had laid eyes on this phone, I was set to buy it. I admit it is sort of a woman's phone because of it's small size and color, but I am going to change the face plate. But I love small phones, especially the flip phones. I purchased this one from Cingular for $130 because I lost my other phone and I had already signed a new contract. The minute I took this phone home,I was quite disappointed by it's features. For one the phonebook is ridiculously horrible. The only things I can store is a person's name and only 1 phone number for them. With my old phone, the Motorola V60i, I was able to store their name, cell, house, work, and main number in addition to their email. So you can imagine how disappointed I was with my new phonebook. I am also saddened by the fact that I can't download ringtones onto my phone, instead I must compose them onto my phone which takes time. But this is a great sounding phone and the color screen is great! I can admit that the buttons are extremely small although it hardly bothers me except if I start playing a game on it. The phone's other features are quite great though, the MMS messaging, the email, chat and text messaging. Overall, I would give this phone a 6.5 out of 10
**Tuesday August 10th 2004 UPDATE REVIEW**
By now I've mastered the inner functions to this phone and must say that it has a handful of options not immediately open to the eye. One must get to know this phone quit well in order to actually use it to the fullest extent. Although now I would rate this phone at about an 8/10, I still would prefer a different phone. A disappointment here is the lack of speakerphone, and a larger variety of games and modern song ringtones. I must say nonetheless that the size is great and compact and is a modestly good phone for those not willing to spend the big dollars on full scale camera phones.
13 2nd worst phone I ever had
Used with Cingular in Tennessee. I am supposedly in a mid to high level Cingular area, but my phone is almost unusable at home. I don't remember the phone being so bad when I first got it. Cingular doesn't seem to want to do anything for us on this phone, and we bought 2 of them. I paid for a Nokia 3595 replacement and it did super in the same location! I will probably be getting a second Nokia 3595 and then when my contract is up with Cingular I will probably switch to T-Mobile since they wouldn't help me with any costs of buying a new phone. Buyer beware of both the T226 and Cingular. In my opinion, the T226 is worse than Cingular, though. I was happy with Cingular until they wouldn't help me. They did offer to replace my T226 with another T226 but after having 2 that wouldn't work properly I didn't want to waste my time with another. They SHOULD understand that, but the losers don't care.
14 No Problems After a Year
I've read lots of bad reviews of this phone used with the AT&T Network but I've had no problems using it with Cingular. The phone does indeed appear cheaply made (the look of the plastic they used is unfortunate) but apparently looks can be deceiving as it's taken all kinds of abuse over the last year and I've had no problems. The color display is so-so but I've enjoyed using the free software from the Sony Ericcson website to turn my photos into wallpaper. The ringtones are nice and can be uniquely assigned to contacts in your phonebook. Most importantly though, reception is excellent everywhere I use the phone and standby time is absolutely amazing (greater than 2 weeks.) The phone was free with my plan and I have no major complaints.
15 Ericsson T226 poor sound and reception
I previously had a samsung, while living in the same location which had far better sound and reception than does the ericsson.
16 Great phone and you can UNLOCK
Great little phone and dont forget to unlock it if you want to use other carriers SIM cards. Check it out (unlockcellular.com)
17 good, compact phone
I've had my T226 phone for a couple weeks so far and I have had nothing to complain about. Reception in Fresno and LA has been very good. The phone is very light and compact, it easily fits in my pants pocket. Checking the weather forecast and sports scores is quite easy, an unexpected bonus. The only downside that I have observed is that in bright sunlight the color screen can be difficult to read.
This phone is being used with Cingular Wireless.
