1 Good over all phone, with a design problem (charging)
I've found this phone to be quite a good phone for my purposes. I use it heavily with Bluetooth for Internet access via my Palm and Laptop, and with a wireless headset. It's basic, small, holds a charge for a LONG time, and seems to work quite well for me.
After having my phone less then a year, I did find a major design flaw with the phone if you don't want to open it up and start soldering. The connections on the bottom of the phone solder directly to the board in the phone. If you're not careful from the day you get the phone in putting the charger on and off, the solder connections break. I started having to wriggle or tap the phone until it took a charge. It got bad enough I could not get it to charge anymore. Cost to repair (not covered by warranty) was more than a replacement phone. I opened mine up and re-soldered and it's been fine since. But if you're buying this and don't want to fix it, either be very careful about the force you use, or consider another phone. The connector really snaps in and out, so being gentle is easier said than done unless you're VERY conscious of it.
2 Has not been a great phone.
Been using for over two hears. The first week, the volume button on top left disappeared. Phone was replaced by Amzn. Bout six months later it stopped taking a charge. Amzn replaced again. Now, about a month ago the same volume button disappeared yet again, but now it's out of warranty. Volume is okay but can't adjust because button is gone. In addition, phone seems to be creaking now when I hold it and begin to press buttons, as though the frame work is getting lose or something. Also, sometime the phone won't turn on or if on, won't turn off - if I take out the battery and reinstall, it begins again to work, like it resets contact or something. Time to replace this phone. This phone was not cheap and I've hung in there with it, but only used it for one or two calls a day with no great demands on it. Calls have been generally good with very few dropped calls and T-Mobile service and customer service has been pretty good, even when out of area. But, that said, it has been a small delicate phone and overall I'm pretty displeased with it and wish I'd gone with a good flip phone instead. Would not do it again. Now looking for a sturdy phone with good reviews but cingular reviews don't seem very good.
3 ONE of the worst
This phone is not the greatest. It has poor resolution and bad reception. This is an exception to sony's other phones. Try the T226 model or anything higher. The T637 is a fantastic phone with good reception and great qualities. If you want to wait, the S710A is coming out soon and it is an unbelievable phone. It has better features, camera, and wireless connectivity than even the Motorola RAZR. Try it instead. Just dont go with the lower models from sony, as they are not as good as their usual superior electronics. And, hey. You get what you pay for. This phone is negative money from most places. Just go with FREE and get the better phone.
4 Does you well if you give it TLC, but skip it
[...]
All the bad things you read about it are true.
The worst for me are:
Bad reception
Speaker sounded like it was blown out (static voices) after 11.5 months (just before warranty expired, so luckily I got a new one).
Bad things that I've adapted to / don't care about:
Dust gets in the screen
Resolution makes pictures on it worthless
Crappy ring tones (a couple I like)
Slow menus
Phone sometimes "freezes" and must be "reset" (remove battery, replace battery)
Good things:
Synchronization with MS Outlook and other applications!!
Infrared and Blue tooth connection
Internal modem for wireless internet (great, especially if you have free calls at nights :). But the modem is SLOW.
Overall, I've been satisfied, but not without sacrifice. At this point, this phone is around 2 years old and outdated. You can make a better purchase than this now.
5 phony ericsson
this is the worst phone i have ever used. don't get fooled by the cool exterior:
--shockingly bad reception
--half the keys became unresponsive within 6 months
--the menu is extremely slow
6 No redeeming value
This is the worst phone ever made! It does nothing well. The reception is awful and it drops calls frequently, the fit and finish is poor (the screen fills with dust obscuring the low rez screen), it only displays 256 colors making it useless for pictures, bluetooth works intermittently, buttons are too small and press themselves too easily in pockets (even with key lock on), joystick broke with light use...
Shall I go on?
Do yourself a favor, avoid all Sony Ericsson products. If this phone is any indication of their commitment to product quality, they need to get out of the business.
7 Nice Features but Not Durable-Poor Reception
I bought the T68i for its advanced features and bluetooth compatibility. I was able to synchronize the phone with my ACT! database and found the phonebook and calendar functions of the phone quite good.
Bluetooth performance was spotty. I needed to re-establish the bluetooth link with headset quite frequently. Sometimes this worked without a hitch other times it took several tries.
Reception on the phone was spotty in some areas where other ATT Next Generation phones had good reception...don't know why this was.
My biggest complaint about this phone was its durability. Through normal wear and tear it just didn't measure up. The earpiece volume button popped off just a couple of months after I got the phone. This was a real problem since there was no other way to easily adjust earpiece volume.
I think ATT had a lot of problems with these phones since they offered free replacements with another model (unfortunately that model did not have bluetooth or many of the other features).
8 After 14 months of use...
After 14 months of use Ill talk about this phone that I still own (and which Im hoping to get rid of once $370 falls out of the sky so I can get the Motorola V600). The size is great because Im a tiny phone person. The color screen is even fairly nice although it's a bit pixely. I like the whole digital phone thing as a screen saver.
But the cons kill me. Ive had two of these phones. First off that little side volume button didn't break off but it no longer works and that happened on both phones. The first phone it just kinda wiggled up and down. It does what it is supposed to do on this phone but it just refuses to work. It worked for about a week and just stopped. When I first had this phone, I had some huge roaming bills cuz it would just randomly jump into cingular. I still get charged for text message roaming sometimes...don't ask me how. Keeping numbers on the SIM card is a hassle because you can't do categories with this phone for the SIM. It has to be MOM Cell, MOM Home, MOM Work etc. whereas if you store them on the phone you can just put MOM and then enter her work, cell, home, email etc. in the different slots. My first phone threw a hissy fit and had a memory malfunction. One day it just decided that it was going to erase 3/4 of my numbers. Basically my phone booked looked like Alan space space space space Cindy space space space space space space Tammy etc. You had no access to the deleted numbers nor could you recover them and a bonehead AT&T operator told me to do memory reset and i lost ALL of my numbers after that. This phone is also prone to shutting itself off within pockets are purses even if the key lock is on. It has the voice dial but it would help if the voice dial rerecognized my voice. i set it up but hardly use it. The ringtones suck and if you're a person who likes to play games (which I don't) those stink too. This phone is a little old and outdated so i say buy something current and more costly and don't waste your $150.
9 The T68i is a terrible phone
I remember when this phone came out. I had to have it. I thought it was the coolest looking phone I had ever seen. After payeing somewhere around $400.00 to get it, I quickly learned of it's poor qualities. First off, the volume control fell off. Read the other reviews, it is a known flaw that is bound to happen. Secondly, the phone is SLOW! When you turn it on it takes about 3 or 4 minutes before you can use it. Storage for pictures is really low and the image quality is crap. The wireless bluetooth works great but I can get that from other phones. The size is nice. I read here that someone sync it up with thier computer so they can use it as a modem??? WOW they are good I have been trying to do that for the past 3 years. I hear they K700 is comming out and it looks like a good phone to replace the T68i. But then I have to remember when the T68i came out and think to myself, "do I really want another headache?"
10 The worst phone I've ever had
One advise - Don't buy it! This is the 3rd time I had to take advantage of the warranty and it takes forever to receive it from Sony. Problems: The volume button on the side fell, the reception is just awful and it's really slow. This happened with all the replacements I got.
11 Lots of features, if only you can make a call
I have T68i from T-Mobile. The phone has great features. Among the best for me is its bluetooth capability. I can connect to the internet with my laptop or my pocketpc wirelesly using this phone as a modem. Ability to syncronize the contacts in my outlook address book with the phone saved me a lot of time. However, my phone died on me after 15 months. It can not find a network or it can not connect even when it recieves signal. A search in google revealed that many people have the same problem and that the phone is faulty.
12 Sony Crapicsson t68i
I am going to bite the bullet and admit to being a multi-carrier wireless dealer. *ducks from punches* This phone has to be the WORST of the WORST that I have come across. I have hundreds of clients who when this phone first came out, wanted nothing else. Luckily they quickly learned how badly this phone operates and I was able to work something else better for them.
Blue tooth- excellent
Battery Life- can't beat it
features- Good, but getting out dated
Reception- My foot would have better quality reception.
I myself decided to use the phone for a while to really inspect the problems, but after the side volume button fell off, the zero button stopped working, screen after screen would keep freezing and the fact of being a 22 year old male, I began to get gray hair while waiting for the menus to scroll through, I decided to put it in its place. My hammer was more use to me than this phone.
Save yourself the time of even researching this product and give it up. Amazon has some great deals on Samsung phones which are absolutely amazing products! They are even looking like tough competition to me! I started using and now won't give it up!
Anymore questions about phones, I could give some pretty money (and headache) saving tips! NKJazzman@hotmail.com
13 Small but you'll sacrifice
I wanted a really small phone and this seemed like a good one. It fits in your pocket very nicely but I have had more problems than its worth. It continually drops calls when I am lucky enough to get service. It loses coverage when I go under an overpass. Its very slow on internet connection. The one thing its unbeatable on is its battery life. Wow! Its best features are its size and battery life. The menu is aggravating when trying to see your missed calls. If you have missed a call from the caller in the past it goes back and counts how many times you've missed a call from that person......who cares. I want to know when they called and you can't tell unless its their first call.
Overall, if you want size and battery life, this is your phone if you can manage other aggravations of service. Stay away from Att.
14 A Complete Retard
This phone is horrible, horrible, horrible!!
I got mine from t-mobile, but AT&T also sells the same phone. I admit that it has great features, like voice activated dialing, 3-band operation, voice recording, wap, bluetooth etc.
But, using this phone is like running Windows XP on a 386 processor. (They had those processors in early 90's) It has a very long response time. Press a button, sip your coffee, and check if the screen has been updated.. I'm not kidding!!
Worse than that, the it cannot acquire signal very easily. (Probably because of the ceramic antenna) These days, i'm getting "no access" error messages and my calls are constantly being dropped even if the phone can acquire the signal. This happened to me before, and they replaced the phone since it was under warranty, but now I cannot even get a second one. I'll go back to my good ole Nokia using habits.
15 LOADED but rather slow......
PHONE :4 Start
SERVICE: AT&T 0 Stars The worse....
THE GOOD:
When I used the phone in Europe the Singal Strength and Voice Quality were EXCEPTIONAL!
The menu is not worse then Nokia's menu but lack the INSTANT Response of it. I just remember the shortcuts so it works great for me. The features are exceptional for a 2-years-old model. I will gladly get a the NEXT version Ericsson which in addition to current features will adds 65K display, polyphonic sounds and camera, (maybe also 802.11b/g). When I dropped my older T68 summer '03 in a pool, I still got the same phone (T68i version) cause I loved all the gizmos.
THE BAD:
The almost non existant SERVICE is only due to AT&T's poor network. AT&T, unlike T-mobile, does NOT unlock their GSMs when asked(Unlocking is ~$10 service over-the-net or in Chinatowns). Cingular are in for hard times. The phone is great once you get used to the somewhat retarded response... usually takes 1-2 sec for the menu to work after the buttons are pressed. I think the phone run from software and it in not hardwired inside a chip.. ie probably reads flash memory instead of hardwired chip.
I am planning to switch to T-mobile after I get the "Free T226"
with NO PLAN EXTENSION for suffering with ATT & Ericsson for about 2 years. Few Caveats: the T226 is a major DOWN-GRADE in feature: No Bluetooth&IR, no 900/1800MHz GSM, no Voicedailing, no Organizer >>>
(http://www.sonyericssonT226upgrade.com).
Nevertheless T-mobile does not offer GPRS!
16 Disappointing Phone
The size, weight, design, and features were very attractive, but the quality is very low. The sound quality poor no matter how good the reception was. Within 4 months I got a replacement, 3 months after the replacement died. The sound composer was easy to operate. The reception was not as good as other phones with the same service. Screen display is fuzzy, and camera attachment's pictures are pixilated. The charger and hands-free plug-in were hard to insert I broke one car charger trying to plug in the phone.
17 NEXT!!!!!!
I have had to exchange this phone about 4 times and also the sim card and battery another time each. The phones OS is user friendly, but is extremely slow. Reception sucks the big one and calls are frequently dropped. The phone can turn off even when the key guard is on!! Frequently see 'no access' or 'no gprs subscription', which means you cant use the phone. Very disappointed with this phone and I am going to get a new one. AT&T also sucks the big one. They are by far the most expensive carrier in this area, and half the time you cant make PHONE CALLS.
I would not recommend this phone
18 Very Disappointing
Positives,... Loads of features and exceptional battery life.... BUT,... I thought this would be the best phone I ever owned. I've had numerous problems. Occasionally it just freezes up or takes forever to turn on and ready itself for operation (probably OS problems). I've had problems installing and using the synchronization software especially with bluetooth, which was of course one of the reasons I bought the phone in the first place. Now the 0 key is flaking out... very disappointing...
19 Nothing but problems
I made a horrible mistake when i swithched from my Nokia to this phone. I wanted a color screen and this was one of the first available. I never get a full signal with this phone. I receive about 60% of text messages that are sent to me. It hangs up on people all of the time. It does have a nice layout but i would rather have a phone that works! This is the most disappointing phone I've ever had. I just purchased a new phone and thought about selling this one...but it is worthless and I don't want to give someone else this headache.
20 nice phone
I am using the T68i with ATT and it is just amazing little phone. The phone is small and I am loving it. Amazing phone. Good service. (ATT's customer service sucks big time tho). This is the phone!!!!!!!!
PROS:
Small,light weight, Bluetooth, IR.
Cons:
none till now :)
21 Small/bluetooth is good, rest is bad.
Okay, so I like SMALL phones. I don't like carrying around a lot of weight and between all the other electronics I carry for work, a small phone is good. This one is pretty good for that.
Also I LOVE having a wireless bluetooth headset.
Now the problems: I have broken three of these phones so far in the last year. Twice from some magical impact of air as far as I can tell on the LCD display. The "call and get another feature right away" would be nice if that was how it worked, but it took a few weeks each time and they replace it with a refurbished phone that already had problems. The other issue is the little button on the side for up/down menu navigation will just pop off. Lost two of those.
Connection wise, yeah I have problems. I don't know if it is the phone or the service, so I don't lay blame.
I almost never use the phone pad to dial, since I have the voice commands in the headset.
I really wish they had a lightweight hard-case with a flip cover to protect the display and buttons, or integrated such a thing into a similarly sized phone.
I would also like a better resolution display and polyphonic support.
22 Please, please, please DON'T BUY this phone!!!!
I was really excited when I ordered this phone because of it's features and looks. It had the bluetooth and everything. But man, was I wrong. It had the worst reception. 95% of the time, calls were dropped for no reason. I've had several phones and this one's the worst. I've emailed Sony about this product but no response. The worst when I was trying to call 911 emergency because I was involved in an accident, I wanted to throw this phone out and break it. It is the WORST PHONE EVER!!! I wanted to rate this item negative 100 stars.
23 Internal antenna problem
I too own this phone and has of lots of problems staying connected to the network. After sending it back for repairs three times I found out the problem lies with the internal antenna which isn't secured well. Open the phone, tighten the screw of the antenna, and you're back in business. Apart from this network problem, the phone is great. Bluetooth is verrryyy handy and stable (get software from sonyericsson.com). My laptop connects well to the internet through it, and the phone uses very little energy (can go on for hours). Screen is very bright with excellent contrast and can almost be used as a torch at night. SMS and some menu functions are a little bit slow, and yes the phone somethimes freezes (Microsoft wasn't ivolved, or was it?).
24 WORST PHONE I HAVE EVER USED
The color screen the curvy shape and smooth sexy look drew me to pay $50 after rebates,and it HAS BEEN THE WORST DECISION OF MY LIFE,im sorry, even worse was choosing AT&T service(...).What good is a phone that fails to keep you connected,cant make calls even with full reception,drops calls,tries its best to send calls direct to the voice mail without me even knowing people were tryin to reach me,freezes,and after you get tired of messing around with the fone and have played the crappy games and seen the crappy fotos with communicam you'd like to get down 2 serious work and be able to make and recieve calls rite?and after talking to the ATT customer service, after being put on hold for 3 hours,there have been times when i have wanted to throw the fone at the wall or drive my car over it but hey i need to know when ive got voice mail rite !! and may i suggest that u use this phone for character building,trying your patience,controlling your temper...and all that karma and zen stuff when your waiting for ages for your lovable t68i to boot up.
25 The crappiest phone I have ever used
This phone really sucks -- I agree with the first reviewer who says that you are lucky to be able to connect with it. I have t-mobile service on it which is equally crappy. They have replaced my handset three times, (i'm stuck with this model because an upgrade requires another year's commitment to crappy service) and each time, my experience has been no better.
26 My T68i Phone
This phone works really great for me except when i don't have a signal. T-Mobile is really sucks! though they've the best service plan in the nation but not the coverage. i can't even have a signal inside the house :-( Verizon is great but they always overcharged the customer every single billing statement. cingular is pretty good except their customer service.
27 Don't blame the T68i for AT&T's problems....
... I've used this phone with TMobile, and loved it. So I got one with AT&T and was horrified at the quality of coverage. I was told that 'in a year, our coverage should double', but found it to have no greater improvement thusfar. After just returning from three weeks in Europe, as well as ten days prior in Mexico, I remembered why I loved this phone. It connected everywhere, places where my fiancˇs analogue phone wouldn't even get a signal. The call quality was excellent under these other networks, and, especially in Europe, the GPRS features were hugely helpful. It is a pity the major networks can't standardize on one network-type; in the meantime, if you want cutting edge tech, you are likely to be stuck with poor coverage, if you want coverage, choose Verizon.
28 Amazing!
I live in San Francisco, California and I have used this phone with Cingular, T-Mobile, and AT&T. I own the AT&T version and have noticed that it was not the phone but the service provide that had problems. At&T wireless just started their GSM network. Cingular and T-Mobile have had about 10 years of providing service to consumers. AT&T will hopefully advance in the spread of their GSM network. This phone was one of the very first Bluetooth phones availible. It may not have polyphonic ringtones but it makes up with the speed it connects via GPRS to the internet. This is one of the best world phones I have owned yet. Sony Ericsson has made a huge increase of purchases and hopefully will be competing with Nokia soon! If you come across this phone, BUY IT!
29 T68i is bad. ATT service is Worse
This is the worst phone u can buy. Even worse with ATT service. Even when the phone shows me full signal, I cant make or receive calls. ATT service coverage is probably the worst ever. To get to a customer service representative be prepared to wait upto 3 hrs and after that they put u on hold another hour before telling you to try going to their store.
Please do not make the mistake of taking ATT service. Worse would be a combo of Sony Erricson with ATT.
30 Cool features, decent screen, poor reception
The title sums it up. I've found the T68i easy to use. The long battery life is nice, too, and I really like its small size. I was a little disappointed by the low screen resolution for pictures, but the biggest problem has been this phone's poor reception. It works in my house, but not a quarter-mile down the road. I get okay reception in some spots, but none just a mile or two away. It's pretty sad. I'm about to ditch my T68i and buy a Nokia.
31 Best Cellphone ever - with T-Mobile
I purchased the T-Mobile version of this phone (T68i) here on Amazon about a year ago and from right out of the box it worked to pefection. From syncing to the PC to using as a digital modem to connect the PC to lan at work there were never any problems. Voice reception was almost always crystal clear and the only problem I ever had was when T-Mobile did an infrastructure upgrade to their routers and I was without data for a few days. T-Mobile credited me back for the time. Voice never went down. Bluetooth worked with every card I had and with various devices. Infrared synced every time.
32 THIS IS THE ONE!
This is the most convenient and most functional international mobile I have ever used! I bought mine in New Delhi, India and when I got to Arizona I migrated my GSM card to ATT - since then I have used the phone in Singapore, China, Indonesia, Japan, Dubai, the UK - it works EVERYWHERE! The color screen is bright and clear, SMS functionalisty is great, the battery life is fantastic after 18 months on the original battery, bluetooth works great - it's the best mobile device I have ever had! Highly recommended.
33 craptastic
I'm not sure if it's my Cingular service or not; because cingular doesn't get signal anywhere. Anyways, I try to make a call and it rejects me. The features are great, when they work. My cell phone attachment for the camera will click in and make the phone inoperable, and the camera attachment sometimes doesn't even recognize the phone and doesn't work. Overall I would never recommend this phone to anyone, nor would I recommend cingular. I haven't had much of a chance to test out the bluetooth stuff but I'm not gonna waste my money. Neither should you, don't buy the phone... save yourself the trouble.
34 T68 almost as bad as ATT.
This phone has serious problems. When it works, the operating system is clumsy and slow. Just plain bad engineering. Biggest problem is that it drops calls, sounds bad, or can't get on to network to begin with. IT SUCKS!! avoid this and ATT. ATT customer service is as bad as SPRINT, which was horrible. ATT GSM service is very bad- not GSMs fault - its great in the rest of the world. ATT just doesn't have the money to spend to get the service up to standards. I've talked to other T68 users that have similar problems - This phone and increasingly ATT are universally despised.
AVOID AVOID AVOID - this combo (T68/ATT) is not worth it even if it PAYS you money!!
35 piece of junk!
Don't buy this phone! In addition to having horrible reception, dropping calls, freezing frequently and having a horrible interface for simple tasks, it's extremely slow to use. I had to have this phone replaced just a few months after I got it because it wouldn't make calls anymore. Now, just six months after having it replaced, it's broken again!
36 I smashed this phone.
I've been dropping calls since I bought my phone in August, 2002. I was drawn by the fact that I could sync up my contacts with my computer using the bluetooth feature. I soon found out that I could maintain a normal phone conversation longer than 2 minutes only about one third of the time -- my valuable time. My girlfriend has the exact same phone plan as me and I'd constantly have to use her phone to make calls when mine dropped. It didn't take me very long to figure out why I was able to purchase the phone for only $50 after rebates. Worst rip-off ever!
37 good/bad
Good:
- is color screen
- supports GPRS
- has infared and bluetooth
- comes with 8 games
- has themes
- can hold 250 numbers
- has a camera
Bad:
- screen is hard to see in sunlight
- camera quality is poor until put on a computer
- camera has to be bought seperatley
- buttons are kind of small
38 Right direction but needs to be tweeked
I purchased this phone looking to take advantage of bluetooth technology, and maybe get rid of my palm, But...
this is not to be as GSM service is not complete where I live rurally so calls are dropped or I can't get service.
Using this phone with my Clie NZ90 has also been a challange even with the phone being in bluetooth mode, if it isn't paired you'll be wondering what the hype is all about.
If you're looking for a PDA and have cell phone service you might look at some of the newer PDA/phone setups ie: Garmin, Treo 600 etc.
39 Small and "cute" but inefficient and annoying
The main reason I bught this phone was for its size and its extremely long battery power. In these respects it did not fail. However, I've found myself wishing several times that I could throw it against the wall in a burst of fury. First it is slow to respond. You hit the send button, and you may have to do this 2-4 times because for some reason it does not "connect" despite having good reception, and you have to wait about 5 seconds before it connects. Its even slow when navigating through the menu.
Second, and I'll explain this with an example, let's say you've just called a friend's house, and he's not there. Now the natural thing to do is call his cell-phone. To do this, you have to click 5 buttons! Following each button press, there is about half-a-second lag, because the phone is so slow.
Third, The ring tones are cheesy and not polyphonic, which is what you would expect with such a "futuristic phone". I mean, it has bluetooth connectivity for heaven's sake.
Other than that, the phone is fine!
40 DO NOT BUY THIS PHONE
ALL AROUND BAD PHONE
ESPECIALLY THE RECEPTION
HOW DID THIS THING EVER GO INTO PRODUCTION?????
41 AT&T GSM Service or Phone
I have this phone but I think its the GSM technology more so than the phone. I know someone else who has a GSM phone with the card in it and they have a different carrier and the exact same problems with the phone.
42 The brick phone got better recption
This is probably the worst phone i have ever owned, and i am ashamed that spent money on it. It is constantly dropping calls, that is when it gets service. I agree with the other review which is. DONT BUY THIS PHONE
43 Horrible Phone
The bells and whistles of this phone are nice -- when it works. There are two problems with this phone, and they're big ones. First, the reception on this phone is terrible, it drops calls constantly and that's when you're fortunate enought to have enough reception to recieve or make a phonecall. Other GSM phones will have full coverage, but the T68i won't even have any service. It's quite annoying when you can't make a call at a stoplight and you look around and see that everyone else can. Secondly, the phone constantly freezes up. It has these steps that it takes to make a call after you hit send and durring these steps the phone will simply stop and go back to its main screen. Be prepared to hit send two, three, or sometimes four times. Don't get this phone; and better yet, stay away from AT&T, because with their service it's quite difficult to reach out and touch somebody.
