Sony Ericsson T18s Cell Phone

I've been using my T18s for over a year now, essentially a replacement phone for my old Nokia which finally gave up the ghost after being dropped one time too often.

What initially attracted me to the Ericsson was the battery life, I'm one of those people who would forget his head if it wasn't screwed on so it's often easy for me to forget to put my phone on charge.

So I was looking for something that could handle a decent stint away from the mains along with a smaller more pocketable size. At the time the Ericsson fitted the bill.

Living with the phone has been for the most part a painless experience. It's not been faultless however and on one occasion I had to return the unit under warranty to repair a defective screen (I didn't drop it this time). However I take onboard that these things happen with any mass produced product.

One of the nice things about this phone is the active flip design of the case. Unlike it's predecessors the T18s answers the call when you bring the lid down, I know it's a small detail but it is a relevant one.

I remember using an older model with a flip front and when it rang I would sometimes forget to press the answer button after flipping the front panel down.

Looking at the design of the T18s you wouldn' t think it could take that much punishment. The aforementioned flip front looks like a snap off accident waiting to happen for starters. However a year on and I am surprised by just how durable the phone is.

So far I haven't managed to break anything, although the case is starting to look a little scuffed in places but nothing major and more importantly everything still works.

In use the Ericsson phones can take a little bit of getting used, the screen size on this model is smaller than comparative Nokia models but I guess you can argue that makes it less likely to get broken.

Navigation through the various menus again is a little trickier than other models of phone. Your menus have sub menus within them and if you are looking to get to a feature in a hurry it helps if you create a mental map in your head of where it is, and before anyone says anything "Yes, I know I should get out more if that's the kind of stuff I'm filling my head with".

That said however there are quite a few features to this phone although since it's introduction a lot more manufacturers have pretty much levelled the playing field.

Amongst other things are vibrating alert and user definable ring tones (Nokia's method of importing them as SMS is better though). If you want your own tune you need to type it on the keypad as a series of numbers which represent notation. That's OK if you've got too much time on your hands and even a geek like me has lost the will to persevere with this annoying little system.

You have the option of a programmable alarm and a calculator as well (I've never used it, in fact up until writing this I had forgotten it was there). Also there is the usual options to look at your call lists and get an idea of how much time you've been yakking when you could have been doing something else instead.

Voice activated dialling on this model works well, you can define up to ten numbers to have a "voice tag", simply hold down one of the side mounted buttons, wait for a quick bleep and say the magic name and you are dialling. Now that might sound like a bit of a process but trust me it's really quick and it really does work.

One problem I have had with the phone in the software department has been caused by lockups or extremely slow response times to key presses. I presume it's some kind of bug in the software, I've often found it occurs most when the SMS message box on the phone is full. Empty that and the phone seems to be OK after a reboot.

The phone has a decent standby time of around three days without heavy use. That's good enough for most people, but then again most people remember to charge their phones once in awhile.

The keypad is adequate although nothing special, the keys can at time feel a little loose and 'rattley' in their housings, but it's something that you can live with .

During a call sound quality is excellent most of the time, even when your reception is poor and you are only showing one or two indicator bars I have found that there is no degradation in quality, the phone even feels comfortable in your hand during long calls (and I hear it emits less harmful radiation than most according to one survey, how true this I don't know so please no flames).

The phone also fits nicely into pockets although it does feel slightly to heavy, there is an optional belt clip included with the phone, I don't bother using this even though it's attached to the phone.