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 Ò610.
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 ÏÅÐÅÕÎÄÍÀß 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.
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