Sony Ericsson T237 / T290a
Average Ratings
Its ok as a basic phone
I just got this phone two days ago, in the mail for free, so I was like I would try it.If you are looking for more in a phone, stay away from this one. Especially if you have big hands. I am returning this phone, and getting me the motorola v600, if the buttons were bigger, and had 65k display. I would keep it, but I am tired of hitting two keys at the same time. I am kind of used to having more feature packed phones. So the T237 would not do with me. But if you are looking for a basic phone. Then the T237 is for you, but if you are looking for a more than a basic phone, I would go with the motorola v600.
Pros-
Call Quality
Battery Life
Good Speakerphone
Loud Ringtones
Cons-
Only 4000 colors
Tiny buttons
Special handset plug, not 2.5mm plug
Also the menus, have too many submenus.(takes to long just to do something simple, like text someone).
Very nice phone
I've had this phone for a few days and so far haven't had any problems with it. It's on the Cingular Network in the Annapolis Area and It's only gotten as low as three bars. I got this phone pretty cheap at Walmart as a prepaid phone and it came with ten dollars worth of minutes. It was an easy process to set up. The phone is very tiny and does take 2 seconds after pushing a button to come out of standby mode, I clocked it.
It has great features and cool ring tones.
Pros:
Small and compact
Moderately loud ringer
Excellent Mic and voice activation.
Strong vibration when in Vib mode.
Large storage system
For being small, it's very resilient.
Cons:
Mushy keypad
Keys are very small
Take two seconds to come out of standby
Screen gets dirty quickly
Charger is a little difficult to unplug from phone.
really durable
Hey, I also had this phone as well, I've owned quite a lot. This phone was really good. It got tossed, into water, dropped slammed on walls, and everything.
I am unsure if it was the t237 because it had a camera I think it was t327. Anyway I really dropped this phone, one night, at a party the phone got dunked and ruined, AT LEAST IT WAS WHAT I THOUGHT. AND IT WASN'T.
It was pretty undentable and it got scratched up, what ended me to stop using it is was the trackball middle broke off completely and it was strenuous to go into different applications, camera wasn't that great, it kind of stunk, but good for 2003.
As far as i remember it was a great phone, and the ringtones were great. I liked the call quality, everyone thought this phone was cool back then, but now all I see it as is a brick, but yet cool back then, as we have iphones now etc. Great phone though if you want a basic phone
Great phone for people who take care of it!
If your a person who doesn't TOTALLY ABUSE their cell phone, then this is for you. A lot of people complain about:
-SIM card falling out
-No camera built-in (just get a darn digi cam or film cam wouldya!!!)
-crappy games
-graphics=not for game nerds or techies
-sometimes laggy like a guy playing Halo 1 multiplayer on full graphics mode with an old computer and a 56.6 KBPS modem...
-toooo many menues.....
But overall, people were satified.
I've recently bought the Kyocera Jet, and since it has been released pretty early ago, it has some glitches. But this phone as been with me for 3.9 years, and in 15 more days, 4 years. It had no problems. sure, it lags like crap, but I can live with that. Games? For children ages 1-5 only. Graphics,blehhhh! Keypad? have you ever tried dialing a your friend and ending up with like....19 numbers instead of the usual 10 numbers? yep....get my point? But everything else was A-ok, shipshape, well not really.
PROS: (if you take care of it)
-Lasts a looooooong time
-INSANE INSAAAAANE battery life.
-SIM card stores many many many many contacts
-Great speaker
-Great recorder
-Large variety of ringtones and wallpapers.
-Very durable for a plastic phone that costs 10 bucks or free... (dropped it 9 times... all on solid concrete, and another 2 times on carpet. No internal damage at all...except my outer plasitc case is mighty beat-up)
-Mighty powerful vibrations on vib mode (try putting it on a glass table and tell someone to call you on vib mode-youll see what i mean)
-Much more...i cant fit all of them into the 527 more characters remaining!
CONS: IF you take care of it
-INSANELY SMALL KEYPAD i guess the battery life covers this up.
-INSANELY CRAPPY graphics
-INSANELY NOT-SO-GOOD games
-A little slow
-Uhh....preloaded wallpapers are CRAP
-Same goes for some ringtones
PROS : if u abuse it
NOTHING well, not really,
CONS: if u abust it
EVERYTHING but i only have 2 characters left.
sides its true
eh...worked for a bit
i got this phone for x-mas 2 years ago. I'm getting the MotoKRZR fer x-mas this year. my t237 worked OK for about 1.5 years. it never really got good reception, but it was always OK. the games were good, no camera built in but u can buy a camera attachment, but the camera quality was crappy, altho the zoom on the camera was excellent. vibrating alert was great. altho the buttons are quite small, they are suprizinglyeasy to use, and hard to push the wrong button. since the phone is amazingly small, it was hard to get the speaker perfectly on your ear to hear it correctly. (also, you will hear many women say "oh, cute phone! its sooo small!....") for getting data to and from a PC, you will need to use either a usb cable or a serial cable. i purchased a serial one, and it DID NOT WORK. all the tech support in the world DID NOT HELP, it wouldn't work at all. only thing it did was recognize that it was plugged into the computer. i had to buy a Sony Ericsson J220a as a temp phone until x-mas until i get my krzr, because my t237 crapped out on me. it started to sound horrible, got really gunked up, horribly scratched, the alarm for some reason started to malfunction completely, the Sim card error where it says "simcard dislodged, please turn off phone..." blah blah blah happened for no apparent reason whether i dropped the phone or not (sometimes just PICKING UP the phone caused this error), the battery life after 1.5 years was maybe 30 minutes to an hour max, etc, etc, etc. sooo many problems, but only after a while. sooo, if you are looking for a short term phone, to be ONLY used as a phone, with basic gaming/internet capability, this will work OK. oh, and you have to be able to deal with hearing "CUTE PHONE! ITS SO TINY!"
Nice little phone
I used this phone for a while on Cingular after two other phones failed.
This one was pretty nice for a basic phone. I could hear just fine on it, and reception was better than the Motorola or LG that I had previously used. It isn't going to awe you with features, but it's going to do the job.
However, I had to quit using it as the car charger for it (the only charger I have) quit charging. There seemed to be an issue with it making contact at the charge port - I had always had problems with it not charging sometimes if I didn't make sure it was plugged in solidly. Finally it just quit charging at all, and that forced me to quit using this phone.
PROS
Small format. Not thin, but still easy to hold in the hand.
Good Reception
CONS
Very small keys may be a problem for some.
Charge port may have problems for you too.
Good for basic functions
This was (and still is) my first cell phone purchase. I was satisfied with one that has the basic functions like phone, messaging and WAP.
It's nice that this phone also has a function to check regular e-mail, though I haven't activated this function yet because I'm not sure if I would get spam.
The menu interface is completely confusing. I don't know what the designers at SE were thinking when they added the same functions in 2 different menu sub-folders. For example, you have a menu folder where you can see all your wallpapers and ringtones, you can also set it to use them. The exact same function can be found in the options menu, next to be able to set the volume, there's the exact same sub-menu for the wallpapers and ringtones. Why did you do that, SE?
The phone also sometimes lags/hangs for a while when you are returning from a menu to the parent one.
There is no Java support, instead you have the Mophun technology to make sure you will only be able to download kiddie games, but no productive tools.
The biggest drawback are the tiny buttons, but then this is a trend for Sony Ericsson to fill their cell phones with the latest gadgets and forget about usability.
Despite all the negative things, I'm still content because the basic functions work very good.
But I still give it a "1".
Good beginer's phone
It is a good phone for both beginners and experts. With the optional USB cable (see ebay) you can go into there and mess with it. Or, just use it to call...whatever...
PROS:
-Cheap (Can get it on Gophone with no contract!)
-Loud Ringtones
-Snooze for alarm
-Calandar works well
-Good reception via Cingular
-Small
-Cool 3D mophun Java games
CONS:
-Little too cheap (The screen crackes on mine...able to replace it tho with a T6 Screwdriver)
-Sim chip likes coming dislodged!
-A bit too small
-Mophun games only, no java; leaves you with a small selection of games. Nor can you make your own!
Overall, I would recommend this phone for beginners mainly...tho I would reccomend that you also get a Communicam Camera add on as well to get the best experience!
cool phone!
I own this phone it is an o.k. phone. The only problems I have is that their is no standard camera. I can live without bluetooth because I'm only 12, but I really know my cellphones. The speakerphone function is a little low ,but otherwise it is good to talk in a quiet room. The battery life is great it will last for 5 days on one single charge. I have not purchased the camera attachment yet ,but from what I've read it sucks the life from the battery.
PROs:
lightweight
vivid colur screen
small
speaker is pretty decent
CONs:
no camera
by the way this is the T290a and with the cingular prepaid service. the service is great and I can get a signal just about anywhere.
Nice phone ;]
I've had the T290a for about a week now and overall, it's very nice. It has better reception than my old phone (Motorola V600). The thing I just love about this phone is how it's designed. It's so small, I can just slip it into my pocket.
PROS
- Small, light-weight.
- Good reception.
- Never dropped a call so far.
CONS
- Color display could be better.
- The buttons are really tiny, it makes it hard to text message.
- Slow sometimes.
