Ericsson T39m 8/10. Date Posted 16/09/2002.

Ericsson's mobile phone division recently merged to form Sony Ericsson. This phone was one of the last to be designed purely by Ericsson. Looking at it, the phone is quite stylish. It has the usual flip down design of Ericsson phones. Not quite as accomplished as the flips you have on Samsung phones, but it nevertheless prevents the phone dialling itself when inside your pocket, which can be very irritating. Also opening the flap initiates calls, whilst closing it hangs up - especially useful when you using the phone with one hand.

This phone is packed with features. It has Bluetooth, infra-red and the now ubiquitous GPRS system, which you can use in conjunction with WAP. WAP is essentially a low bandwidth version of the internet specifically for mobile phones and organisers. Although using GPRS I found the pages came up quite quickly, it tedious reading pages with the T39m small screen. It would be much better to use the T39m with a PocketPC to view WAP pages, via Bluetooth or the infra-red. One nice feature with the T39m is that you can synchronise it with Outlook and update all your contacts and diary on your PC. This can save you a lot of time, especially if you updating more than 2 or 3 contacts. You can even get the T39m to read your e-mail (although this is more trouble than it's worth!). Most users are probably just going to stick to SMS messaging in any case. As a result, it is good to see that Ericsson have included predicative text for SMS. You have all the usual features as well, that you seen on mobile phones today, like voice dialling, games (Tennis) and vibrating alert. One area which has let this phone down is in ease of use. As a regular Nokia user it took me a while, to get used to Ericsson's system of navigating through the phone. I suspect this is mainly because I had never used an Ericsson phone up until this point, but I would hope that in Ericsson's new phones, this matter is addressed.

The number one feature of this phone, apart from it's relatively small size and good reception, has to be its battery. Like other Ericsson's it boasts a state of the art lithium polymer battery. I have been able to use the phone for a week without charging! Even after a year of use, the battery's capacity still does not seem to have diminished at all. Obviously heavy use of the data functions may reduce battery life.

This phone has more than enough features for even the most demanding of users. Couple that with long battery life, the fact it is one of the few phones that work in America as well as the rest of the world (being a tri-band) and you have a decent phone: just make sure you can get past learning to use it first!