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Question to European users: About Sony Ericsson phone.

Joeytpg

Joeytpg

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 1, 2004
467
0
Vienna, Austria
guys, i'll be buying a Sony Ericsson phone, probably a T616 or a T610, i still don't know.....i've heard they synch great with macs.

My question is this. I'll be moving to Spain in about a month or so, and i want to buy this phone, but down in europe they're expensive, while i can buy it in the U.S. cheaper. But someone told me i needed to verify that it had the correct signal, or connection, or whatever........is this true?.....for what i know i only need to buy a 110 - 220 power AC converter to plug the charger, but other than that, i can buy it and go to a spain mobile company and hook it up right?......

someone told me that the phone needed to be a GSP or GPS signal of whatever..... (i don't really remember) but anyways......what do you guys think of this?
 
I would buy it over there.

Often you cannot use the same phone when you switch providers.

Also, the configuration should probably be different over there.

Save yourself headaches and give up a few extra bucks to get the phone there. Plus, I don't know about Spain, but generally in Europe I believe that phones are no more expensive than here (except that the dollar is very weak now against the Euro).

Good luck. :)
 
dav said:
If it is GSM just get it unlocked and pop your SIM in


Look around http://www.howardforums.com
Click to expand...

Yeah, both are GSM, and would have to be unlocked, since you're probably not planning on buying it with a contract, it should be available unlocked and ready for your sim card.

I'm pretty sure you would need the t610, the t616 won't work in europe, that's the major distinction between the model numbers. How big is the price difference? I'd bet the (unlocked) t610 will work just fine, but it may not be worth the effort.

Oh, my t610 syncs wonderfully, great phone in my opinion.
 
Thanks for the input guys, i really apretiate it.

I guess i'll be buying it over there.

So is the 610 a good choice?.....i just want a good phone......nuthing fancy.
 
Get it from T-Mobile. They'll unlock it for you if you say you're going to be traveling (which you are), and if it's available, you could use their service in Spain if you want (which won't be required because the phone's unlocked :D)
 
Counterfit said:
Get it from T-Mobile. They'll unlock it for you if you say you're going to be traveling (which you are), and if it's available, you could use their service in Spain if you want (which won't be required because the phone's unlocked :D)
Click to expand...

Hi,

As well as being network locked, phones are often country locked as well. So a T-Mobile US phone may not accept a T-Mobile spanish SIM.

Operators are normally OK about unlocking SIMs if you are moving abroad but it may cost you money as you are getting a subsidized phone and they want there money back.

Going back to network issues. Just because a phone is GSM doesn't mean it will work in Europe. There are four GSM bands GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800 & GSM 1900. Of these only 900 & 1800 are used in Europe. The T610 will work here and in the States. The T616 is a variant not available in europe. I suspect that it supports both 850 & 1900 so it may not support both 900 & 1800.

Your safest option is purchase over hear, especially as you may get a good network subsidy and you can hunt around for a good deal.

I don't know about spain but in the UK there are plenty of better deals than the headline deals that are available.

Regards
 
My Cingular T616 accepts Swisscom SIMs, but the Swisscom phones don't accept my Cingular SIM.

As to combatwombat comment on the T616 not working in Europe that is a buntch of crap. I bought my T616 specifically so i could travel to Europe with it.
 
The Sony Ericsson phones are awful, the phones are extremely slow and laggy and are just not a pleasure to use. Once you get into Spain there are plenty of better deals with far better phones out there. Don't just buy a phone because it sync's perfectly with your mac, I bought a T610 and got so angry with it gave it to a recycling bin so 3rd world countries can use the GSM chip.

I bought a Samsung E800 phone which was free on vodafone contract, It doesn't sync with my mac, it doesn't have bluetooth but i am extremely happy with it as all my contacts are syncd to my iPaq from my mac anyway.
 
i don't really want a fancy, camara, mp3 player, video reproducer-photoshop-garageband phone. i just want a phone that sounds good, but the MAIN purpose of this is the synch and bluetooth option.

Why?.....well simply because, i want to be able to edit my address book in the pbook and take notes and do whaterver i want and just passing it to my mobile phone, plus i'll be walking a lot and taking trains and buses, in spain so there a chance my phone might get lost of robbed, and it's synch and bluetooth i can pretty much have a backup of the address book and other cool stuff in my mac.

so, any other bluetooth phone out there besides de sonyericsson, maybe a little cheaper? that synchs good with macs?
 
T610 is being phased out

Now, I don't really know about the situation in southern Europe, but here in Finland, the T610 is not on sale any more. I bought my T610 a couple of weeks ago used. It syncs quite nicely with OSX. BluePhoneMenu is a nifty call monitoring package, but the problem is the T610's battery usage -- when connected to the Mac about 10 hours a day, the phone will suck its battery dry in about two days. Without, you'd expect to recharge about once a week.
The model to go for (if you don't mind the battery problem) is T630, which is pretty much the same phone but with a better display. Yeah, T610's display is a bit dark in sunlight. Around here the T630's asking price is about 230e as telcos aren't allowed to subsidize phones in Finland. The K700 is the T630's big brother, but seems to be quite expensive currently.
 
I have to disagree with Gary. My past few personal phones have been Sony Ericssons and I really like them. My work insist on using Nokias so it's not like I've not been exposed to others.

I like the SE interfaces, I like their predictive text options, I like their menu options for saving/using numbers/contacts. I've not found them particularly laggy either. The Bluetooth is excellent and they synch with the Mac well, even when they're not officially supported yet.
I've never had any problems and they don't seem particularly buggy to me - although I've heard that some 'bugs' can be do to with an operator putting on their own version of the firmware which disables some features and often means they are using an early firmware version that hasn't been optimised yet - Orange and Vodafone in the UK seem to like doing this to standardise the phones they offer.

And yes T610 is being phased out and replaced with the k500 and k700. 500 is a little more basic than the 700 IIRC. The k700 incidentally can act as a BT remote control for your Mac
 
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