Review Of Sony Ericsson Equinox TM717

A stylish black phone by Sony Ericsson that disappoints you in the features.

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Good display, good photo quality and nice multimedia.

Thumbs Down:

Sony Ericsson still has a single port for charger and headset, no microUSB, no 3.5 mm head phone jack, bad keypad, disappointing external display.

Inside the Trunk:

Technology: GSM
Band: GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Caller ID: Yes
Phone design: Clamshell
Other features: GPS, FM, Bluetooth, Music player, camera.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Sony Ericsson Equinox has a carbon black body; it is a clamshell designed phone. Features like vibrating alert, polyphonic ringer, call timer, call conference, caller ID and speaker phone are all included. Supports Bluetooth, WAP 2.0, Edge, GPRS and gesture control for silencing phone calls and alarm. 2.5 inch display gives you 240X320 resolution and has 18-bit 262000 colors. Display on the lid has a 128X36 resolution. Supported audio formats are AAC and MP3, 100 MB internal memory expandable to 16 GB, no memory card bundled. The phone is powered by lithium ion battery.

You can download content like themes, games, ring tones, wallpapers, audio-video files, operator logos, screen savers. The 3.2 megapixel camera on the surface of the lid doesn’t have flash.

Razzle Dazzle:

Sony Ericsson Equinox is a sleek phone and you will surely fall in love with it at first sight. The lid is of the phone is shiny and glossy, it shows you the time that seems to come out of nowhere. However, glossy outside will attract a lot of finger prints . On the top of the lid is the 3.2 MP camera and inside the phone is a keyboard that is very different from the other lot.

Inside Dope:

Sony Ericcson is one of the best players in mobile phones market. They have been around for awhile and now we can rely on them to make quality products.

Sony Ericsson Equinox TM717 landed in our test centers; it is a shiny black clamshell model phone. Being flap, it has two displays, one of them being on the lid of the phone.
We weren’t quite happy with the external display of the phone because it doesn’t give photo caller ID. The external display gives you time(we wanted date also), battery, signal strength and caller ID. We think Sony Ericsson could have exploited the presence external display more.

Inside the phone is a 2.25 inch display which gives you 320X240 pixel resolution. Screen of size 2.5 inch are known to have such resolution display and we were quite happy with the space in the screen. The screen has 262000 (18-bit) colors. You can personalize the display with wallpapers, display themes, screen savers and tones for messages, calls, etc.

The key pad of the phone is a little different from what you see in usually. The keys are well separated from each other and it looks quite tidy. We thought typing on these keypads would be easy but there were a lot of struggles. You will make a lot of mistakes will typing on this keypad. On the top of the numeric keypad there are two soft buttons, four way direction button with a OK button in the centre, call receive and call end buttons, a cancel button and a shutter button for the camera. You can configure four short cuts for applications for the four way navigational button.

On the exterior of the phone there is a volume rocker and a single port for headset and charger. Now we have balked a lot at the absence of a micro USB port for a Sony Ericsson phone, mostly all phone manufacturers have now moved on to micro USB port. But Sony Ericsson still uses its proprietary port for connectivity. You cannot use charge the phone and use the head set both at the same time since there is only one port for them. There is no 3.5 mm phone jack so you will have to use adapter if you want to plug different head phones. Sony Ericsson refuses to acknowledge the fact that there are better headphones in the market than the bundled ones which we might want to use. If this cannot be done at least we would like a separate port for charger and headset.

Sony Ericsson always uses its own Memory stick brand of cards; you cannot use microSD cards on these phones. This means that if you want to transfer files between the Equinox and a computer or another non- Sony Ericsson phone, you are stuck. Sony Ericsson forces us to use their products rather than letting us use what we want. All other phones use microSD cards.

The phone also has USB mass storage, Wi-Fi, voice recorder, file manager, PC syncing, instant messaging and code memo for storing sensitive information. The phone has 10 hours of GSM talk time and four hours of 3G talk time. Standby time for both modes is 16 days.

The phone book of the card is spacious 1000 entry-one; a single entry can take seven phone numbers, URL, company name, two street addresses, e-mail address, birthday and notes, the SIM card can hold an additional 250 names. You can pair up a photo with a person so that his face appears when he is calling and you can also assign individual ring tones people. Don’t expect the photo to flash on the external display because it doesn’t support photo caller ID on the lid. The phone has 23 ring tones but you can assign your MP3 files as ring tones if you aren’t happy with the bundled ringtones.

For gamers Sony Ericsson Equinox comes bundled with two games- Bubble Town and Real Football 2. You can buy more from the T-Mobile store but remember that games will dry out battery faster.

The camera on the lid has a 3.2 mega pixel rating and we were happy with the quality of photos. The options on the camera include a night mode, brightness adjustments, three color effects, white balance, a self timer, four shutter sounds, 14 frames, panoramic and multi shot modes and a silent option. There is 3.2x digital zoom but you can use it in lowest resolution only. You can add geo tagging information to photos that you take with this camera, the phone has GPS. There is no flash and no mirror. The photos are bright and images are sharp, such quality from photo cameras is rare. Video quality was fine and you can shoot only 1 minute and 15 seconds video for multi media messaging.

Other features on this phone which are worth mentioning are speakerphone, timer, calendar, task list, text and multimedia messaging, calculator, alarm, stopwatch and clock. There is a unique gesture control feature where you can silence calls and alarms by waving you hand in front of the camera. We tested the feature and found out that it needs slow and deliberate waving to get it to work, but it was fun waving on the phones face.

When it comes to music on Sony Ericsson phones there hardly anything to complain because Sony Ericsson has one of the best music players in the market. The music quality is awesome. Options include play lists, shuffle and repeat modes, there equalizer and also Sony Ericsson’s trademark Mega Bass feature. The phone comes built in with FM radio and it is easy to transfer files from a computer to the phone. The phone has a built in 100 MB of internal memory space. The phone doesn’t come with a memory card bundled in and you can put a card up to 16 GB memory size in the Sony Ericsson Equinox.

The call quality of the Sony Ericsson Equinox was good but the phone could have done with a little louder volume because you will struggle in places where there is large amount of back ground noise. Call quality was great the voice was clear on both the sides. The speaker phone quality could have been better. The phone supports Bluetooth and we tried headsets and this time the quality was excellent.

Nitty Gritty:

We don’t find anything great in Sony Ericsson Equinox that is worth recommending. The external display doesn’t have photo id, the key bad is awful and we continue to throw tantrums for separate port for charger and head set. We also want support for micro USB cards and 3.5 mm head phone jack. We found the sound quality great but then all Sony Ericsson phones are known for their good sound quality. Let this phone go, it is not worth it.