Sony Ericsson TM506 / Reviews

This is a solid phone that has many (but by no means all) of the niceties of a smartphone, but it's inexpensive up front and lets you keep your monthly phone bill significantly under $100. Every few weeks, the interface gets slow which requires a reboot to get back to normal, and the sound is a little quiet. Still, I think this phone is a very good choice in the "free phone" category.

Pros:

-Good construction. Not as nice as the Motorola W490 I had before, but still feels very solid after spending a few months in my jeans pocket. I like the glossy black finish, looks nice.

-Great battery life. I talk for hours on my unlimited numbers; I'd really believe the ~10-hour talk time it's rated at.

-Beautiful screen. I don't think I've seen a nicer one in a flip phone before. Viewing the pictures and videos taken with the camera is great, and websites look really nice too.

-Nice camera. 2 megapixels is enough to take acceptable photos for screen display, but I don't think they'd print well. Awesome for sending picture messages.

-Takes good short videos. They look nice on the screen or computer, and the recorded sound quality is actually very nice (no hiss).

-Web browsing on this phone is as good as I've seen with a flip phone. It only adds $10 a month for a data+text plan, or $25 for unlimited. (I use the $10 plan...)

-Gmail. This phone works with the gmail java application, and it's just wonderful to have real e-mail in my pocket. I don't type very many messages since I'm not too good at the txt typing on the numeric keypad, but it's awesome for reading messages.

-Google maps. This phone works with the google maps application, which is awesome for searching for businesses or getting a quick idea of directions somewhere.

-Media player. The built-in Sony media player is awesome. It organizes your songs by album just as accurately as my iPod does, and it has very good audio quality over the headphones. You need an adapter, but the in-ear earbud+micrphone set that I ordered for $5 or so is amazing. When you get a call, the music stops, you start talking through the microphone, and then when you hang up the music picks up right where you left off. Just as slick as an iPhone...

-Nice calendar, contacts, and alarm clock. It syncs via bluetooth to the Apple address book and iCal.

-I tether my Macbook for internet access through the phone. (I'm actually doing that right now...) I haven't gotten it working with a Windows or linux laptop though...but it should be possible if the Mac can do it out of the box with no fancy configuration.

Cons:

-Sound quality is so-so. The phone is quiet, and the speaker phone is so quiet you have to be home alone in near silence to use it.

-Acts strangely sometimes with my Motorola bluetooth headset. (Maybe if I bought a Sony one..?)

-Non-standard charger. They aren't very expensive to order online in this day and age, but it's annoying to have to buy new data cables, chargers, and headphones for every phone again.

-The user interface randomly hangs sometimes. If I'm using an application or the music player, about once every couple weeks the phone gets really slow, and I have to restart it. Not a big deal, but it happens...

-Doesn't sync with iTunes on my Mac, but it would if I bought Salling Media Sync. (I haven't...but the unregistered version of it works alright.)

-No "apps." You can run a lot of the .jar old-school mobile phone programs that are out there, but I feel a little left out every time I hear about a cool iPhone or Google Android application that comes out. But, this is true of all of the other "free phones" out there, so I can't really complain.

Read original review at Amazon.