Exploring SonyEricsson T610

I recently received a SonyEricsson T610 as a birthday present from my wife. This phone is one of "tech" product I dream of this year (another one is the new iPod). I like T610 not because its 65K color screen, cyber-look enclosure or MMS/EMS messaging support but just its connectivity - Bluetooth. Although some might say Bluetooth support in mobile phone has been very common, one should not neglect the fact that SE phones like T68i, T610 are very good in software and wide-range OS support.

I spent my two of the three day holidays to play around this toy and unleash some features in the T610:

• Address Book/Phonebook - The very first problem I encountered is to transfer the address book from my old moble, Siemens 6688i, to T610. Fortunately, Siemens provides everything I need: data cable and software, I can easily synchronized the address book to Outlook. The rest of them is to sync them back to my T610.
  The T610 package comes with a XTNDConnect PC software. I orginally thought that it could synchronize Outlook contact via Bluetooth - it didn't work. The software said it cannot find my device. So I bought a 3rd party USB data cable (for T610) at HK$120. Luckily, all the data transfer works seemlessly. The XTNDConnect PC software connects to my T610 and they synchronized. Problem 1 solved.
• Bluetooth connection on Mac and iSync - after my contacts are in T610, the next step is to synchronize all contacts with my iBook. Currently, I have no contact in the Address Book on the iBook, so the synchronization is like a plain copy transfer. In order to use iSync, I need to pair T610 with iBook using the Bluetooth Assistant first, then run iSync. It will automatically detect changes and notify me if change is higher than the pre-defined setting (> 5%). The synchornization process works smoothly, and I had run several tests such as updating contacts on one end and sync. The updates applies correctly. Afterwards, I can use iBook to manage my contact instead of Outlook and synchronize with iSync via Bluetooth!
• Imaging. T610 comes with the Image Editor for putting pictures as wallpaper to your phone. I took some good pictures from the honeymoon journey in Hokkaido, Japan. The software loads my picture and there are tools to adjust which potions (with zoom-in/-out in rectangle box) I want to capture. When uploading, it will connects to my phone via data cable and send to my phone. The tools also comes with nifty tools such as brightness, contrast and RGB adjustment. Although I didn't use it, they are nice features. The wallpapar I currently using is shown below:
  
  
• Ringing Tone. Since all ringing tones are MIDI files (.mid), I can upload some of my favourite MIDIs to T610 and play. I have a collection of MIDI files ripped from the classic games such as Ultima 7, Lands of Lore, Wing Commander 2, etc.. The MIDI quality is even better when playing from the classic Sound Blaster card, although I heard that the sample quality is low. But at least all MIDI instruments sound like from a wavetable sound card (I recalled UltraSound) - not FM modulation! Since all MIDIs are stored on PC, I made Bluetooth connection between them and they are transferred via Bluetooth File Transfer.
• T610 as a remote. Since T610 have built-in Bluetooth, there are software to enable the phone to control the some application remotely, such that you can run PowerPoint or Keynote in your Mac and use your phone to play next or previous slides. The software I used is Romeo. There is another shareware, called Sally Clicker. But Romeo, in contrast, is freeware. I played it a while and I can remotely control iTunes and PowerPoint, and I have all feature I want. It's nice.

Some more interesting notes when I was exploring T610:

• I did not aware that I can send contacts from Outlook to T610 via Bluetooth. Although it is just a plain contact transfer - no sync, I think I can live with that. If I could find that feature, I may not buy the data cable.
• The USB data cable can drain voltage from USB to act as a charger. I can charge the battey from PC or iBook and even from punknix (since it is ever-powered)!
• IrDA failed to transfer to Nokia 6610 - I have some good pictures in my phone now but T610 failed to transfer pictures to my wife's 6610. I think it is compatibility issue between SE and Nokia devices.