I’m finally connected. It took it’s share of time, but I now have a Bluetooth phone to use to get online wherever I am with my iPAQ. I could have gone the cable or IR route, but that just wouldn’t be bleeding edge enough, now would it?

My first impression with the T39 was that the color wasn’t quite what I expected, beware when buying items from overseas that you can’t see in person. Nothing wrong with that, but the light blue color I got looks almost lavender in some lights, and that isn’t exactly what I was going for.

Other than that less than useful bit of information, the phone is lightweight, and very easy to use one-handed. I didn’t think I’d like the flip much at first, not having had one since my old Motorola classic flip phone, but it’s great for receiving and ending calls. Also, when I want to make a call, I don’t have to fiddle with unlocking the keys. Not a big deal, but a feature I like. The flip has a couple little tabs to catch on and opens and closes very nicely.

As far as features go, this phone is packed. It is quite lightweight and small, and makes use of a very thin Lithium-Polymer battery. The phone runs on the GSM/GPRS network, tri-band 900/1800/1900 for use all over the world. It has Bluetooth, a built-in WAP browser, passthrough ability for use as a modem, IR, SMS, and a couple of games, one of which is Tennis, very closely resembling the old Pong. It has downloadable images and ring tones, and has a vibrating silent alert. The only thing on the newer phones that this is missing is the color screen.

Getting the phone set up was a breeze, I just went down to my local wireless carrier, picked up a SIM chip, popped it in, and the phone was up and working. The great thing about buying a phone like this SIM unlocked is that you can use almost any carrier, and then later, change to a different phone with very little hassle.

GPRS on the other hand is another story all unto itself. WAP was quite easy to set up and get browsing on, but because of the fact that it’s still a very new concept to connect a Pocket PC through a Bluetooth phone, it’s hard to get tech support. I’m sure this is a function of the carrier, but just be aware that most of us early adopters in the U.S. will have some of our own growing pains to figure out.

I have Voicestream for my carrier, and although a lot of it is dependant on them, the phone picks up a signal well, has a good amount of talk time, and the Bluetooth works well with my iPAQ.

There are a couple of things I noticed that someone not yet using a GSM/GPRS phone may think are odd. For one, the phone actually has a boot-up time. It takes about 20-30 seconds to come up, initialize the network, get on the network and be ready to do anything with. It was a little bit of a shock to me at first, but since I never turn it on it doesn’t get in the way. Occasionally Bluetooth will not want to connect, or Bluetooth will connect but I can’t actually get any pages to load over GPRS, and sometimes a reboot of the phone will fix this. It’s a rare occurrence, but it was a new concept to me to need to reboot my phone.

Two other little things I noticed are that the side navigation button (up/down slider) can be a little sticky sometimes, though it could be because it’s not broken in yet, and that the battery adapter isn’t the easiest thing to plug in. It may go for all Ericssons, I’m not sure, I just know I had to play with it a couple of minutes to get the hang of it.

The battery gives a standby time of about 48-56 hours, and a talk time of approximately 4.5 hours. I haven’t actually run it dry testing this, but the battery meter seems to work really well, and even after using about half of what it says, it seems to be right on.

Surfing on GPRS has been pretty speedy for the most part, given what I have experienced with the CDMA aircards, and I’m sure once the network build outs are complete it is going to be an awesome technology.

I purchased my phone from Expansys (http://www.expansys.com) a retailer in the UK and they were fast and easy to deal with. A few retailers stateside are starting to carry them as well, so we should be seeing more of them around soon.

--Rob Hartley
PocketPC Editor