Sound Quality

We didn't find any major problems with the incoming clarity in the T310. Nowadays phones are pretty good with sound quality. If you aren't that picky with tonal qualities, then most phones will work for you. As a phone aimed for the value market, the sound quality will sound as good as any for most people.

On the other side, outgoing calls calls were also very clear and crisp. The reception and position of the mouthpiece didn't cause significant background noise when talking in noisy environments, the voice comes through pretty clearly. People who are used to flip may not like how the T310 sits on their face as they talk. Since the phone is straight, the mouthpiece can seem further away than a flip phone that curves close to the mouth. However, background noise is filtered out pretty well, leaving you to talk without having to shout.

The earpiece volume was very good. It's sufficiently loud even in noisy environments while talking to soft spoken callers.

RF Performance

The T310 also has an internal antenna. Sony Ericsson has been improving the reception of its phones since the many complaints of the T68i. You'll be glad to know that Sony Ericsson has improved on the T300 reception. The RF performance was comparable to Nokia's. You'll still get drops and distortion in small signal areas though. No phone is perfect, but the T310 is better than its predecessors. One reason that the reception may not be great is that there is no protruding antenna, and when conducting our tests we found some flaws. Although the look of no antenna may be stylish, an antenna that comes out still increases reception.

The phone's ability to hold on to weak signals is above average when information is being sent. However, calls are dropped quite easily when idling. When receiving weak signals, there were frequent error bits sent that were not corrected. The dropped calls did not happen very frequently, but a dropped call is always annoying as well as a hassle for both parties.

After all that's said, if you're wondering about reception, the T310 stands just above the median. You won't have problems if your coverage is in a metropolitan area. However, the outskirts may cause some difficulties. Overall we give the T310 a reception rating of:

Your phone performance can very significantly, especially when considering how well your service provider's coverage area is, landscape, or other varying conditions. The phone with the worst reception can still work well if you live under a tower. These results are just a measure of the raw RF capabilities. Factoring everything else would just be impossible to compare phones.

< Prev Next >

This article is Copyright 2002-2012 Mobiledia Corp. and the review in part or in whole may NOT be reproduced in any electronic or printed medium without prior permission from Mobiledia. For information on reproducing any part of this review (or any images) please contact us.