Sony Ericsson has withdrawn from the CDMA market. Five hundred are sacked in EU and US offices.
Press Release from Sony Ericsson makes a few things very clear.
This move to stop work on new CDMA handsets, and scale back on R&D efforts is clearly a bad sign. Ericsson has been getting short on money for quite some time, and completely killing off an entire line of products is certainly a drastic move considering they had not even attempted to penetrate that market.
With the R&D money gone for a product they’ll never sell, hopefully Sony Ericsson can pull a rabbit out of their hat to stay even remotely competitive. Phonescoop is reporting that Sony Ericsson may still continue to sell this product, but with little to no future development in the queue, it may leave people wondering what they’ll do when there are bugs that need fixing.
Previous news item below:
The Sony Ericsson T608 is due to be carried by Sprint PCS soon.
This is the first Sony Ericsson CDMA handset for US CDMA carriers such as Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS. There are two very similar handsets – the T606 and the T608. This information is somewhat applicable to the T606 in features, but is specifically about the forthcoming T608.
I haven?t been following Verizon?s pipeline but I do know that Sprint PCS is scheduled to carry the phone and Sprint PCS says that this handset will be available in July.
The handheld is slated to cost US$199.99 and will give Sprint PCS users a taste of Bluetooth wireless connectivity to a mobile handset from a variety of devices. It is unknown however if Sprint PCS will be actually disabling the capability to actually use wireless data services on laptops and PDA?s, since Sprint PCS has a very strange policy regarding the use of data services with computers and PDAs. Apparently Sprint PCS views abusing their Vision service a violation of the terms of service. It is quite unclear to me, and many others, what constitutes abusing the service. Cross your fingers, Sprint PCS customers. For your sake I hope they don?t blow this one.
User gmsmith on HowardForums has an SE T608, and a 17″ Powerbook, and has been providing users there with some information and insight into the way the mobile works and has a preliminary review.
The T608 is not a CDMA version of the T610 or T68i – it?s a different design but falls into line with Sprint PCS?s other handsets. It offers Java, a large 128×128 pixel color display, and a speakerphone (which is more like a volume enhancer than anything else from what I?ve seen). It?s a small device, 106x48x19mm and 99 grams, sliding easily into your pocket.
It speaks CDMA 800/1900 and AMPS 800 like most Sprint PCS phones, meaning that when you?re outside of the CDMA coverage area, you still have the dubious blessing of falling back on analog coverage. There is an optional camera accessory but for some reason it lacks a built-in method of taking a snapshot. It has polyphonic ringers and GPS capability for E911. SE claims a talktime of 3 hours, which isn?t too bad, but seems about average these days.
The data features of this device are solely via the fast 1xRTT data network Sprint PCS has in place for data speeds that eclipse that of GPRS and CDPD.
A feature of most handsets from Nokia and Sony Ericsson on the GSM side is the use of Profiles, which this handset seems to have. On the T610 and 3650, this allows you to store various settings depending on what you want. Think of it as the Location Manager for a mobile phone. If you?re in a meeting, pick “meeting” and the ringer turns off. The user interface is nearly identical in behavior with the T610, a joystick and two softkeys.
For more information, I recommend you read up on the T608 on InfoSync or Mobile.Burn.
