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January 04, 2003
New Toy!
Everyone knows I have this thing for electronic gear with flashing lights. Well, I finally have found a cell phone that really makes my day -- the Sony/Ericsson T68i has a flashing green light and a flashing blue light. It is like a damn ship or something. Needless to say, I've got a new cell phone now.
Not that the blinking lights were the only thing that sold me, mind you. I mentioned in October that I was looking for a way to complete the "kitchen sync" -- the ability to have my laptop, Palm and cell phone all share information. With Apple's recent release of an updated calendar application and non-beta synchronizing utility I started thinking again about the last missing piece, my cell phone.
Apple has the ability to synchronize with Ericsson phones using Bluetooth, but not with Motorola's (at least so far). There is a command-line utility for connecting to Motorola phone over serial lines, but I didn't really want to fiddle with that. So I started looking for an Ericsson phone.
What eventually caught my eye was the Sony/Ericsson T86i, a small non-flip phone that uses GSM networks. It looked like a great little phone, with everything from a calendar to a calculator and Bluetooth built-in, but GSM isn't very common in America. I thought I was stuck, but I found out that Cingular offers GSM in my area and supports the T86i -- that sealed the deal for me.
I've spent the last few days getting to know the phone, and it is a neat little toy. You can theme the color display, download or compose ringtones, and take pictures (with a detachable camera).
Heck, you can play games, use a stopwatch ... all kinds of stuff is crammed into the little thing. If you did the original Star Trek these days, you'd have to have the Phaser, Tricorder and Communicator all one little device the size of a lighter ... just to make it seemed advanced in comparison to what we already have.
The big thing, of course, was moving my names and addresses from the laptop to the phone. Creating a bluetooth connection between two devices can be a bit fiddly, but once the connection is created the synchronization software worked fine. I was even able to sync both the Palm and phone at the same time, with the Palm using the IR port on the laptop.
Here are two good websites for the T86i:
For Mac OS X users, here are two valuable software packages:
- T68 ThemeEdit -- a theme editor for the T68.
- Ericsson Client -- makes sending files to the T68 super easy.
Comments
I'm not a musician, so I don't know how much help I'll be here...
Do you specifically want to make a ring signal on the phone, or do you want to do it on your computer and then transfer it to the phone (assuming you have a bluetooth or IR connection on your computer)?
To work on the phone, the instructions for the composer seem pretty much straight forward (the instructions run from page 19 to 20 in my T68i handbook). But if you have any specific questions, I'll try and answer them.
Off the phone, the best bet seems to be a program called Ringtone Converter
http://www.codingworkshop.com/ringtones/
Ringtone Converter comes with a bunch of tones, helps you search the Internet for existing tones, allows you to convert files intended for other phones to files that will work with the T68i *and* has a visual keyboard so you can edit existing songs or make new ones.
Personally, as long as I had a way to transfer files from my computer to the phone, I'd go with searching for or building tones on the computer.
If you have a more specific question, please let me know.
how do i use the sony ericsson T68i composer plz help asap its for my mum
Posted by: tracy | October 25, 2003 11:11 AM