L.M. Ericsson Telephone Co. is showing off its latest little mobile at Comdex this week – the T66, the firm’s smallest ever mobile.
As you can see it’s smaller than a credit card and it weighs just under 60G. That doesn’t really give you an idea of how astonishingly small and light this phone is, though. It feels like a shop demo unit, but it’s not empty.
Talktime isn’t awesome at between two to five hours, but standby is impressive at around 150 hours. A killer element, though, is that it’s triple-band, which means it works all over Europe and in the United States – when the frankly dire U.S. GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) networks have the room to let you make calls, that is.
Ericsson says the phone is aimed at a youth market, as it’s devoid of GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) or Bluetooth capabilities. This keeps the cost of the phone down though – Ericsson doesn’t have a price point for the T66 at the moment, but expect to see it in phone shops from the end of this year for a lot less than the fabulous, but fabulously expensive, T68.
Recently Ericsson signed off a joint deal with Sony, passing its handset manufacture over to the Japanese consumer electronics giant. The look of the T66 and Ericsson’s latest Bluetooth headset – a flexible cord like your average hands-free system – are much more Sony-style, as is the T68, and Ericsson says to expect more movement in that area over the coming year.