Well friends, I went with the intention of buying just a color phone and wound up buying the Motorola E365, I bought the phone in Jan 2004, well at that time for the price I paid i.e, Rs 11450 with bill from Giria’s in bangalore, there was no other close substitute.
The picture resolution is good, all JPEGs downloaded with the cable kit from the computer or internet look good on it. The quality of pics taken by the camera in good light is clear. In the night mode, the focussing appears very slow and the object you try to photograph should be very still. I think this aspect is a drawback especially if your indoors in the night taking pics of your loved ones, its not always possible to make them sit very still. The pics with resolution - low and medium are clear when transfered onto the computer. But the high resolution pics are not sharp on the computer. The screen fades in direct sunlight, so when you are outdoors and receive a call its very difficult to view the caller.
For a phone of the business class, there should be provision for storing numbers according to home, office, mobile, general etc, which this phone doesnt have, the names are displayed multiple times, its inconvenient. The dictaphone is useless. 10 seconds recording time is no use.
The ringtones don’t sound good like in samsung phones. Mono ringtones when downloaded don’t sound nice. Only polyphonic is good, for that GPRS should be enabled, then cost of ringtone becomes high. Of the 40 ring tones you may find 3-4 which sound ok, rest are all waste, I always felt samsung has the right choice of ringtones, some animal sounds, some classical, some disco etc .
The menus in E365 are least to say very insipid, there is nothing in the layout and design of the menus which will make you want to browse through the phone, the motorola people have given no thought to make the phone interesting to use. They have followed the 2key functions every where i.e, you press only 2 buttons to go to any function you want, this is a plus point. It has CLI picture identification to see the person who is calling, this is a nice feature, I dont think any samsung phone allows this feature. All in all the phone is sturdy and can take rough use , the greatest plus point of this phone is the TFT screen. Many manufacturers dont give this quality screen in their phones for such low price. Even the new Samsung X600 has UFB screen which is an older technology.
Other features in the software cd and data kit like ringtone composer I could not use as I found some problem may be with my sound card. It has a basic photo editor in it. Its convenient to enter phone numbers through the Data Cable, and also send sms, you cant download games, the default 5 games have bowling, Magic II, bubble Tea, big garden and pacific storm, bowling is very tough to play and you will lose interest, pacific storm and magic II is ok. Rest of the games I couldnt play. The date book doesn’t show month wise, if your used to seen months then sorry this phone doesnt have it , it doesnt have world time, stop watch, timer either. Yes there is an alarm and it doesnt work when the phone is off.
When the phone is uninteresting the usage life comes down. Not many people have bought this phone may be for that reason. If your a person who likes beauty and features then look for another phone because in this case beauty is only skin deep i.e the wallpapers look good thats about it . The animations are all junk. The battery is good for normal use, the moment you play games and use the camera the juice goes out. If you travel by bus, and carry your phone in your pants, dont expect to hear a call or feel any vibrations the vibrations are very average, the sound level is upto 5 but its not enough to hear in a bus. No problems with reception though. All in all its a sturdy phone and can take rough use.