When I decided to buy a dual SIM mobile, the Indian market was flooded with small manufacturers like Micromax, Spice, Karbon, Lava etc. This particular mobile caught my attention, which is a dual SIM QWERTY mobile phone launched by the Telecommunications giant, and is a step ahead with its competitors.
I purchased this mobile in Dec’10, so I think its time to write a review and let all make aware of its pros & cons.
The Motorola EX-115, code-named Starling, has dimensions of 109 x 61 x 12.4 mm and weighs 102.2 gms. It is a well built mobile having solid looks. The back panel is made of rubberized plastic and offers amazing grip. The phone is very slim and has a single port which is used to connect the charger as well as data cable. On the other side, there are attractive looking metal-made volume control keys. At the top is the 3.5mm jack to connect headphones/ earphones.
The mobile screen is 2.3 inch TFT, capable of displaying 256K colors and has a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. Two SIM card slots are under the battery, whereas micro-SD card slot is hot-swappable. The phone supports memory card capacity of up to 32 Gb.
The keypad is my personal favorite- quick responsive which make messaging a nice experience. The D-pad is used to navigate the menus and control the media player. There is a dedicated camera key as well.
Connectivity
This phone is a quad band GSM phone with EDGE Class 10 support. The phone comes with Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP. The phone supports USB 2.0 connectivity and can be connected to the pc. The phone doesn’t come with a data cable or PC suite. So it’s a big problem to connect it to PC. I am using data cable of Samsung Corby to connect it to PC that too in only mass storage mode. Till now I am unable to find a way to access phonebook from PC.
The phone has a default browser & also comes with Opera Mini. The speed and performance is OK. It has no 3G but has EDGE support. Overall there is no great browsing experience in Motorola EX115.
Media
The media player supports MP3, H.263, WAV, AAC, MIDI, AMR NB formats. The sound quality of the loudspeaker is good & loud. There are no individual Video or Audio playback options. Audio & Video are seen in “All Media Files” under Media Player. Whenever media files are opened, a pop-up message is displayed- ‘Updating library will take a long time. Continue?’, which is very irritating. Every time I have to select ‘no’ to access media files. Searching a particular song is also very cumbersome process.
Camera
The phone has a fixed focus 3.0 MP camera with digital zoom (zooming can be done by volume control keys). The snaps are good with bright colors but still it is not comparable with Nokia mobile’s 3MP cameras. Since mobile has no flash, night snaps are not that good. The camera has many customization options (Capture mode, Effects, Scene mode, Image size & White balance). There are loads of effects- Normal, Grayscale, Sepia, Sepia Blue, Color Invert, Gray Invert, and Embossment & Sketch. Last two are new & very innovative; I haven’t seen them in other mobiles. Image can be taken in 4 sizes- VGA, 1MP, 2MP, & 3MP. The video recording is of poor quality.
The image viewer application is decent and the phone also comes with a photo editing software.
Messaging
The Motorola EX-115 is capable of handling all the common message types including SMS, MMS and audio messages and also included email handling.
The keypad is very good, unlike Samsung Chat. The keys are bumpy that avoid typing errors. There are some minor bugs in messaging. After ‘full stop’, the letter doesn’t automatically convert into uppercase (to be done manually).
Major Drawback- No Group messaging on this phone. Also, we cannot select multiple contacts at one go; we have to manually select one contact after the other.
Calling
The signal reception on this phone is quite well. The call quality & clarity is not as good as Nokia phones. The loudspeaker is excellent and offers loud, crisp and clear sound. The phone has both SIMs active at all times. You can receive calls on both SIM cards and can select the SIM card to make outgoing calls or outgoing messages. But we have to manually select the SIM1 or SIM2 while making outgoing calls. There is only one button for making calls, unlike other dual SIM phones which have two buttons. The SIM selection can be done in the settings menu. It is dual standby, not dual active phone.
When receiving a call from SIM1; SIM2 is not reachable or switched off. Where as call on SIM1 becomes a waiting call.
Applications
The phone has quite a lot of features to offer. The navigation is simple using the D-pad. There is a small lag while switching windows. There is no inbuilt theme provided with the phone. The phone comes with 50 Mb of inbuilt memory. The Organizer section has standard features- calendar, world clock, alarm clock and tasks. Calculator and currency converter tools are also included in extras.
The settings section has the usual phone settings, network settings, security and connectivity settings and the dual SIM settings.
The phone has no pre-installed games. But you can download & install JAVA games online.
The phone has pre-installed ‘Social Networks’ application which allows access to different social networking sites like Myspace, Gmail, Facebook etc.
The phone has FM, FM recorder & inbuilt sound recorder as well.
The phone-book can store unlimited contacts. Phone-book can be set to display contacts from the phone memory, SIM memory or both. Ring-tones, Caller picture & Caller video can be assigned to each contact.
Battery
The 930 mah Lithium-ion battery offers talk time of nearly 180 minutes and a standby time of almost 240 hours (This is as per specification provided on Motorola website). Usually the battery lasts for almost two days with normal usage.
Verdict
The Motorola EX-115 is a dual SIM phone which looks very elegant. It is extremely well made, well finished and feels heavy if you hold it. The performance of the phone is acceptable. The Motorola EX-115 cost me Rs.4800 inclusive of two-year extended warr