Over the past 5 years, I have been fortunate to use and understand most of the leading brands....except a philips, sagem etc and the feeling that I aways carried with me was why are brands like SE, Motorola and Samsung not having the brand recall value when we talk about mobiles....well, this was the scenario about 2 years back when Nokia rooled the roost....things have changed for the better....SE and Motorola have been accepted and established, with more features and lower rates than ever......Long live the mobile revolution......the consumer benefits..!!
Let us get to having a feel of the MOTOROLA V3i RAZR, which I have had a chance to use and comment about in this column.
(Scale of 1-5, 1 being lowest and 5 highest)
1-Lowest, 2-Usable, 3-Meduim, 4-Good, 5-Excellent
STYLE: (5) Think this comes in at second postion after the LG CHOCOLATE phone. Nevertheless, a very svelte figure and very prominent and easily attracts attention, though a lot less as each day passes. The handset is well proportioned and finished, with a matt finish and a stylish leather case.
USABILITY AND USER FRIENDLINESS: (3) Let me put it this way, users switching from Nokia its 1, from SE its 2 and MOTOROLA its 5:-). Lets face it, the motorola v3i razr user interface can get a bit intimidating and annoying to start with, but certainly ur gonna get used to this.(both the menu and the frustration)...and be an expert in lets say in a months time.
FEATURES: (3) Reasonable to good feature set. Bluetooth, iTunes, Airplane Mode, Micro SD card, and a TFT screen are the highlights. Bluethooth implementation is ok, and you need to dig into the menu to activate this...same with voice recording and also live call recording....though there is a button on the main panel as a shortcut. The screen itself being a 176 X 220 pixel display is not the best for its size...screen is bright, however colours seem a little hazy and dispersed....now this is not something very evident....and we can certainly live with this. ITunes has a limit of around 50 songs.....so upgrading to a 512MB from the present 256 doesnt seem an option!!
BATTERY: (3) Reasonable considering that its got 2 screens to run on, lasts about a day and half at the max..
Overall a package at level 3, with the present market purchase price of about INR8700, giving you a complete set of features.....sans FM. :-)