I bought mine a few days ago, and my feelings for the phone have moved from ecstasy (the experience of opening what must be the best darned phone packaging ever) to deep disappointment, after putting it through the paces.
In Motorola’s defense I must say that the phone is put together beautifully. The design and workmanship are enough to make you think that this is a product of a superior alien species. I would also add that some of the interface, such as the messaging, are simply superb - making it very easy to add/spell/create new words and store them in the dictionary. I their defense I would also say that the camera is adequate for a phone at this price, though one does need good light and steady hands to take a decent picture. There are also some wonderful ringtones and sounds you can choose from to personalize your phone. I have a jazz ring tone and a discreet little sound for message alerts. Very classy! All the accessories that come with it, including the belt clip are very hip and almost chic.
The big problem really is with functions that you would take for granted with a phone of this sort. Motorola claims that the phone can act as a modem, an MP3 player, and synchronizes with outlook to hold upto a 1000 contacts and manages your calendar. I don’t know if you are a business user, but if you are, you probably know the benefits of using MS Outlook for your personal productivity. Most phones at this level synchronize with your PC, making it a mobile extension of your contact list/ calendar/ tasks, etc.
I was looking forward to these functions. I find that GPRS and browsing the internet are actually superfluous functions for such small screens. But the outlook sync is an absolute must. So I loaded the motorola tools. When I connected my phone via cable, the tools program (not windows) recognized it as a modem (??) and asked if I would connect via cable/BT/IR? Hullo, I’m already connected via cable. Eventually I got to the synchronisation menu and asked it to synchronize all my 900+ contacts. The interface for doing the synchronization settings absolutely sucks, and is bad enough to make you want to tear your hair out. I battled through it, and hit ’synchronize’. The interface read ’ entry 581..2..3...4 of 2876’!. Where do I have 2876 contacts? Eventually it said synchronize failed because of inadequate phone memory. My phone has 256Mb of memory apart from the 15Mb flashed on the phone. I know that most PDA phones need no more than 128Mb to store more than 1000 contacts, with full information including notes and pictures. I have two questions for motorola here -->
Why do you claim 1000 contacts when it is actually 1000 ’entries’?. Yes, the phone can only hold 1000 distinct phone or fax numbers and email addresses. This makes it feel very low-end
When I hit ’synchronize’, why does it not inform us that there are too many entries, rather than stupidly filling itself up and then letting us know?
In addition, deleting the phone book is painfully slow, and can take upwards of 15 minutes! And when we choose delete phone book from the synchronization tools application, it deletes whats on the sim card as well. Hullo, leave the sim card alone.
For the record, I checked with the Moto website. there is no helpdesk to answer my questions. And I have many of them.
There are also some serious usability issues - for e.g. something as simple as setting an alarm takes more steps than you want to be bothered with. A Rs. 3500 Samsung phone has a better interface for setting alarms. Making external memory as default storage is almost impossible unless you chance upon the option somewhere within one of the multimedia tools.
Speaking of media Motorola has provided a wonderful screen in terms of quality, but with not so great skins and icons (well actually the skins are quite decent). I have not tested the sound yet because I’ve not loaded the itunes application to sync with my PC collection. I want to use Windows Media, but it did not recognize the phone as a device to rip the music to. I think this might be a bug, but all the same, it sucks!.
The RAZR V3i seems to have all functions you may need but is really not very good at any. Or maybe, I’m not exactly their target market. In fact I think I’ll scout for a used P910i. Does everything anyone could want, and does it all very well.
UPDATE September 18th: I’ve been using this for a few weeks now. I think it is a Good, but not great phone. I’ve gotten used to some some quirks and I really do like the iTunes function. The downside to the iTunes is the pairing up with the PC and exchanging music - very slow and hard to tell whats going on. Really not watertight stuff. The sound quality through the Mini-USB earphones provided is Exceptional, far better than any other phone I’ve heard, except for the MotoSLVR which is at least as good. The speakerphone is good too, but the SLVR is far better in this department as well. The interface for the iTunes/Phone events is very easy to get used to.
I would still not forgive them for the painful contacts storage and retrieval, or for the fact that it says memory full after 50sms’s. My old P800 had 1800+ sms’s and over 900 contacts and never made any noise about its little 128Mb card.
Hey, if you’ve come this far. Rate this review.