When technology goes wild and even faster than people would like or appreciate, a "return to the origins" could easily lead to a success.
I must say I'm not a great fan of modern mobile phones with hundreds of functions that you will never ever use (ok the camera on the phone may be useful sometimes but I have my doubts about the rest). I don't play videogames, videochat, download music or watch films on the mobile and neither I want to. Even more, the famous idea of sending odour-messages being now not so far from the market will alienate even more most of the average mobile users.
Motorola had a great idea. A mobile phone with the most basic functions you can get and for the cheapest
price ever seen! The Motorola F3 (o Motofone) is the answer to the increasingly estranging mobile phone technology. Simple, slim, light, smart-looking, easy-to-use, cheap and durable!
-----------> After all this praise let's see what so good about it (and what's bad):
First of all the price! I paid it around £7 at pound-stretcher and since it was so appealing I went back and bought another just in case. The phone is really smart looking. Everyone I show it to is positively shocked!
It came in a cylindrical box, with a Virgin sim card (although the phone is unlocked), manual and battery charger.
The F3 is the first mobile phone to use electronic paper in its screen which allows extreem thinness (no glass involved), longer battery life, and all-light condition viewablity (you can see properly also in candlelight). It has a catchy backlight for the keypad and a slit that projects the backlight onto the screen so the display can be seen in darkness.
The display shows a digital clock that is visible in any lighting condition. That's good as I don't wear my watch anymore.
Once you turn it on the first time it asks you to choose between 3 languages available (English, Italian and something else, can't remember). After the first selection, a voice (yes the phone talks, it's not SO basic afterall) in the language you selected asks you if you need a voice helper which I guess was thought for elderly people but you just can't resist by using it even if your ears are good. Having the voice helper means that when you move through the different menu icons the voice tells you what they are (ie. "Write a Message", "Set the Alarm", etc...).
I read online that the F3 has two internal antennas to maximize reception even when partially shielded by obstacles which I can confirm as I have never experienced bad reception, ever.
Also it can be quite loud but the ring tones are not embarassing so it's actually quite nice to pull it out in public and show it off. The unique default ringing mode is vibrating silently for some seconds, then ring in modest volume, then ring with full volume (one can also set a vibrate-only mode or modes with fixed volume). So ringing modes are not fully customisable
The Motorola Motofone band is 900/1800 MHz GSM for Europe. I read that it also comes in different colours (black, blue, red and a silverish grey) but I only found the black one which is very nice.
-----------> Now the bad The real bad thing of this phone is the weird display of SMS. The text display contains only two lines of six characters each that makes reading and writing SMS less practical than on standard LCD displays, also the non-alphabetic characters are severely limited due to this kind of display, and for some reason, the capital letters are completely mixed up with the normal ones which makes it even harder to read anything but numbers. The SMS-thing is really the only issue that I can say being a little annoying on this phone, possibly off-putting.
... ah yes and the alarm clock only works when phone is on, more of a reminder than an actual alarm clock. Silly isn't it? (remember we're talking of a under-10-quids phone).
-----------> Yes but what functions does this phone have? In short... it can deal with SMS, you can set an alarm, it has a clock, you can use a headset with it, it has an address book, vibration, ringtones, and a voice helper (that's nice).
-----------> For more information... on Wiki you could find a lot of useful information such as number codes, these allow you to access more options which are not directly available from the standard menu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_FONE_F3
and the Motorola website http://www.motorola.com/consumer/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=c243c532715 0f010VgnVCM1000008206b00aRCRD&show=productHome
I hope my review helped you to decide whether to buy or not to buy this phone if you see it in a shop. I think it's a cool phone that will last me for a long time. Personally I love it.
[Forgive me if I stole some pictures from Google but they were better than mine]
Pictures of Motorola Motofone F3
The cylindrical box it came with
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very helpful by (85%):
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