Motorola RAZR V3i > Reviews > Motorola V3i

Author's product rating:   

Look & Feel	Excellent
Durability & Robustness	Strong
Reception quality	Excellent
Battery standby time	Good
Value for money	Excellent
Range of features	Good selection

Advantages:	Sleek looking, easy navigation
Disadvantages:	Average battery life, poor game selection

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

When the RAZR V3 burst onto the market a few years back, it was certainly seen as the next step in mobile phone technology. Nowadays, it’s still competing and it’s still popular for users. But is it really any good???

I brought my black V3i model as part of an O2 contract, so obviously the phone was inclusive…always an advantage in my view! Roughly 9.5cm by 5.3cm by 1.5cm, it’s a sleek, clam-style opening phone design that looks good. When opened up, the big colour display screen is an obvious plus for any phone, with a number pad that’s not too small, especially when compared to smaller, fiddly models that you need a pen nib to hit the buttons one at a time!!

The menu gives you 9 separate options in a 3 x 3 grid all with unique icons – Camera, Contacts, Media Centre, WebAccess, Messages, Settings, Calls, Games and Extras. The arrow buttons on the keypad enable easy navigation up, down, left and right to whatever area you desire.

The SIM card capacity of the contact book is 250, however all mine are stored on the phone…just got to hope the phone doesn’t die on me then! Those that have more than 250 up-to-date contacts…well, you are a popular person!!

The phone has a memory space of roughly around 12 megabytes. But because it allows removable memory card use, and a 64mb card comes with the card, there’s not too much of a problem with regards to storage – I personally have not used this space up as I don’t tend to keep things like photos or videos on there for too long as I usually upload them onto my laptop. (Yes, you receive a USB connection cable to make that all possible!!)

The games aren’t particular awe-inspiring – AsphaltUrbanGT; a basic racing game. Rebels; or space invaders to the traditionalist and Solitare – not exactly a compendium there then. However O2’s website has a whole host of games that you can download, for a small charge, to add to your phone if you so wish.

The camera, on first impressions, doesn’t seem all that impressive and that the quality is fairly poor. However, once you upload them onto a higher definition screen such as a PC, you’ll notice that they are of a decent standard such as a disposable camera. The videos never seem to improve however, probably due to the aspects ratio…and perhaps due to the storage space, often the recording device will cut out during recording and then save what you’ve filmed rather than allowing you to continue filming for as long as you wish, or when the memory space runs out.

You can access a number of text based websites such as O2’s own one, on sites such as BBC or Wikipedia, and thankfully they don’t take too long to load…just be prepared to be denied access if it can’t open up a basic picture however.

The settings option allows you to get rid of some of the annoying noises such as the bleeping the keys make every time you press them (yes, that’s a pet hate of mine), and you can personalise the phone in a number of ways such as adding a greeting every time you turn your phone on, or a different home screen picture, or indeed a different ‘skin’ i.e. the borders and fonts for those in need of some help with the ‘lingo’!

Some people I know who have this phone say the battery life is very good, I must disagree however as within a couple of days it’ll usually need recharging, if not before if I’ve spoken on it for a while or sent a fair few text messages.

So it may not last a long weekend, but on the plus side it does seem to withstand the odd drop and knock. I’m hardly caring to it so it does get it’s fair share of whacks, and so far it’s stood up to the challenge…but please note, I still wouldn’t recommend dropping it out of a high storey window!!

There are better models out there on the market, even by Motorola, but its still good value for money. If you’re buying it as a Pay-as-you-go phone, you’ll probably pick it up for less than £100 nowadays so that’s pretty good value for money all things considering – yes the battery life isn’t the best, neither are the games that are available or the video quality. But for a consistent phone that won’t let you down, you won’t go far wrong with this little number...