Ok, this is my first review on a mobile phone and I see so many come through that appear as if the writer simply can't be bothered and expects to get ratings for it.
First of all I am starting off with a rant and a small review similar to what people write these days and then move on to a proper review of my phone. Sorry if it's a bit long winded.
*** A typical Phone Review ***
I was looking for a mobile phone and came across quite a few cheap ones that seemed fairly good until I saw this Motorola V220 for £50. It comes in either silver or pink and may even get freebies with it.
The phone is small, light and stylish with a couple of good ring tones and a few little features. It is a flip phone that has an lcd on the front and a colour screen on the inside. It has a digital camera built in which is ok and has a few games to play if your bored. It has all the usual settings that phones have and are easy enough to learn.
I've had this phone for a year now and it's been quite durable apart from one drop that cracked the front lcd, this is a great phone and if you need a cheap phone it should cost you only £50.
*** end of typical phone review ***
Now come on people, these types of reviews or not really reviews, they tell us nothing about the phone or your experiences using it. The question we have to answer when rating your review is ...
How helpful would this review be to someone making a buying decision?
Well reviews like this are not even worth rating or at most should only get a "somewhat helpful". My reviews are far from perfect but I put a lot of detail and a bit of personal experience in them too, and sometimes a bit of advice.
Ok, rant over so now it's time for my real review of my Motorola V220.......
Over a year ago I was looking for a phone that was cheap,
had good ringtones, a digital camera, small and preferable a flip phone. Not liking mentioning names or advertising I won't say where I got it from but it is a well known phone shop. It was advertised at £50 in silver or pink so I opted for silver. The last time I owned a Motorola it was large and cumbersome but was reliable and robust so that also influenced me in buying this one.
~ The phone ~
My personal opinion is that it does look stylish, it is small and compact with a nice little flip cover in silver and black with an LCD and camera on it. As you lift the flip up the colour LCD on the underside lights up and the keys glow with a slight blue tint. The keys are laid out nicely with navigation and selection buttons at the top near the colour lcd. It has a built in speaker on the back and charger and headphone socket on the bottom. It has a small USB port on the side with 3 other buttons and one button on the other side. The battery compartment is easy to access by pressing a little silver pressure point and sliding cover off.
The phone boasts a number of features such as polyphonic and mp3 ring tones, java games, mpeg4 playback, wap 2.0, gsm triband and 4x digital zoom camera. All of which I will break down a bit more a little further.
The standard V220 literally comes with the bare basics to keep the phone going. A battery, charger, sim card and if your lucky a hands free kit may be thrown in. The battery should give you about 5hrs talk time and 9 days in standby mode but mine lasts less than that.
This phone does not come with Bluetooth capability which is no big deal to me.
~ The LCD colour Screen ~
This screen differs from others in that it is STN rather than TFT, the main reason for this I guess is that STN uses less power and is cheaper to make. This is also the phones downfall, the STN screen displays lower quality images over TFT that often look as though too much contrast has been added. Other than that the menu's and txt etc are fine enough to see and read without any struggling but taking pictures is another story.
The digital camera is a VGA camera that takes pictures sized 640x480 pixels. The camera takes pictures using 65,000 colours or 16bit which really is not that good on this phone. The images it produces are visible and you can make out what it is supposed to be but not in detail, what does not help either is the screen is not a colour TFT.
~ The Ringtones ~
Here's the bit that most people probably pay most attention to, the phone uses polyphonic or mp3 ringtones which actually sound quite good. You can also get use MOTOMIXER to mix your own ringtones in midi format. Not tried that myself so can't go into depth about it. In fact, not being into funky ringtones and placing an importance on them I use the MOTO ringtone. You can also download ringtones and no doubt upload them with a usb data cable.
~ The Fun Bits ~
The phone comes with some java games, photo editor and MPEG4 playback. To be honest I can't see the need to MPEG4 playback because you only have 1.8mb of storage space and the quality will be poor anyway.
The games - The java games that are on my phone are Hungry Fish and Open it Out. There is an option called Orange games but it tries to launch a browser so I am guessing these are online games. Apparently you can download games or upload via data cable, as you can guess I don't bother as I have a PC and console to play games on.
The Photo Editor - Not as you would expect a photo editor to be ! basically you can grab a photo, select the face or part of it and super impose it on a body from a preset clipart gallery. A bit fun for kids but not what I would call useful for adults.
~ Ease of Use ~
Now one of the good bit about the phone, it is fairly easy to get around by using a menu button and navigation keys. The menu options come up nice and clearly considering the poor choice of LCD screen. You have a select button for selecting menu options and settings them, a back button for cancelling most options.
Settings - The settings can be accessed by pressing the top center button that looks like 4 short lines, the symbol is also displayed on the LCD next to the word ringtones. Pressing this button will bring up the settings screen with 9 images in a 3x3 square. These options are ....
Recent Calls - Received calls, Dialled calls, Notepad, Call times, Data times and Data volumes.
Phonebook - Obviously a list of your contacts
Settings - Personalise, Ringtones, Webaccess, In-call setup, Initial setup, Phone status, Headset, Car settings, Network, Security and Java settings.
Camera - Simply sets the phone to camera mode.
Messages - Gives you all the options for your messages such as Inbox, Outbox, Drafts, Answer phone, Templates and the option to create new messages.
Orange world - This tries to launch a browser which I am assuming connects to an Orange website but mine has no access.
Office Tools - Within here you have calculator, Calendar, Shortcuts, Alarm clock, chat (which is supposed to be like msn), Dialling services and Information.
Multimedia - You can select Themes, Pictures, Sounds, Motomixer and videos.
Games and Apps - This is where you find all your games or applications you have uploaded/downloaded to your phone.
Each of these menu options you can select and some have sub menus but I would be here all day listing them.
You have two buttons on the side of the phone which are quick access buttons to changing your ringtone modes on the fly such as Silent, Vibrate, Vibrate and ring, Soft and Loud. There is also a button next to these that acts as a quick access camera button, press the button once flicks to camera mode and press again to take pic.
The only difficulty I had setting up the phone was the date and time - How hard can that be ? Well, for some reason when you select auto update the phone resets itself to Jan 1st 03. If you set the date and time and then press auto update it sets itself back again. Basically set the time manually and turn of the auto update because for me it is useless.
Although it has a stubby little arial the reception is very good and never have problems hearing people, it even seemed to work in the lift the other day where most phones cut out. You can unscrew the arial and fit little snazzy ones to it if you want.
~ Durability ~
I find this phone very durable considering I don't use a phone case, it's either in my pocket or thrown in my bag. Sometimes my kids get hold of it and have all sorts of fun with it. It has been banged and dropped for the last few years and has only cracked the outer LCD so I can no longer see the time - So what I have a watch - lol To get this LCD replaced it would cost me £40 in the carphone warehouse but why bother when it costs £39.95 from the same place. Other than a crack in the LCD screen the phone works perfect and the inner screen is not affected at all. Due to the phone being what they call a "Clam shell" flip phone, I thought the flip cover hinges would probably be the first to go or the contacts inside, but no - it's all fine so far.
~ Price ~
This phone seems to be priced from £39.95 to £80 depending on the shop/website. To be very honest with you I wouldn't pay anymore than £50 considering you can now get a nice NEC camera phone with 1.3megpixels for £50 as well. If you do pay more than £50 make sure you a load of freebies or at least free airtime thrown in.
~ Overall impression ~
A good little phone for £50, not worth paying anymore for it as the camera is old and you can now get 1.3mp camera phones for £50 too. It has been robust and reliable with a few features to keep the average mobile phone owner happy. It has nothing to impress your friends or make you look cool or important. Some people may disagree with me but I think it is fantastic phone.
Would I buy it again ? Yes, but not at £50 as the NEC e540 is a better buy for the money.
How much would I pay if I had to replace it ? I would buy second hand and look to pay about £25.
So why am I recommending this phone to buyers ? Basically, if you can get it cheap it is a great phone, if not I would watch how much you pay.
Thanks for reading !
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Jun 28th, 2006
exceptional by (6%):
very helpful by (94%):
