Motorola V66e

...my eyes fall upon the Motorola V66e, a very sexy dinky little silver number with a small black covering on the front, carrying the large ‘M’ significant of the Motorola Brand – well they are a good company aren’t they? How could things go wrong?

The small black covering is easily removed and hides the SIM card; other colours are available from all good telephone stockists – but I do like Black. The Phone also sports a rather sizeable ...
...and say that everyone that has seen this phone wants a closer look at it; it oozes finesse and sexiness as far as it is possible for a phone to do so, it has a flip-over lid with the buttons and the mouth-piece on the bottom part and a surprisingly large display and the ear-piece on the top half, and is very comfortable to make calls on and conversations are usually very clear providing reception is OK.

THE COST?
Well I am sure ... more

Firstly, lets get one question out of the way – what’s the difference between the V66 and the V66e? Actually nothing to do with the phone itself, its just that as I discovered, phones with an ‘e’ suffix can only be used on the Orange Network.

The time had come to change my phone AND my network, I had been with BT Cellnet for 11½ months (subsequently their name changed to O2) and hated them – signals in the depth of mid-Wales were something the police did in the middle of the road whilst directing traffic and I used to open my bills with all the confidence of someone expecting the bailiffs as they were horrendous beyond belief – the costs of running a phone on a similar contract to Orange had doubled and much as I had fallen out with Orange it was time to go back, but what were my choices?

Pay as You Go, Some form of Orange pay up front for line rental and just pay for calls or a good old-fashioned 'where have you lived for the last 10 years?' contract. After a lengthy conversation with my friend Stephen at the Carphone Warehouse I opted for a contract – now, which phone?

A quick glance through their myriad of selections on the wall saw my eyes fall upon the Motorola V66e, a very sexy dinky little silver number with a small black covering on the front, carrying the large ‘M’ significant of the Motorola Brand – well they are a good company aren’t they? How could things go wrong?

The small black covering is easily removed and hides the SIM card; other colours are available from all good telephone stockists – but I do like Black. The Phone also sports a rather sizeable and static aerial.

I will be honest and say that everyone that has seen this phone wants a closer look at it; it oozes finesse and sexiness as far as it is possible for a phone to do so, it has a flip-over lid with the buttons and the mouth-piece on the bottom part and a surprisingly large display and the ear-piece on the top half, and is very comfortable to make calls on and conversations are usually very clear providing reception is OK.

THE COST?
Well I am sure this varies between shops, but in the Carphone Warehouse in early June 2002:
· Pay as You Go - £199
· Orange No Line rental - £149
· Contract - £30

Although the Carphone Warehouse had an offer on during the Jubilee weekend of providing it free, so I am glad to say it didn’t cost me a dime; incidentally if you buy through the Orange website at the moment you will get this phone free and £149.99 for the Pay as you Go version.

USAGE
Well this phone, unlike many of its dual-band equivalents is actually a tri-band. I am led to believe that this means you can literally use it anywhere (subject to your contract arrangements and network availability) including the US.

WAP ENABLED
You can ‘surf the web’ using the phone, loosely interpreted from my limited experience with it, that you can obtain a dearth of information on latest news stories, share prices and hot gossip on your favourite football teams and stars, although with the wide use of the internet I don’t really see that much benefit from this function at a cost of 5p per minute, but hang on – this phone also has another feature which I was really excited about, but haven’t actually had reason to try out yet, it doubles up as a modem and the USB cables and discs were supplied to allow you to even surf the internet whilst travelling in cars and trains (make sure you are not driving at the same time with the former), looking forward to trying this out on my forthcoming trip to Belfast – I am sure it would have been of use in the Ciao meet for that first op!!!.

VITAL STATISTICS

o Length 84mm
o Width 44mm
o Depth 21mm
o Weight 73g

As you can see it really is small and light, so small in fact that when it gets into the depths of my handbag I can never find the damn thing even when it is ringing.

RING TONES
All boring stuff I’m afraid, no Jingle Bells and Robbie Williams received tones here – it is all classical, although it does vibrate in 5 ways, great for those guys (or girls) who keep their mobile in their trouser pocket and enjoy a cheap thrill. Unlike Nokia, it doesn’t vibrate and ring at the same time, it either simply vibrates, or it vibrates 5 or 6 times and then rings and yes it is a very noticeable vibrate that has seen my bag shaking and me desperately looking for it. There is also a little light at the top which flashes red intermittently when the phone is active.

MESSAGE TEXTING
Yes, why shock horror you can send text messages from this phone. The reason I mentioned it separately is because whereas with the Nokias and other phones I have used you can just press the appropriate button until you get to the required number of letter; with this phone you have to use the backward and forward arrow keys to select your character – gone are my discrete days of quickly wapping out a text message to my nearest and dearest whilst travelling. In addition the buttons are very small and trust me you need very nimble fingers to use it. My other half gave it back to me in disgust the first time I asked him to make a call on it. The Message centre on the phone has boxes for Voicemails, Text Messages, Quick notes, Outbox and saving Draft Messages (if you sending a long one you will need this).

Using the V66e for texting has become akin to the same chore that my thesis is going to be in the coming months, hence I am sending far less text messages; result, increased phone bills.

TALK-TIME AND LONGEVITY
Yes I know I am a woman, but I do not spend hours on my mobile but use it just for work and family related quick calls – so can’t tell you whether it lives up to its claim of 2.5hours, but I do use it regularly and seldom charge it.

Standby is stated as 4.5 days, although I haven’t run the battery down at all yet as I need to keep the thing charged sufficiently for when I am out and about on my travels.

I do have an in-car charger which set me back £14.99 less 10% discount for buying it at the same time as the phone, it has different connections from the Nokia range and therefore I needed to literally start from scratch.

OTHER FEATURES
Calculator – numbers are used off the keypad, actions such as multiply and divide are selected from a row of pictures using the navigation buttons.

GAMES
BlackJack – which is exactly what its name suggests – not mind blowingly exciting and the bloody thing nearly always beats me.

MindBlaster - Haven’t quite worked this out.

Paddleball - Like computerised tennis, trying to keep a bouncing ball on the screen, the game is over once you fail. As the keys are so small, I find it quite difficult to move the cursors fast enough, plus again it is not exactly what I would call exciting, not like Pairs and Snake on the Nokia phone which are slightly more stimulating.

TELEPHONE BOOK
This is a particularly pleasing feature of phone and I am led to believe that it can store up to 590 numbers, 90 on the phone itself and 500 on the SIM. When inputting numbers you are provided with a range of options to select whether it is home, work, mobile, fax or pager and you can store all five numbers under the one name, making them easily identifiable when browsing the phonebook for numbers. The keys are so small however that transferring all my numbers took ages.

In addition, a speed-dial number is automatically allocated to every phone book entry and there is also a facility to use Voice Activated dialling.

BEWARE
Some of the V66e mobiles have a fault; I have had mobiles for nearly 7 years and have never come across it before. I tend to store ALL useful contact numbers on my phone, save me digging through diaries or scrappy bits of paper. I turned my phone on Friday to get a number I didn’t ring regularly only to find the phonebook empty. After a couple of minutes hyperventilating, I controlled myself sufficiently to contact Orange, only to discover that there is a recognised fault which is being investigated and it does not affect all the handsets, therefore they didn’t think it necessary to notify customers – aaaaaggggh. However, I was advised to remove the SIM, put the phone on, turn it back off and put the SIM back in and they would return – true to her word this worked, but I really could have done without the hassle and the panic. I have since been advised that Orange are not offering replacement handsets or refunds to those customers affected.

STORED NUMBERS
Your last 10 received and dialled calls will be recorded.

DISPLAY
The display light background can be changed to green, red or orange and can be set not to come on at all, or at 5-second intervals whilst in use lasting up to 20 seconds.

For those with sight problems you can set the screen to zoom in or out, making it much larger and scrolling can be on a continuous wrap around or top-bottom.

VOICE NOTES
You can record and write in short notes when out and about on your travels and set yourself diarised reminders – although it doesn’t work like a typical alarm clock like the Nokia range do (oh how I miss it)

PERSONALISATION
Is there such a word? The lack of ability to receive personalised ring tones, coupled with the inability to change the welcome greeting really frustrated me, funny how we get hooked to the silly things in life.

You can also set the phone up for headset and in-car hands free use with the right equipment.

PROS
o Boy it is very sexy and petite and everyone will want to look at it (or maybe that’s just in Wales as we have a fascination with small things and most locals still have the old fashioned great hulking Nokia and Bosch phones)

o You Don’t need to buy a case as the phone is folded and therefore cannot accidentally be switched on/off or dial you local police station (which I did a number of times on my Nokia phone which for obvious reasons allows 999 and 112 calls whether the keypad is locked or not.

o Nice large visual display

o Can be used as a modem for the laptop in times of emergency

CONS
o The keypad is TOO small

o Can’t personalise it as much as I would like

o No proper alarm clock

o The fault with the phone book

o Its accessories are not interchangeable with our other phones and are not cheap – hands free kits and in car chargers are around £15, the USB connection if you don’t receive one with the phone are around £37, cases £10 and replacement batteries £45.

o Very difficult to send text messages on - although with a little perseverance it does become easier.

SUMMARY
When I wrote this review three months after getting the phone, I swore I would return to Nokia at the end of my contract - I did, but not without some regrets.

The phone does grow on you over time, its sleekness and sexiness together with the flip handset being its best features - my mum now has the phone and it is ideal for her as she simply uses it for contacting my dad when he is out and about with his mobile, and as a second line in case someone needs to get hold of her urgently.
Sue 

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