I got this phone as a present to replace my old phone. It's a plain model with no fancy features but I wouldn't use a camera anyway so that's no loss.
The phone is larger than many on the market now but is still pretty small. It has a small battery so feels very light. It has quite a large colour display screen which is easy to ready text messages on and shows about 6 lines of text at a time. The buttons are a good size and spaced out so they're easy to use and I don't catch other buttons as I did sometimes with my old phone. The navigation button for paging up and down texts and settings I find a bit fiddly though.
Slightly annoying to start with is an aircraft check screen which displays when you switch the phone on and forces you to click OK or it shuts itself off. There doesn't appear to be any way of switching this off so you have to live with it every time you switch on.
From the main screen there's a 'menu' option which takes you to a simple menu screen where a grid of options is presented - phone book, messages, setup, extras etc. The extras are quite light - alarm clock, stop watch and calculator. There are a couple of games and a profiles setting but I've no idea what to use that for. There are also Call Records but annoyingly they don't show duplicate entries only the latest entry for a number and outgoing calls do not display the time so you can't tell when you rang someone!
This annoyance is carried into the Messages section where the Outbox list doesn't show you when you sent the message which isn't very useful. The Inbox list shows just the sender's name in the list, nothing else. My previous phone showed the first line of the message so it was easier to find a message in the list.
Missed calls and unread messages are signalled clearly by little symbols on the main screen. A phonebook search can be started from the main screen and the list narrowed by first letter. There's a simple call button signalled by a green phone symbol to make a call and an equivalent red phone button to end a call or cancel an action. I've never had any problems making calls or using the phonebook.
The battery life is good, the phone goes into standby mode when not in use which saves the battery. I only have to charge mine a couple of times a week but I don't spend hours talking on it. Recharging takes around an hour.
There does seem to be a bug where if you have more than one unread message and the first is a message in 2 parts, when you read the first message subsequent messages are no longer listed as unread. So they're not signalled on the main screen and you have to spot them in the message list. This has happened a couple of times and I haven't always spotted the other messages straightaway. Not good.
I have dropped it on the floor once (what I do for the sake of reviews!, just kidding) and although the back fell off it hasn't affected it. So it's fairly robust.
It cost my boyfriend about £35 and he also got a £5 phone credit by buying it from the Virgin Mobile website. The phone came with a charger (also small & light) and an ear piece and it's possible to buy accessories like a USB charger.
So, it's cheap and cheerful. It has a nice colour display and is simple to use but it's missing a few useful things like showing times of calls made and messages sent and there is this bug with unread messages. But if you can live with that the rest of it works fine. You get what you pay for.
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This model is quite old. I'm surprised Virgin still sells them! We stopped selling these about 5 months ago. Maybe they are trying to get rid off old stock. Though saying that, it's a lovely phone that hardly goes wrong. I don't think I've seen this one could back for repair! Could of done with a little more explanation on the features of the phone but nice review x
Advantages: WAP, colour screen, easy to press buttons, built in hands free kit, changeable covers Disadvantages: No GPRS (unless you subscribe) OR camera
haribo999 12.05.2004 ·
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