Motorola v60t - Great phone, but with some faults
Written: Jun 23 '04
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
| Clarity: |
 |
|
| Portability: |
|
|
| Battery Life: |
|
|
|
Pros: Compact, sleek, attractive, loud ring
Cons: No color display, vibrates so hard it is audible, annoying menus, no GSM support
The Bottom Line: Recommended -- a solid non-color cell phone. Holds up well and fairly easy to use. Doesn't drop calls.
|
|
|
| basilisk4's Full Review: Motorola V60t |
I purchased the Motorola v60t in the spring of last year because I wanted a newer phone with some frills, and my Nokia 3360 (see my review on the 3360) just wasn't cutting it for me anymore.
The first thing one notices about the Motorola v60t is its sleek, smooth design. With its silver-chrome finish and soft black accents, the v60t gets great ratings for aesthetics. The v60t also incorporates one of my favorite features in a flip-phone, that of a screen on the outside which displays time and date, as well as the caller ID when someone calls. Since the days when I carried around a pager, I have come to depend on my portable communications devices for the time and date. One of the biggest pet peeves I had about my prior phone was that it did not display the date anywhere, but the v60t displays it right on the front of the phone. The only downside to this feature is that the front display can be somewhat difficult to read, especially under low-light conditions; dust tends to collect behind the screen over time, so that the screen gradually becomes harder to read, even when the backlight is lit.
The buttons are easy to press, both displays are fairly easy to read, and the menus are fairly intuitive. However, there are two somewhat annoying things about the menu system. First, the phonebook will not allow more than one phone number to be stored under a single name. That is, if you want to store two numbers for the same person, you will have to create two separate entries. For example, if you wanted to enter home and work numbers for your mother, then "Mom" would appear twice in a row in the phonebook. Motorola tried to alleviate this somewhat by allowing you to choose a small picture to appear next to each listing in the directory to indicate home, work, mobile, or main, but I personally found this to be of little help. Even when the phone acts like it will let you enter a second number for an existing person, it still stores and displays it as I described above.
The second, and far more annoying feature of the Motorola v60t menu systems is that the selections for the soft buttons are often unintuitive. There are two "soft" buttons at the top of the phone, whose function change as you go through different features and functions. This is all well and fine, but I wish they were programmed better -- for example, sometimes one button will mean "Yes," and then on the following menu it will mean "Cancel." I found this quite annoying at times.
This is a tri-band phone, which makes it far more versatile than cheaper, single- or dual-band phones. Among other things, it means that it can (at least potentially) be transferred from one network (or carrier) to another, although that all depends on what particular network your carrier of choice uses. If you're in an area where GSM is all the rage like it has recently become in the Atlanta, you might want to consider another phone, as this phone does NOT work on the GSM band. However, Motorola produces a sister version of the v60t called the Motorola v60g which is apparently exactly the same except that it works on GSM.
I had little problem with dropped calls from the v60t, although it would occasionally power itself off and immediately power back on for no apparent reason, sometimes in the middle of calls. This was quite annoying, and was one of the reasons I eventually replaced my v60t with a Motorola T722i.
The battery life is excellent -- if you don't use your phone much, you'll probably only have to recharge the battery every three days or so, and it charges in a matter of one to two hours.
The v60t has a very loud ring that is audible even over loud music or other people's screaming children. If the phone is in vibrate mode, it vibrates so much that it can be felt no matter how much ambient bass there is around you; the flipside of this, though, is that if you're in a class or meeting the vibration can be heard a good distance away.
Finally, one last pet peeve of mine about this phone was the fact that when the phone's battery got low, it would produce an audible warning tone every couple minutes, even though the phone was on vibrate. I went through every menu option I could find, and even consulted the owner's manual in depth, but could never find a way to change this.
Overall, I would recommend the Motorola v60t, though, as long as the relatively small problems I've mentioned don't sound like a big deal to you -- after all, it does look pretty darn cool.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 99.99
Recommended for: Adventurous Technophiles - Tough and Durable
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
basilisk4
|
 - Top 500 |
|
Location: Atlanta, GA
Reviews written: 233
Trusted by: 214 members
About Me:
Soon-to-be married 26-year-old lawyer who likes electronics, computers, and cars.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.