Made to Break
Written: Mar 07 '05
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
| Clarity: |
 |
|
| Portability: |
|
|
| Battery Life: |
|
|
|
Pros: Speakerphone, blue keys, stock ringtones, and screen colors.
Cons: DURABILITY!
The Bottom Line: I would not recommend this phone unless durability is not an issue, then I would.
|
|
|
| midnightz's Full Review: Motorola V180 |
The Good
If you are going to treat your cell phone with utmost respect and durability is not an issue you then I would recommend this phone. I really liked the screens when they worked and the blue buttons were pretty cool. The speakerphone worked great, though sometimes it could be confusing when you have call waiting. I had no trouble finding a ring tone that came with the cell phone that I did not find terribly annoying, I think this is thanks to the speakerphone which is also used as the ringer so the rings come out loud and clear. Also I seemed to get good reception with the phone everywhere inside my house.
The Bad
Personally I thought the features and looks of this cell phone were great. However these are useless if you have a broken screen. I had the phone for about 45 days, 15 days longer than my warranty, when one day I pulled the phone out of my pocket and opened it to see this cool looking design on the screen that reminded me of broken glass. At first I was a little confused about how my background got changed to this new ‘picture’ but it was not long before I realized this was not a new background but actually many cracks in the screen. The screen on the outside of the phone was still fine but it wasn’t long before that screen was slowly taken over by a dark ‘ooze.’ It took about a week before that screen was useless as well.
I’ll tell you it is really difficult to use a cell phone with no screens, but it is not impossible. I did it for about a month while I tried to figure out what to do about the situation.
I did not do anything out of the ordinary that should have cracked that screen like that. I usually carry a canon digital camera in my other pocket, and have been for a long time. I have put that camera through a lot and nothing has broken on it. It seems Motorola did not apply the idea that something that goes in your pocket should be able to withstand typical stresses encountered in a pocket to this particular phone. I am studying to be an engineer so I started to examine the construction of the phone just out of curiosity. Almost immediately I noticed that the plastic housing for the half of the phone with the screen can be flexed or bent very easily. Though the plastic stands up to this bending and springs right back into shape, the material composing the screen seemed to have characteristics similar to glass and does not do so well under these conditions. Also the piece of plastic covering the screen was easily pressed down with my finger also causing cracks in the screen.
Due to these shortcomings on the phone I would recommend getting the extra insurance on the phone if your phone company carries it and you plan on keeping this thing in your pocket. Since my standard warranty was expired there was nothing AT&T (now Cingular) would do for me. They told me to call Motorola if I wanted the phone fixed which I did. Motorola told me to send in the phone and they will look at in and fix it, though they could not tell me how much it would cost but it was not going to be free. I chose not to do this because I still had my old phone, and who knows how much it was going to cost to replace both screens, Motorola couldn’t tell me.
Also I noticed the outside plastic of the phone scratched very easily.
Another brilliant move on Motorola’s part was that when you entered in someone’s name and number into the phone book, there was the option to store the voice dial name. I did this for a couple of my entries when I first got the phone but when it came time to use the voice dial there is no button, no menu option, no nothing! I went to the local AT&T store to ask them about it and they told me Motorola’s engineers just screwed up on that one, sorry. One last issue I had with the phone was also with storing phone numbers. I guess if you do anything besides enter the name and number, like if it’s a house phone or a cell phone, into the phonebook it saves the data to the phone, not the SIM card. So when it came time to take my SIM card to a new phone there was one phone number on it. Though the phone has the option to copy all entries to the SIM card, it is basically impossible to do this without a screen. Myself and several of the AT&T store associates tried for maybe an hour to transfer the data, with no success.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): NA
Recommended for: Stylish Trendsetters - Hip and Trendy
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
midnightz
|
|
Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Reviews written: 8
Trusted by: 1 member
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.