I had a Motorola phone for a few years and the main thing I hated about it was that the battery was terrible, and the on-screen user interface was slow and hard to use. I finally decided to get a new phone and I spoke to all my gadget friends and cell phone wonks and got their opinions. They mainly pointed me to the Samsungs for cool features and the Nokias for a super battery. You're probably getting the same advice from your friends. But I wanted both (features and battery life)!

I decided to take a chance on the Audiovox CDM 9000 due to its Nokia-like battery life and its Samsung like list of features. The best of both worlds! Also, I figured I'd forge new ground in my circle of friends by being the first to try it out. Also, the phone looks awesome!

Let me tell you, I am extremely happy with this phone. It's as light as the Samsung (under five ounces) yet it doesn't have that "Star Trek" flip up thing going on. I am a big guy and those "flip ups" don't feel right when I'm talking on them.

After just an hour or so of charging the phone is at 100%. So far I leave it on 24/7 and I used it at will and only have to recharge it twice a week. Its very easy to enter phone numbers into its directory and you can store two phone numbers per person in it. In other words, for your friend Joe you can have his home number and his cell phone number stored, so its really twice the storage capacity they advertise it as since they don't mention this in any of their ads.

Also, it has a number of ringer tones and besides the obvious selecting a default ring, you can also tell it to sound a different ringer depending on who is calling you. If one of my friends calls me it sounds "Camptown Races". If my boss calls it sound "Beethoven's Fifth". If my parents call it sounds "Happy Birthday". That is extremely useful - just by the ring you can know who is calling you as you search for your phone. Of course the caller ID will tell you exactly who is calling you once you have the phone in hand.

The features are plentiful and easy to navigate through. You can search for phone numbers in order or you can enter "Jo" and get every phone that has "Jo" in it. The voice recognition is great! I can just say "Home" and it will dial my home number for me. Plus it has a vibrating ring included (the Nokia's require a different (and more expensive) battery to vibrate). It is web ready but I haven't tried that yet.

So overall - I say go for it!!! You won't regret it. You'll get all the hot features any other phone has, and you'll also get the killer battery life only a few phones have.

Chris




Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 129