Audiovox CDM-9500: Short on Talk and Features
Written: Aug 31 '03
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Pros: Nice color screen
Cons: 95 minute talk time, lack of software for color screen
The Bottom Line: Unless you're dying for cheap color, there are better phones than this one.
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| mookiekong's Full Review: Audiovox CDM 9500 Cell Phone |
The Audiovox CDM-9500 (known as 9500 throughout the rest of the review) is an OK phone. It has nothing special about it, nothing that makes it stand out in an already crowded cell phone market. And to compound this, the phone has some serious issues to boot. This is the phone that my company issued me after I snapped my Motorola StarTac in half. No, don’t be afraid, I was not mad, I had the StarTac cradled between my ear and shoulder (don’t do that) and it snapped in two. Bad Steve! I have been using this phone extensively for more than six months. And with my heavy business traveling in the first five of these six months, I have run an average of 3200 minutes through the phone each month. Now that’s a lot of phone usage!
Hardware
The 9500 is a flip phone that errs on the side of being thicker than most. The marketing fluff lists the phone as 1 inch thick, but it does “grow” thicker than this, more to the growing part later. The 9500 has a brilliant color screen, which I think is the best thing about the phone. But, the built-in software has nothing to actually show off the screen and worse yet, my provider Verizon does not give out anything free to show off the screen, more on this in the software section though. The screen is able to show 65k colors, but in direct sunlight the screen borders on useless. I have problems when I use this phone outdoors because it is a bit difficult to see in direct sunlight. There is also a small LCD window on the outside of the phone that serves to show time/date and also caller ID when the phone rings.
The phone itself is a solid performer. The RF performance of the phone is above average and the phone survives the RF hell that my house creates – if a phone can work in my house, then it is a good RF performer. The antenna is something that needs to be mentioned. When free phones like my Samsung R225m have a short half inch stub for an antenna and performs beautifully, how come the 9500 has to have an antenna that is a good six and a half inches when extended? That is the first thing that anyone notices about the 9500 is that the antenna is so long. Just because I am used to it, I extend the antenna whenever I answer my phone or make a call. I really do not think that the antenna makes that much of a difference though. I may just leave it hidden from now on.
The phone is a 1XRTT/CDMA phone. For all non-cellphone types out there this means that the phone is able to operate on CDMA networks like Verizon, AllTel and SprintPCS. Currently, I believe the phone is only offered through Verizon (under the Audiovox brand name) and Alltel (under the Toshiba brand name). The 1XRTT (1 x Radio Transmission Technology) portion means that this phone is able to operate at high speeds for data needs. One should be able to get between 40-60kbps transfer speeds (about 5 times faster than dialup modems). If you get the data cable kit from Verizon to hook the 9500 to your laptop, you’ll be able to get high speed Internet access through your phone in areas that support 1XRTT (meaning metropolitan areas, not rural areas).
The 9500 has your standard 2.5” headset jack on the side of the unit, it is on the flipping part of the phone though. I still don’t understand why they placed the headset jack on the flipping part of the phone, it just feels weird if I have a headset connected and I have to flip open the phone. The phone also has speaker phone capabilities, which work if the environment is not too noisy and has come in handy quiet a few times.
Now, here are the issues that I have with the phone. First, the keypad is flush with the phone. Therefore it is very hard to dial the phone without directly looking at the keypad. Where as with my R225m I can just feel around and find the right keys, and then work from there.
Second, there is no side rocker. I love side rockers, yes the R225m doesn’t have one either, but my R225m was free! The side rocker lets me change the volume of the ring when I am not on a call and lets me change the volume of the call without having to take the phone away from my ear. With the 9500, I have to not only remove the phone from my ear to change the volume, but the phone insists on pulling up the speaker phone volume also when I push the up/down arrow to change the call volume.
Third, the battery that is included stinks. I make a lot of calls during the day and the included battery does not last me even half the day. I had to go out and get another $60 high capacity battery to get me through the day. The default battery is a measly 650mah battery, the extend life battery is a better 1050mah battery. The extend battery though is thick and comes with its own cover. This makes an already thick phone “grow” in thickness to about an inch and a quarter or so. That makes for a huge bulge in ones pants if they don’t use the holster, and it makes for a big bump on a belt if you do use the bulky holster.
Software
The built-in software does what a phone needs to do and that is it. The use of the color screen is little to none. Sure there are a few (three, I think) colorful backgrounds, but after that the color is really not used. There are no frills like games that come on the phone by default because Verizon wants to make money on that stuff and forces me to pay through their “Get It Now” program to buy games to play on the phone. I have not bought a single game, nor will I because I have my Palm Tungsten T and also because I think it is ridiculous not to have even one free game on a color phone.
The phone comes with a massive phonebook that can accommodate 500 phone book entries. Each entry can have up to 5 phone numbers and 3 email address associated with it. The phone also features T9 predictive text, which comes in handy when sending text messages around. There is no AOL Instant Messenger client built-in though, which is disappointing. But I am glad that the SMS facilities are not as bad as the SprintPCS SMS facilities.
There are also facilities for calendaring, surfing the web (who would do that on a tiny screen though?), and downloading backgrounds and ring tones. This is mostly standard fare stuff when it comes to basic cellphones anyways. There is nothing too special here.
Again, the phone is a no frills phone and the software itself follows that directive. That is where I come to the bewilderment of why there is a battery draining color screen on this phone if it is so basic. If it meant that I could get another hour or two of talk time on the phone if I didn’t have the color screen, I would have been happy to forgo the color screen.
Final Verdict
The Audiovox CDM-9500 sells for $49.99 on Verizon’s website. Is it worth the money? Not really because you have to keep in mind that an extra battery (extra $60) is needed to get past this phones measly 95 minutes of talk time per charge. This is a basic phone that just happened to be blessed with a nice color screen. Everything else is standard fare and ho-hum. It is not worth the money when the $19.99 Motorola V120e offers all the same capabilities and also gives 206 minutes of talk time. If you want cheap color, this maybe the phone for you, but in the end it will cost you a bit more to get the actual performance of a cheaper monochrome phone.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 49.99
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mookiekong
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Location: San Jose, CA, USA
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Current Mookie Obsession: Apple iPhone 8GB and Fedora 8.
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