Great toy, bad phone
Written: Mar 08 '01 (Updated Mar 18 '01)
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Pros: Small and lightweight; Good signal inside
Cons: Horrific display; Belt clip designed by an idiot; battery life is anemic
The Bottom Line: Poor battery life and a miserable display make for a poor choice in cell phones. For $200, there are plenty of other options.
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| adjensen's Full Review: Motorola StarTAC 6500 Cell Phone |
If you've read my previous cell phone reviews, you probably know where this is going. I'm something of a connoisseur of cell phones and I have yet to find a StarTac that met my needs. Add this one to the list. I got this phone through work when my Nokia 6120 started getting a bit "long in the tooth" (eg: I had dropped it enough to merit a new one.)
Have to dig a bit for the good side, but here goes:
Signal quality
Far better than the Nokia 6120 that I replaced this with, the StarTac works well, indoors and out. Sound quality is fine, and it doesn't seem to have the same interference problems as my previous phones have had.
Size
This thing is small and light. That's kind of a good thing (not uncomfortable to haul around) and kind of a bad thing (pretty easy to forget it at home in the morning.) When it's flipped out, you can kind of cradle it on your shoulder, but most people complain that they can't hear me when I do that.
Controls and menus
The controls and menus are easy to use, once you figure them out. It's not as intuitive as either the Nokia or the previous StarTac I had, but using the three buttons on the side of the phone get you where you need to go.
Vibrator ring
This has a built in vibra-ring option, so that you can be jolted into answering the phone without annoying people around you with the ringing (although they'll be plenty annoyed when you start yakking :-) This is a nice standard feature, although be warned that past experience has shown this type of feature to drain batteries very fast.
Hmm. I guess that's about it. Time to start ragging on them:
Display
I think it's been about five years since I had a phone with a display as archaic as this. Seven (I'll repeat that, SEVEN) character LED display. How useful. I have two friends named Chuck. Each of them has several phone numbers. Know of an easy way to put them in the phone book so that I can quickly differentiate between them? Neither can I. The phone book feature, which is limited by the display, is not particularly useful. (To be fair, if you go over seven letters, it will "flip" pages so that you see all of the text, but it's really unwieldy.)
There is also two little meters that show signal and battery strength, both of which turn off to preserve battery life if you leave the phone open for long.
Unlike the Nokia, the StarTac doesn't integrate Caller ID with your phone book, so you don't see the names of who's calling (or at least seven letters of their name,) just the phone number.
Belt clip
This has a "holster" belt clip that holds the phone fine. However, the nitwit that designed it puts a handy plastic tab right over the power adapter plug. Bottom line with that little design flaw is that you can't plug in the phone while it's in its holder. Which means you've got the phone over here, the holster over there, your belt over there, etc. etc. From what I can see of the holster, this plastic tab isn't needed to hold the phone in place, so if I was keeping this for any length of time, I'd probably break it off to avoid the problem.
Battery life
Truly poor. If you talk on the phone for more than an hour a day (that's me, personified) the battery will not last you the whole day. You need to plug it in every night, whether you use it during the day or not. Leaving it on while plugged in slows down the charge, although it fills back up reasonably quickly.
Accessories
If I'm paying $200 for a phone (under a contract,) I think it would be nice to include at least a DC car power adapter. I guess that the guys at Motorola don't think so. This comes with phone, AC adapter, belt clip and (oddly enough) a UK power adapter. I don't know that this phone would work in the UK, given the different cellular systems, so that last item is something of a mystery to me.
There is a plethora of other junk you can buy for this (charging stand, longer life batteries, headphones, etc.)
Conclusion
On the whole, this isn't a horrible phone, but it is severely lacking in the display department, and dragging around extra batteries is about the only way someone like me is going to get much use out of the phone.
Someone who uses the phone very sparingly and who has the memory of an elephant so that they don't need to bother with the phone book feature would probably be okay with this, but let's be honest...for $200, there are much better options available to you.
Update (March 18, 2001)
After three weeks of this thing, I've had enough. I swapped the phone for a new Nokia 6120 (the phone I had replaced this with.) That should say enough about the Motorola StarTac, I guess.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 199.00
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Epinions.com ID:
adjensen
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Member: a.d. jensen
Location: Grand Forks, ND USA
Reviews written: 143
Trusted by: 111 members
About Me:
Now blogging reviews at http://kandsmil.blogspot.com/
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