Good phone-features hard to use
Written: Oct 11 '99
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Small, good audio quality
Cons: Hard to use features
|
|
|
| eGnome's Full Review: Motorola StarTAC 6500 Cell Phone |
If a small phone is what you want then the StarTac is a great choice. If you want a phone whose features are easy to use then you might want to look elsewhere. Don't get me wrong, I loved my StarTac and I even paid quite a bit for it a few years ago when it was relatively new. I also added the auxiliary battery because I liked having it on for extended periods of time.
PROS: The StarTac is incredibly small even with the larger battery and additional auxiliary battery. It easily fit into my jeans pocket and I never had a problem with any damage to it. The fact that it covered it's own keypad when closed was nice (my current phone the Nokia 6120 doesn't and it can be a problem). The audio quality of the phone was fantastic and I especially liked the handy buttons on the side to adjust the volume while using the phone. I had two different service providers for the phone (Bell Atlantic first, then I switched to Comcast Cellular One), and found that the network made more of a difference in the audio quality than the phone. The keys on the side of the phone (one of which they call the Smart Button I think) were handy for scrolling through the directory and for adjusting volume. The phone was also designed to fit nicely into your hand such that you could hold it and dial all with one hand (nice when driving and I know I shouldn't be dialing my phone when I'm driving). The phone also proved to be very durable and a surprising bonus was the fact that it had quite a good resale value. I used the phone for 3 years and was able to sell it for about 60% of what I paid for it - not bad for 3 years of use.
CONS: I found the features of this phone to be very hard to use. For instance it was very tedious to enter names and numbers into the directory so after my initial entry of numbers into the directory I found that I never added or deleted numbers again because it was too cumbersome. Although the keys on the side of the phone were handy for adjusting volume and searching the directory, I found, to my dismay, that they also functioned when the phone was closed. I would frequently carry the phone in a fanny pack and the buttons would get pressed causing the volume to be adjusted to the lowest setting. Of course the volume control also corresponds to the volume of the ringer not just the volume of the conversation so I would frequently not hear the phone ringing and I would miss a call. The phone had many other features, but again I found them non-intuitive so very rarely used them.
OVERALL: I liked the phone, and at the time it was the best phone available. Since you can get it much cheaper (sometimes free) now I would still recommend it for an analog plan especially if you want a small phone. However, if you like fancy features then I would look elsewhere (such as a Nokia phone). I have since gotten rid of my StarTac due to the siren calls of digital cellular. I went with the Nokia 6120 which I absolutely love and I will probably write up an epinion on that phone too. I haven't tried any of the digital StarTacs so maybe they have simplified the features with the availability of a LCD display versus the 6500 LED display.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
eGnome
|
|
Location: Red Bank, NJ
Reviews written: 51
Trusted by: 172 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.