A great excuse to constantly visit a sexy phone repair person of the opposite sex.
Written: Apr 20 '02 (Updated Apr 20 '02)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
| Clarity: |
 |
|
| Portability: |
 |
|
| Battery Life: |
|
|
|
Pros: Packed with tons of features
Cons: Unreliable, sound and signal strength could be better.
The Bottom Line: Luxury-car features outweighed by Hugo-like reliability.
|
|
|
| eharri3's Full Review: Motorola StarTAC ST7868W Cell Phone |
Let me start by saying I share some of the same experiences of many who have owned this phone. That is to say, I am on my third replacement and first repair, only restrained from trying another model by the fact that Verizon would make me pay for it, as opposed to free replacements of my Startac for the life of the 1 year warranty. That warranty, by the way, could very well be the feature you'll make the most use of on this phone.
Of course, that kind of opening statement can't have you very enthusiastic about the phone. And it shouldn't, at least in my opinion. No matter how incredible it seems, just remember the fact that you will not be reimbursed for time and gas money for repeated trips to your local Veriozon store for replacement phones. My first phone wouldn't stop buzzing constantly during calls and suffered from a lower than advertised battery life. With the replacement, once I turned on the vibrate function it was permanently on whether the vibrate function was switched on or off. Heck, it even vibrated continuously when the phone wasn't on, which as you can imagine, was very fun at parties and elicited the expected joking comments from my friends. "Hey, you don't even need a girlfriend when your cell phone doubles as a vibrator 24 hours a day, seven days a week!"
I replaced that phone with yet another, which in turn had to be repaired yet again yesterday. Apparently, according to the service tech, it had bad software on it that sometimes made it impossible for it to find a signal for placing or receiving calls. After a five-minute download of a new program from his PC, I was on my way. So here I am, with my newly repaired third phone. When I asked the repair guy if he gets an awful lot of Startac ST78S8W's back, prompted by the fact that 3 other people were having theirs repaired at the same time that I was, his response was "Yeah but that's only 'cause we sell so many." Yeah, right.
Call quality is only So-So. I've had a few dropped calls and I can sometimes hear static and echos. Overall, it's not as good as one might expect for such an expensive phone. I've seen much cheaper phones that had better sound quality.
Lest you think I'm just a grumpy pessimist, I have to admit that the phone does have excellent features for its price, which was for me $49.99 with a new service plan. It includes built in text messaging, internet browsing, an integrated head phone jack, and fax capabilities. It can search for signals on both an analog and a digital band so that you're less likely to be unable to find a signal or have a call dropped. Technically, there are 99 slots in the phone book. However, if you consider the fact that each slot has four spaces for the subject's home and work number, email, and mobile phone number, then it's really 396. This feature of having specific slots for a person's different numbers is very convenient in that you don't have to waste time and multiple phone book spaces typing in Ben cell, Ben home, Ben mobile, etc...Simply scroll to their name in the phone book and find all their contact information under one heading. IF you ever need to download those numbers to an external source such as a PC, the phone will allow you to that too.
The key to making use of this phone's features is the function key on the key pad and the three buttons on the side. The cool thing is that you can access the main menu and get to the functions using either of these ways, by pressing the middle of the three buttons on the side and then using the other two to scroll up and down or pressing function-1. Many of the options on the main menu can also be accessed by pressing the function button and other keys on the key pad. You can lock the phone, put it on vibrate, mute calls, switch to analog only, or do a number of other things in this way. So the features are easy to figure out if you use these two tips, and most of them can be accessed in 2 ways.
If you like playing games such as snake, you'll have to go get a Nokia or something else. As the sales lady said when she was trying to stroke my ego when she initially pushed this phone to me, the Startacs are more serious phones marketed to important people more likely to use them for business. So you'll find no childish frills here.
It really is a shame. This phone is such a marvel of technology in a tight, compact, easy to use package. But they can't seem to build one that can out last its warranty. If I had the choice to make again, I'd trade away some features and gizmos for a phone that isn't so trouble-prone.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 49.99
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
eharri3
|
 - Top 500 |
|
Member: edward harris
Location: Philadelphia, Pa
Reviews written: 198
Trusted by: 83 members
About Me:
Anybody notice all these bugs always pop up right when it's time to distribute earnings?
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.