Well, it's been another month, and I have discovered a few additional small items about the V400. They are relatively minor, but unfortunately most fall into the "annoying" category for me. Since I am stuck with the phone on a contract, I still like the phone, but Motorola has some work to do if they plan on staying competitive in this crazy cell phone market.
My latest observations:
1) Since I originally wrote this review, I have not had the charging issues or random power-off problem. I have been super careful when charging to make sure that the phone says that it is charging. I have also observed that the poorly designed charging plug is quite unreliable. If I simply touch the plug when the phone is charging, it loses contact, and the phone stops charging. So I now have to very carefully position the phone, slowly remove my hands from the cord and watch the display as I back away. To a spectator, I'm sure it must look like I'm doing some bizarre ritual, but so far, it seems to do the trick. Unfortunately, this problem also exists for my car charger, where it is alot more difficult to position the phone and keep the plug from moving. (Category = Very Annoying)
2) The voice-dial feature has a limited number of entries--I think around 10. Not a huge deal, since I only voice dial a handful of people, but a potential limitation for some people. (Category = Minor)
3) The phonebook lookup process only allows you to enter the first character of the name. So if you have 15 entries that begin with "S", you can jump to the first "S" in the list, but you must then manually scroll down through the list to find the entry you want. This is annoying to me, since I was used to my old Nokia phone that allowed me to search by entering multiple characters--and 2-3 characters always produced the match I wanted. It was much safer for me to lookup an entry while driving by typing--now it is alot more tedious to lookup an entry. (Category = Moderately Annoying)
4) The "Messages" feature of the phone has surprisingly limited memory capacity. It appears that although they gave the phone a decent amount of memory, each feature has a fixed amount of memory, which puts hard limits on the number of entries you can have for any particular feature (photos, voice memos, voice dial, SMS messages, etc.). In the case of Messages, I got a low memory warning when I had 15 short messages in my inbox, and 8 short messages in my outbox. Since these are simple text messages, it seems that there is very little memory allocated to message storage. (Category = Minor)
5) So far, I have dropped this phone at least 3 times. Twice the belt-clip holster fell off of my belt and the phone dropped onto a hard tile floor. To my surprise, the phone still works fine, and doesn't have any physical damage. I think there is an intermittent crunching sound on the keypad, but everything works fine. The phone did stay in the holster during the fall, so it was somewhat protected, but I am still impressed that it survived two of my clutz events. (Category = Praise!)
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Original Review:
I've had the V400 for two months now, and am regretting that I purchased a Motorola. I've had three Nokias with Cingular in the past with only minor issues (primarily software hangs requiring a 'reboot'), so I'm not very tolerant of the problems I'm experiencing with the V400.
Before I get to the problems, I'll say that I do basically like the phone. It took me a while to switch from the Nokia interface to the rather different Motorola software interface, but now that I'm familiar with its features, shortcuts and quirks, I am enjoying it.
I chose the V400 over other brands and models because it had voice dial that works. My old Nokia 8390 claimed to have voicedial, but was so poor and unreliable as to be useless. So I love the voicedial feature when driving, and the voicedial can be activated with the handsfree headset.
Although I didn't think I would want it or use it, the voice recorder feature has been surprisingly handy. I record notes about books, movies, songs, etc. that I hear about on the radio while driving. This feature can also be controlled by the handsfree headset, but it takes some practice to figure it out.
As for the camera, well, I still think it's relatively useless, but can understand that there may be people that find a poor quality low-resolution image handy for certain things. Unfortunately, even after two hours on the phone with 3 of Cingular's grossly incompetent customer support reps, I am still unable to get Multi-media messaging setup on the phone, so have been unable to send any of the photos to my e-mail address to view them on a computer screen. (It seems that my phone did not come configured to do any messaging or internet operations--I had to dig into all of the arcane setup menus)
On a related note, there doesn't seem to be anyone with Cingular or the retail resellers that knows how to use the V400. The manual that comes with the phone is basically useless. It identifies physical buttons, but does not explain how to use any of the software features or how to configure the phone for additional services. The handsfree button seems to be able to perform quite a few features, but there is no documentation of these features, and nobody seems to know about them (clicking twice on the button will redial your last number, etc.)
The calendar feature is decent. I have used that frequently for reminders and appointments and like its graphical view of a month.
The installed ring tones are minimal and a bit disappointing (only two or three that I would consider ring tones, the rest are more alerts or voicemail notification type tones), but I suppose they do that intentionally to drive sales of add-on ring tones.
Reception and signal strength seems to be better than my Nokia 8390, which I am happy about.
Oh, one feature that I have been very pleasantly surprised with is the built in speaker phone. I've done a few business conference calls now on the speakerphone, and it seems to work great. It's very cool to be able to plop the phone down on a desk and turn the conversation into a conference call with co-workers, and apparently the sound quality at the other end is pretty good. It's also handy when you don't have the handsfree headset and need to type or write, as the phone is very difficult to cradle between your ear and shoulder. Just pop it on speaker, and set it on your desk.
As for the quality issues though, I am very unhappy with the phone's battery and/or charging circuitry. As at least one other reviewer has pointed out, this phone does have serious issues with the battery and charging. The battery meter will show 3 out of 3 bars, but then the phone will all of a sudden turn off. When you attempt to turn the phone on, sometimes it will come on okay, other times it will simply die immediately due to low battery--suddenly flashing a red/dead battery when it comes on, which it definitely did not have prior to shutting off.
I've been on calls twice when this happened, and it has happened once or twice when I was not on a call. At first I thought I was losing my mind, but after two months, I am pretty sure that the phone is not charging properly. This week, I have charged my phone three nights in a row, and each morning, the phone still shows that the charge is not complete (the battery symbol is still blinking with 1 of 3 charge bars). (It normally says "Charge Complete" on the screen after a few hours) So even though it is plugged in, and the phone says Charging on the screen, the battery is apparently not being charged.
The guys at the Cingular store where I bought the phone think I'm making this up, and when they plug it in, it says "Charging", so they say there is nothing wrong with the phone. So if this happens to you, don't expect anyone to believe you or do anything about it.
The only other minor complaint is with the phone software, which has some poor design elements and apparent bugs. For example, when I save a calendar entry, I some times get error messages like "Busy, try again later", even though the entry saved fine. This is trivial, but seems to indicate that their software QA could be improved.
Finally, the Motorola handsfree headsets are terrible in terms of build quality. They work great and sound great, but after a week or two of use, the segment of wire between the microphone and the earbud develops some type of issue that causes the audio to cut out. I'm on my third replacement, and it is developing exact the same problem. If you twist the cable one direction, it works, if you twist the other direction, sound cuts out, as if the wire is so fragile that it breaks after a week of use. I've given up and stopped bothering to replace it, despite the money wasted. I recently bought a Plantronics MX153-M1 instead and am giving that a try. (The Plantronics has pros and cons as well, but seems to be working fine for the time being)
Overall, I do like the phone, and would recommend it except for the battery / charging issue, which I consider a huge flaw for a cell phone. I now know that I cannot rely on the phone to work when I need it, and have yet to figure out how to get it to charge reliably.
Perhaps Motorola has issued a software / firmware patch for this issue, but I have not yet checked, and am very reluctant to deal with the untrained reps at Cingular to even ask. After several hours of being useless trying to help me get Multi-media messaging working, the Cingular rep did eventually give me the supposed customer support number for Motorola, so I'll give them a try when I have another hour or two to waste.
In case anyone else is interested, the Motorola support number is:
1-800-331-6456
If I get any info on a firmware upgrade that fixes the battery charging issue, I'll post a follow up to this review.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 170 w/rebate Recommended for: World Travelers - Works Anywhere and Everywhere!
This unlocked cell phone is compatible with GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile. Not all carrier features may be supported. It will not work with CDMA...More at Amazon Marketplace
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