AT&T’s Motorola V600 Review: The First Quad-band Phone

AT&T’s Motorola V600 Review: The First Quad-band Phone
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Introduction

Motorola has been in the hit list for its unique clamshell design, and has been a leader in flip flop phone models for ages - indeed Motorola plays a big part in the history of mobile phones. Motorola’s V600 comes to the market with these age-old features intact, but there are some noticeable differences too. In short, AT&T’s Motorola V600 comes with loads of business related features, along with a lot of style options too in order to satisfy the needs of all. Read the full review for more information on the V600.

Design (4 out of 5)

Motorola V600 mobile

From the outside, the Motorola V600 is very similar and resembles the curved design of the V66 model. The phone has a compact design measuring 87.5 x 47 x 22.5 mm in dimension and small enough to fit into your pocket easily, yet large enough to find in the dark.

On the front flip sits a double lined monochrome display of 96x32 pixels, displaying all the necessary information such as date, caller ID, battery life and time. The black over silver colored 4.4 ounce flip-flop Motorola V600 does not come with an innovative design and layout, but is packed with plenty of features to complement any lifestyle. The face of the V600 contains the lens of the camera and a small mirror for taking self-portraits. Along the left side of the handset are placed two buttons for navigating the menus, adjust volume and changing ring tones. The right side of the phone contains a key for adjusting speakerphone volume.

Opening the V600, reveals a spacious, 8 lined and 65,536 color display in addition to its touch-sensitive, backlit numeric keypad. There sits a four-way rocker key featuring one-push function, along with a silver OK button in the middle. The navigation key is surrounded by five other buttons including two soft keys, the Talk and End keys and another button featuring one-touch access to the menus.

User Interface (4 out of 5)

There has been a lot of confusion regarding the user interface of Motorola V600. To make it simple, the V600 UI isn’t great, but nonetheless operative and user-friendly. However, in some cases it might feel a bit slow. Improving the user interface could have made this feature-rich phone more acceptable and pleasing.

Features (4 out of 5)

The Motorola V600 being the first quad-band GSM phone, is capable of operating anywhere GSM is located and that is what makes it to the hit list. The basic features of the V600 includes an internal phone book that can hold 1000 names and an additional 250 names on the SIM card, caller ID, voice-activated dialing, calculator, voicemail, alarm clock, a to-do list, text and multimedia messaging, currency converter and wireless Web access. The phone is further sported with a built-in VGA digital camera that can take pictures in MMS, medium and high modes.

Screen: The V600 mobile phone is designed with two screen displays, the external being a blue color double-lined LCD monochrome display, as mentioned earlier. The internal display features an 8 lined 65,000 176 x 220 pixels TFT screen. The internal display is large enough to view pictures or browse the web. The screen savers, games and backgrounds are as bright and brilliant as is expected.

Audio: The Motorola’s V600 can play up to twenty-four synchronous instruments as ring tones. The ring tones in the V600 model are good enough to attract consumers and can play MP3s as well. Even though, the phone is lacking in voice recording, the audio features are very good.

Features of the Motorola V600 - Continued

Messaging: The Motorola V600 mobile phone supports all the major messaging options, such as SMS, MMS and EMS. Additionally, the phone can connect IMAP4, SMTP and POP3 clients to the phone too. The mostly used T9 texting standard is replaced by the Motorola’s Lexicus Software iTAP in its V600 model. You can essentially create texts easily with the help of automatic recognition features for probable words as you insert the letters.

Entertainment: You can give a personal touch to your V600 phone by changing its backgrounds, ring tones and screen savers. The phone further supports Video Playback in H.263 and MPEG4 formats. The handset features the J2ME gaming platform and comes preloaded with many games. You can also download and install hundreds of other games from the web, some of which are free while others require purchasing. The Motorola V600 mobile phone is sports many other useful apps in addition to these, such as voice-control, an alarm clock and organizer, a clock and a calculator. The handset also includes the TrueSync software and you can manage your calendar or arrange contacts in your PC via Bluetooth or data cable.

Storage: The V600 mobile phone is sported with an internal memory of 5MB, which is spacious enough to stock emails, ring tones, text messages, games and backgrounds. The phone, however, does not have the facility to expand SD and MMC cards.

Connectivity: The Motorola V600 is featured with Bluetooth so that you can easily connect wireless adapters, headsets or other wireless devices to your V600 smartly. In addition, you can synchronize between your mobile phone and PC with the help of the TrueSync software. Be it email, or transfer of games or pictures, the V600 offers easy and fast connectivity. However, the phone does not contain infrared.

Internet: You can browse the web with the built-in WAP 2.0 browser along with xHTML support in V600. The phone further supports Class 10 (4+2) wireless Web access using AT&T’s wireless high speed GPRS, that helps in faster transfer rates in Motorola V600 mobile phone.

Performance (4 out of 5)

The keypad for some of the numbers needs a little more pressure than you would expect. Also, the keys on the Motorola V600 have a delayed response. The phone has further drawbacks, such as slow scrolling of page down feature, it also supports video playback but cannot record any footage. Despite all of these cons, the V600 is still a decent mobile phone, with a great screen and voice dialing, a good camera with nice resolution, and enough memory, great ringtones and very good software. Additionally, the battery life is quite impressive with a rated talk time of 3.5 hours and standby time of 5.8 days.

The Verdict (4 out of 5)

Cons aside, the Motorola V600 has loads of pros in serving business users pleasingly, along with customizable style. However, at $299 with a two-year contract, the price is towards the high side, especially when you consider smartphones that are available at far cheaper price.

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