Motorola C332

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cnet editors' rating 6.6/10 Good Editorial policies >>
average user rating from 55 users 3.3/10 Poor Read user opinions >>

Product summary

The good: Affordable; solid audio quality; configurable shape.

The bad: Volume control isn't located on the side; display may be too small for some.

The bottom line: With the C332, Motorola offers equal portions of compactness and affordability.

Specs: Carrier: T-Mobile; Band / mode: GSM 850/1900 (Dual Band); Talk time: Up to 270 min See full specs >>

See all products in the Motorola C series

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Reviewed by: William Flanagan

Reviewed on 6/10/03 Choosing a cell phone can be a big undertaking, especially if you're looking for the right balance of size, price, and features. You'd like good audio quality and advanced features such as downloadable ring tones and games, but you don't want to lose an arm and a leg in the process. Lacking the flash of a color screen, Motorola's C332 isn't ideal, but it does take a good swipe at hitting the nexus of features and affordability.

Design of Motorola C332

At 2.82 ounces and 4.2 by 1.8 by 0.9 inches, the silvery Motorola C332 is an attractively styled phone that weighs just enough to feel good in your hand, but it's not so heavy that it loads down your pockets. Its 96x64-pixel screen can show five lines of text and has an extra row for icons. Unlike the more recent C350, the C332 is monochrome and displays only four shades of gray.

The C332 weighs a bit more than the candy bar but it is much less likely to melt in your pocket.

Presto change-o: Customize the C332's looks with optional faceplates.

As for ergonomics, the C332 fares well overall, save one flaw: The volume control isn't located on the side of the phone. The mobile's buttons are raised enough to make it easy to dial on the fly. But as with most candy bar-style phones, you'll want to activate the keypad-lock feature; otherwise, you might find yourself accidentally launching the browser or making calls when the Motorola is in your front pocket. A four-way rocker switch sits below the screen and gives easy access to menu items such as the Media Center, where you can use the Picture Viewer and the MotoMixer (more on that in Features). Two buttons next to the rocker let you select items or back out of menus.

As with the C350, Motorola takes a step beyond simple customization by letting you reconfigure the phone using a smartly designed casing that changes the mobile's shape--not just the color.

Features of Motorola C332

Rock on: The four-way rocker lets you roll through menu selections.

The C332 has the usual bells and whistles, including caller ID, voice dialing, a calculator, a call log, a calendar, and a few games (Astrosmash, MotoGP, and Snood 21). You can store 100 phone-book entries in the mobile's internal memory or add 250 more names with a SIM card. This is especially useful if you have more than one favorite phone or if, for example, your company has a pool of GSM mobiles.

The Motorola has a vibrate mode and supports as many polyphonic tones as you can download into this model's 200K of allotted memory. Like the C350, the C332 lets you customize or remix tones using the aforementioned MotoMixer, which allows you to add bass or drums to a tone and mix your own beats. Since this feature is particularly appealing to budding DJs, we enlisted DJ Skip to mix a tune on the company's Web site. You can listen to it here. But that's not all; you can download additional ring tones, wallpaper, and screensavers.

Performance of Motorola C332

Shrinking size: The C332 comes with a smaller than average charger.

We tested the phone (GSM 850/1900) in New York City and San Francisco using T-Mobile service and found call quality to be quite good. We always managed to get a signal, and callers said they could hear us just fine.

In our battery-life tests, the C332 gave us 150 hours of standby time, which is in the 110-to-250-hour range that Motorola touts. But we squeaked by with only 120 minutes of talk time--well short of the 190-minute rating but on a par with that of other color-display phones.

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3.3/10
Average user rating from 55 users
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Write your own review How would you rate this product?
5/10 Average
March 11, 2005

by peacock_king (see profile)

"an ok phone that just doesn't have too much life" Read more >>
4/10 Mediocre
February 3, 2005

"Disposable Phone" Read more >>
1/10 Abysmal
January 12, 2005

"don't waste your pennies" Read more >>
2/10 Terrible
January 12, 2005

"What a hunk a junk!" Read more >>
1/10 Abysmal
December 8, 2004

"the worst phone i have owned in 10 years." Read more >>
1/10 Abysmal
November 27, 2004

"Absolute JUNK!!!!!!!" Read more >>
10/10 Perfect
November 17, 2004

"I'm a little person with a little phone! Love it!" Read more >>
5/10 Average
October 25, 2004

"Bad Software denies use" Read more >>
5/10 Average
October 25, 2004

"Weird" Read more >>
3/10 Poor
October 16, 2004

"little phone little quality" Read more >>
Write your own review See all 55 user opinions >>