The ClarityLife's slider mechanism moves up and down easily, but it's a bit looser than we'd prefer. Also, because of the phone's size, it can be difficult to close the phone with one hand. Another design quirk is that phone's battery makes it rather bottom heavy, particularly when the ClarityLife is open.
On the back of the phone is a large, red emergency button. Luckily, it's recessed to protect against any accidental dialing. The volume buttons are on the left spine. Though they could be a little larger, they were easy to find when we were on a call. On the top of the phone are the power button, a shortcut for setting the alarm and a control for locking the navigation keys. There's also a small flashlight, which you can activate by holding down a button. Just be careful you don't press the button accidentally when you're on a call.
Features
The ClarityLife has room for 200 contacts, but you can save only one phone number to each contact. That's rather inconvenient in an era where everyone has multiple phone numbers, so we imagine that you could fill the phone book's capacity pretty quickly. The SIM card holds an additional 250 names, but then you'd have to switch back and forth to make changes. Also, though the ClarityLife comes with nine polyphonic ringtones, it doesn't support ringtone caller ID. There is a vibrate mode, and an orange LED flashes when a call comes in.
The emergency button doesn't call 911 automatically; rather, it sounds an alarm, then calls a list of five user-programmable contacts and sends a text message until you reach someone. A nifty features allows you to change the order of the phone book, so your favorite 10 contacts always appear at the top of the list regardless of alphabetical order. Also, you can program a favorites menu with often used functions.
We were surprised by how many features the ClarityLife offers. Though we suppose that a few applications would come in handy, others seem rather unnecessary. You'll find call forwarding, call waiting, a calculator, a birthday reminder, and a security code option (do we really need that?). You can even choose to withhold your number when you call someone, and you can decide if you want the carrier name to appear on the screen. The ClarityLife also offers text messaging, and you can receive phone book entries via a text message. As we said earlier, it may be more than some people need.
The ClarityLife doesn't come with any customization options beyond a selection of alarm and keypad tones. There are no games or applications, nor is there a wireless Web browser for downloading them.
Performance
We tested the GSM ClarityLife in San Francisco using T-Mobile service. Call quality was decent on the whole. The volume was very loud (up to 20 decibels), so we had no problems hearing our friends, even when the volume was set to the lowest level. On our end voices sounded natural, and we had no static or interference. At times callers sounded a little robotic, but it wasn't a big deal. On their end, callers said we sounded fine, though they could tell we were using a cell phone. Also, they said they phone picked up a bit of background noise. Yet even then, they reported good audio quality.
The ClarityLife has a rated battery life of 2.5 hours talk time. That's pretty low for a GSM phone. We'll report back once we run our tests.
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