The C139 comes with a tiny phone book that holds just 100 contacts. Though that may be sufficient for many prepaid users, it's pretty small if you're popular, particularly since each entry holds just one phone number. The SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts, but we were hoping for more space since many people have multiple phone numbers. There are no caller groups, and you can't assign individual ring tones to specific callers. Other features were minimal, but you get most of the essentials, including a vibrate mode, speed dialing, text messaging, a calculator, a currency converter, a stopwatch, a calendar with a day and week views, and an alarm clock. The only thing we really missed was a speakerphone, which is an increasingly common feature even on the most basic phones.
You can personalize the C139 with a small selection of wallpapers and screensavers. There's no wireless Web browser, so you can't download any new options if you tire of what comes on the phone. Yet you can compose your own ring tones if you want more choices beyond the included 20 monophonic melodies. Surprisingly, the C139 comes with three simple games (Spring Ball, Soccer, and Maze) but gameplay can be a little tedious on such a small display. A final offbeat feature is that you can use the display as a light for moments when you're lost in the dark.
We tested the dual-band (GSM 850/1900) in San Francisco using Cingular's service. Call quality was decent overall with few patchy moments and little interference. We also had no trouble getting a signal. Occasionally voices sounded a bit echoed and the volume may be too low for some users. On their end, callers could understand us plainly, and they could hear us in a variety of environments.
Motorola promises length battery life with the C139: up to 11 hours of talk time and up to 18.75 days of standby time. In our tests, we managed to get an astonishing 11.5 hours of talk time. According to FCC
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