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- My rating: 0 stars
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10 out of 14 people found this review helpful
3.5 stars
"Good basic phone but not the best"
Pros: Thin, fast, easy to use. Looks fantastic
Cons: Camera while fast isn't up to par, Some glaring design flaws.
Summary: I just opened the box and activated the phone. Comparing it to an LG VX8300. I took a few pictures and noticed how much brighter the pictures from the LG 8300VX are. Much brighter. I thought this might be attributed to taking a higher resolution pic with the Maxx but that wasn't it as I changed it to be the same. The LG is simply a clearer and brighter picture.
Now for the kicker. You can't take pictures with the phone closed. With the much less expensive LG 8300VX you just push the camera button on the side and take pictures. No such thing with the Motorola Maxx VE. You have to open the phone. How could Motorola put music buttons on the outside but no button for the camera? Huge mistake.
I bought this phone with the hopes that for routine pics, I could just use the phone. The pictures are very good, don't get me wrong but they aren't up to the quality of the LG and not being able to take a picture without opening the phone just makes everything not worth while.
The other serious design flaw is the little cover for the charger/USB slot. It's very flimsy and will easily get pulled off. Furthermore, it's on the side near the bottom and has sharp edges. What were they thinking? Put the thing on the bottom and then it won't snag on clothing. Men might not care but I bet women will quickly find this a problem.
The overall design is nice and this phone looks as good as anything out there and better than most but these design flaws keep it from being a keeper.
The call quality is good and connecting to a Plantronics Bluetooth headset went smoothly. The sound is very clear.
The menus have been given a slight revamp fro the standard VZW modes, nice. The camera menus are very easy to use and eliminate most redundant button presses. The features of the camera modes work very well.
The phone has lots of capacity for storing pictures and videos so that is a real plus. That gets us to expansion memory. To access the memory slot you must turn off the phone, remove the cover and battery. This makes absolutely no sense. Unless you can very quickly and easily transfer pictures to your PC wirelessly, then you should be able to just pop the memory card out of a slot and do it that way. This starts to show that Motorola just rested on it's laurels instead of really taking some time to make the phone easy to use.
I don't mean to complain here too much but it does seem like form over function took all the design resources.
This is a usable phone but much less expensive phones are much easier to use. If Motorola just paid a little attention to some very glaring design flaws, this would have been a near perfect phone. As it is, while being a good phone, I'd have to rate it as a basic model, not a high end product. For the money, you have a right to expect some very simple consideration to how people actually use a phone as opposed to just making it look good.Updated
Okay, the camera's indoor performance is much less in quality than even medium priced LG phones. This is common with Motorola phones though. While the 2 megapixels is nice, the indoor shots are not all that clear and get grainy if there isn't a lot of light, even with the flash on. The flash BTW is about the brightest I ever seen on a mobile phone.
A real nice feature is the flashing Bluetooth indicator light on the closed face of the phone. The problem with it is that it flashes for just a few seconds and then goes off. A very small flashing BT indicator can't use that much power, keep it flashing or don't put it there!
Before all the comments come in, I did try the various brightness settings for the display, the photo quality just isn't as good as an LG 8300VX and that is the way it is.
I do have to say that the keypad is a joy to use. Very tactile and fast. This is one of the better keypads made; like IBM keyboards, there probably isn't much better.
In summary, if you want looks and don't care much about the camera functions, this might be a good choice but why buy a 2 megapixel phone if not to make use of the camera?Updated
Those nice music player buttons at the top of the outside of the display (rear of the hinge at the top?) Well every time you go to pull this out of a pocket guess what button is going to get pressed? Now this usually wouldn't be an issue except for one thing. If you are using a Bluetooth headset, every time you hit that button you get a tone in your ear. Annoying for sure.
There really is no way not to hit that button if you try to take the phone out of a pocket; you reach in and grab the phone and that button gets pressed. I tried in a shirt pocket, front pocket and then in a side pocket of a pair of carpenter style jeans. You know, the small pocket that is on the side? Putting it in or taking it out, that button gets pressed.
This might be nit-picking but this is not a 50 or 100 dollar phone. Did Motorola do any usability testing on this before just shoving it out the door?
The buttons you need most it doesn't have (external for the camera) and the buttons it has get pressed when you don't need them (external hinge music buttons). That button would have been perfect for operating the camera and at first that is what I thougt is was.
How about a firmware fix that lets the user map the buttons to a function? At least that way you'll get easier access to the camera although pictures from the inside of your pocket might not be what you had in mind.
I tried to connect the MAXX VE to a laptop using a USB cable but without buying additional software from Verizon, there is no way to make the connection. You can connect via Bluetooth but if you are away from that computer and just want to off-load some pictures with a cable, forget it. Dumb, very dumb. If you need that software, it should at least be included right?
So, sorry to say, this phone goes back. For all it's great looks, it just doesn't live up to the promise and that is Motorola's fault. You can only squeeze so much customer loyalty out of the Razr design. Just a few things which could easily have been taken care of at design time and this phone would have no equal.
Like the american auto industry, you have to ask why they can't seem to stop running downhill. It's almost as if they want to fail.
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