Motorola V360 (T-Mobile)

Pros: Good voice quality, triband, decent camera, bluetooth, a bright clear screen. Seems sturdy and reception is excellent; I work in a concrete box and it never drops calls.

Cons: MP3 player fails, in functionality, quality, and equipment. It was clearly designed by a team with no understanding whatsoever of music players, likely to avoid stealing sales from the ROKR.

Summary: I bought the V360 as a replacement for my aging Nokia 3300, after trying and returning a Nokia 6620. The only alternative left may be a ROKR, but it's targeted at people half my age, and I'm leery of iTunes and DRM, and after the V360 experience I doubt Motorola know what they're doing.

Where the V360 falls down is every place the 3300 shone:
- V360: No earphones, so add $40 to buy a set which are all midrange. 3300: shipped with decent full-range stereo phones.
- V360: No transflash card, so add $70 to buy a 256M, which is all I could get, transflash being the newest format. 3300: shipped with 64M MMC, easily upgraded as 1G MMCs are readily available.
- V360: no USB cable, and though it has a standard port, no file access from Windows or Linux, due to lack of drivers. 3300: shipped with USB cable, appears as standard USB drive under Windows & Linux.
- V360: No equalizer, no balance, not even bass/treble, so tinny midrange sound. 3300: 5-band user-defined EQ with presets and balance.
- V360: had to map the left-side soft button to music player app. 3300: dedicated music button brings up music menu.
- V360: no volume control when closed (using standard player; Java player works, but is clunky and slow) 3300: dedicated volume control buttons.
- V360: max music volume barely adequate. 3300: max music volume quite excessive, but still distortion-free.
- V360: no internal FM radio (eternal option). 3300: FM radio with auto-scan, presets, you can name stations, etc.
- V360: both player programs force you to create and namea playlist, sorting songs from ringtones, before playing. 3300: just plays whatever MP3s you've put in the Music/ dir on it; playlists are optional, though you have to use a text editor or Nokia's software to make them.
V360: no way to skip songs while playing closed; button on headphones tries to send the file to someone, which a message chides you that you're not allowed to do. 3300: headphone button skips to next song.
V360: playing music in the background rearranges home screen keys; Pressing "hang up" kills player. 3300: home screen works normally; press and hold "hang up" for 2 seconds to kill player.
V360: number keys 1-7 set volume... 3300: number keys jump directly to tracks.

I must admit I'm truly disapointed by this phone, the more so since the lack of available accessories meant I couldn't test it until after my provider's buyers' remorse period had passed.