Summary Honestly, I bought this phone out of looks alone.. that and the RAZR I wanted was out of stock, but I'm extremely happy with this phone and feel very good that I've not chosen to go the way of the bandwagon RAZR users. Now, going back to my ... Expand full review
Summary: Honestly, I bought this phone out of looks alone.. that and the RAZR I wanted was out of stock, but I'm extremely happy with this phone and feel very good that I've not chosen to go the way of the bandwagon RAZR users. Now, going back to my blind purchase, I handled the phone for a good 20 seconds without really knowing what it can do and decided to purchase it right on the spot. Now that I've had it for a couple days I figured I could share my (rather short) experience with it.
This phone is your typical clamshell design and rather light weight. When folded down it displays a green 4-shade OLED screen with time, date, whos calling, signal strength, song, title, whether vibrate is on or off and other various icons. Sidenote on the external OLED, I'm not all that positive, but some phones may or may not have a blue colored OLED, mine is green. The outside phone is very prone to fingerprints since it has a glossy coat, but the vertical display is really something different. There is no external antenna (internal only) and also has plugs for charging, head set/phone jack (2.5mm), volume keys, a speaker phone key and USB support for transfer of files like MP3s for it's audio use.
When opening the phone you will find that the directional keys are locked to specific programs functions. Only the down key can be changed (default is calender). The buttons are nicely raised and large so if you have big hands (like me) you will find using this phone is easy and enjoyable. There are 2 extra buttons alongside the directional keys. The left one is your camera/camcorder and the right one is your voice activated dialing.
Despite what many sites keep saying, you CAN download ringtones from Verizon's library and other various places. There's rumor of a trick you can do with Bluetooth involving transferring files from your PC (like mp3s) and using them as ringtones, but I haven't done it myself. This phone seems to be the one that many will want to really enjoy the V-Cast service Verizon offers. This truly may be the all in one media phone.
Sadly after buying this phone I realized that I could not fully use this phone's worth and still have to buy a MicroSD card to hold my MP3s. As well as a seperate USB cable to transfer music AND headphones that specifically fit the kind of headphone jack the phone has. All that is probably an extra $80 at least just to experience all the capabilities this phone has to offer. Oh well! I'll need those items sooner or later anyway.
The battery life.. is.. eh.. so so. Aside from the full charge I gave it 3 days ago, I've talked on it several times, downloaded numerous items and left it on standby and the battery has dropped to about 40%. I'm afraid how fast it'll drop when I begin using the mp3 player.
Regardless of it all I still enjoy using this phone and am satisfied with my blind purchase.
Updated
I got so caught up in talking about the actual phone that I forgot to add my opinion on how it functions when taking actual calls, ha. Well, in my area (a rather small city or town) I've had very poor results with other companies. I've been through Virgin Mobile pre-paids, Boost Mobile pre-paids, Cingular paid and pre-paids and it just felt like the quality was sub par. Not to mention that living with aluminum siding didn't help with reception at all with those older phones. I've made several calls on this phone (indoors and out) and every single call was as clear as it could possibly be. It was like the person was standing right next to me (or, I suppose as clear as a landline to landline connection). Very nice.
