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- Average user rating: 3.0 stars out of 148 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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17 out of 17 people found this review helpful
3.5 stars
"Ample features and a low cost means a good phone... as long as it's not sunny outside."
Pros: Cheap, EDGE enabled, MP3 ringtones, Changeable faceplates, Records video, No external antenna, Good reception, Voice dialing, External color display
Cons: Substandard display, Poor power management, Mediocre amount of memory, Not the best quality camera, Very limited pre-installed games/ apps/ themes/ ringtones
Summary: This is the current Wal-Mart of flip phones. It has almost everything, it?s pretty inexpensive, but the quality you get isn?t necessarily the best around.
First off, if you want to get the most out of your Z500, I suggest picking up the USB data cable from Cingular for about 25 bucks. There?s no Bluetooth or IR support so the only other option is email, if you don?t mind paying the extra per-month or per-use charges. Personally, I have no use for either IR or Bluetooth on a phone so the data cable works out great for me. With the data cable you can chop up as much of your MP3 library as you want for use as your ringtones, make your own themes with the SE Theme Creator, or download custom wallpapers to your phone without having to pay any sort of service charge.
Having the cable also helps alleviate the problem of the mediocre amount of memory. After deleting all the non-protected content on my phone, it showed that there was about 6.6 Megs free. I really can?t complain too much since this is right at or slightly above average among similar phones. If you're careful about what ends up on your phone (like only using relatively short and low quality mp3s) and if you don't plan on permanently storing all of your pictures, ringtones, and videos on there, you should be fine. Realistically speaking, expect to be able to carry about 25 pictures, 3-4 minutes of video, and a few mp3 ringtones at a time. That?s not bad yet it would have been nice to have a bit more memory taking into account how multimedia-centric this phone is and also considering that the phone initially only comes with four themes, one application, and two barely playable demo version games.
One of the bigger issues with this phone is the display SE chose to use. Because the phone is slightly on the bulky side, the display may seem smaller than some others but in fact, the size and resolution are on par with comparable phones. It's simply the type that is used that causes the major problems. The Z500a has a CSTN display rather than any sort of active matrix type. While the 'crispness' of the display seems lacking, the biggest drawback is how bright it is... or rather isn't. Indoors you're more or less fine but if you take this phone outside on a relatively sunny day, it's next to impossible to see the display at all. Without the backlight on, the displays are slightly visible in bright sunlight when held at just the right angle, however while indoors, at best it will look like an image has been burnt into the display. For all intents and purposes, you won?t be able to use the phone without the backlight and you also shouldn?t plan on using it outside too much.
While generally speaking, the software on the Z500a works well and is fairly intuitive, there are a few aspects that just make it seem that it was designed in a sloppy or rushed manner. Many of the purely aesthetic aspects of the phone are highly customizable but there are a few functional options that I really wish had been included. For example, you can pick a 'screensaver' (usually an animated GIF) that will come on after about 25 seconds of inactivity however, there's no way to change how long that delay is before it comes on. Even worse, 5 seconds after the screensaver starts, a huge ugly black and white digital clock takes over both of the displays and there is absolutely no way of disabling this ?feature?. This means you will never see your screensaver for more than 5 seconds at a time and there?s no options for fixing this. Also missing is any sort of real control over how long the backlight and/or displays remain on before turning off to save power. Instead, there are just four choices given to you for controlling the backlight: Always Off (which pretty much renders the phone useless and begs the question of why that option even exists), Always On (which will drain your battery in no time), Automatic, and Power Save. As far as I know, the only difference between the Automatic and Power Save modes is the fact that in Power Save, the displays will actually turn off rather than just the backlights.
Besides the lack of options, there?s one other problem with the power conservation. If one display is on, the other one is ALWAYS on as well... or at least its backlight is. It's absolutely ridiculous that the phone operates this way. This means that if you set your option to have the displays' backlights Always On, then even when the phone is closed, both the external display and the internal display are on all the time. Even in Power Save and Automatic mode, when you close the phone, the internal display doesn't turn off until the external one does. Then when you have the phone open, the external display is always lit up but shows nothing but a black screen. This is a complete waste of battery life and pretty much makes the Always On option useless unless your phone is plugged into the charger more often than it's not.
There are a few more quirks that become noticeable after a period of use. The +/- buttons on the side of the phone don't do what I'd expect them to most of the time. Unless you're in certain option pages or in a call, all these buttons do is bring up the status page for the phone or let you voice-dial someone. Maybe I'm crazy, but I'd expect them to adjust the ringer volume... which is something that's buried in the setup menus instead. The camera isn't the best quality, more like a webcam from about 4-5 years ago. My attempts to use the sound recorder app have produced nothing but rather quiet, very low quality clips. The main display seems to get dirty very easily for some reason. You can only set one one-time alarm and one recurrent alarm at a time. The main call log seems to incorrectly sort some calls, usually the more recent ones. Finally, there are one or two sound alerts that you can't customize.
One of the things I did really like about the Z500 is the 'Style Up Covers', which is apparently SE speak for changeable front and back faceplates. To my knowledge, this isn?t very common among flip phones. I like that if the front cover gets scratched up too much, it doesn't mean that the camera will forever be blurred or that the external display will be hard to read. It just means I have to swap out the faceplates... that is if you can find somewhere that sells the covers for this phone. Unfortunately, the lack of available faceplates isn't what turns this feature into a potential drawback. The covers are extremely hard to get off the phone at first. Both the phone's instruction manual and the instruction card that came with the covers we received say, "You may need to apply significant pressure the first time you remove the cover". This is by far one of the biggest understatements I've ever come across. It literally felt like I was going to break the phone in two just so I could have a blue phone instead of a gray one. In fact, it appears that my phone has a lot more ?wiggle? about the hinge ever since I changed the faceplate. It felt very sturdy and well built when I first got it but now it just seems a little flimsy.
Setting aside these quirks and drawbacks, this phone really does have some attractive features and some good qualities. Like I mentioned before, the biggest lure was probably the cost. Fifty bucks for two phones and two faceplates isn't that bad. Another standout feature is the fact that the Z500a is EDGE enabled, which means it's capable of sending and receiving data at much faster rates than most phones out there right now. Also, it's nice that there's no external antenna to get caught in my pocket or jab me in the hip when I sit down. Instead, there?s an internal antenna buried within the hinge. Being able to use MP3s for my ringtones has been great and the ringer volume has thus far been more than loud enough. The length of videos you record is limited only by the amount of free memory rather than an arbitrary number of seconds like on other phones. The speakerphone function works decently aside from the fact that you have to wait until your call goes through before you can turn it on. The voice-dial is pretty reliable. Several of the buttons can be linked to pretty much any menu on the phone. The menus themselves are easy to navigate and the file manager is well thought out. Being able to use an animated GIF for the main background picture is pretty nifty. The external display works well when receiving a call and features picture caller ID. Last but not least, after two months of use I've had no problems with the sound quality and only a few problems with reception, but that is most likely an issue with the network rather than the phone. I have yet to find a place where my signal strength wasn't great.
If it weren?t for the handful of unforgivable design flaws this could be an incredible phone at a remarkable price. If you don?t care about all the features and just want a phone that?s extremely well built, well thought out, and well designed, you might look at a different brand of flip phone instead. And despite the ability to email and surf the web at record speeds with the EDGE technology, this is just not the phone for a serious business user, although it does seem to synchronize well with Outlook. However, if a tight budget is your biggest concern but you?re really interested in being able to personalize how your phone looks and sounds, the Z500a should satisfy you without leaving you feeling like you ended up with a phone that?s behind the times.
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