Motorola V551 - Review

V551

I was using a Sony Ericssion T610 till a few weeks ago. My charger failed and I had to bring out my emergency stash of phones and the only one in there was my new Motorola V 551. Please read my other blog for my review on the T610 http://clrkn.blogspot.com/2005/05/t610-review.html

The motorola V551 looks kinda cool. I like the blue outer cover and the metallic front, it kinda sets it apart from the rest of the flip phones that follow Henry fords policy ("you can have any color as long as its black, every flip phone is metallic) .

The layout of the buttons is like any other flip phone, except I do not understand the use of two buttons that acheive the same function. If I could lay my hands on the guy who designed the user interface for this phone, I would do the world a favor and dispose him.

Do this simple test and you will see what I mean: (this works on the V551, might work on other motorolas, never used one, so do not really know)

1) open the phone
2) press the button to the top left (the screen just above it should read recent)

So the way this is laid out, this button is a selection button... right ?

3) once the button is pressed you will see a list (received calls, dialed calls, notepad etc. etc.)

4) now check out what the button does...

It now automatically becomes an exit button

So if you click the select button, move to dialled called and (by habit and common sense) click the same button, you are back to where to started.

How fuc***g LAME. Given the fact that I am programmer with a little thing called usability stuck in my head, I think motorola should be banned from making anything with a menu from this point on.

The phone also has other issues, when you receive a missed call / message and you decide to ignore it, trouble starts. From that point on, anytime you close your phone, an alert pops up saying you have a missed call or a message. Until you check the received calls section or listen to the message the alert keeps coming back. To me this is crazy, I know who called, I decided to ignore, now why would the phone annoy me ?

Hiding your number is a pain, the menu is stoopid, everything in this phone is crazy.

Think about this, when you want to send a photo to your friend via bluetooth, you would logically select send and then select how you would want to send it ... right. WRONG. On a Motorola send is only for picture messages (the one to send via cingular's network), but hidden below there are two other options, copy and paste, once you select this, then you choose how to send the messages.

Think about this, you are on the phone with someone and they give you a number, normally you key the number in as you are talking and save it right. Not here, coz as soon as the other person hangs up, the screen clears and everything you were typing in, is now history. What is wrong with these people.

The battery life sucks, more so coz they did not manage the features right. On the T610, the bluetooth used to auto shut off, not here, here you do not know what the hell is going on. Well it would not matter, coz you first have to dig through the menu to figure out where blue tooth is.

Overall, I would not recommend this phone to anyone not even my enemy (there is the higher priced killer moto razr for that, that will blow a bigger hole in his pocket). So please stay away, this phone should not even be called a phone. This product has made me cringe so much that I do not think I will ever buy a motorola product EVER again.