No Frills Phone (Motorola C115)

Member Name: Ayesha-`

Product:	Motorola C115
Date:	15/01/09 (132 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, easy to use

Disadvantages: Lacks some important features

This a review originally from my Ciao account, that I have attempted to update and improve. I will be making further improvements, so if you rate now, forgive me for possibly pestering you to re-read at some later stage.

***

I have had this phone for absolutely ages now, but admittedly I find it hard to let go of anything. I got it for £20, which included a £10 top-up, on O2. It is cute and my friends seem to adore it, but it is a budget phone, so don't expect much. It has a very small, basic screen (no colour, very basic graphics) with blue backlight - goes quite well actually on a black phone, but obviously nothing special. However, I have had cheap phones that barely lasted in the past, and this one has survived a fair bit, so it is not a false economy type phone that will not work after 2 months.

Calls & sound

The quality of calls is fairly clear, although from time to time people I am talking to have noticed the sound go for a few seconds on their end. I've used it to talk to friends for hours (as girls do) without any major problems in the past. When making calls outside, the air can interfere and sometimes the sound goes, but it is hard to tell whether this is not more to do with reception or the actual handset.

The volume is pretty high, so hearing is not so much of a problem, but as I haven't figured out how to reduce that it can be a problem when there are other people around. For some reason, voicemail is significantly louder, and I have been a little embarrassed a few times when I get a message that goes "hello Ayesh it's mum!!" etc.

Power

The battery is quite old, and it doesn't last too long in talk time. On standby I get a good few days. It beeps to warn you when the battery is low if the sound is on and even then you usually have a good few hours of standby time left to get it on the charger. The regular beeping continues until you either switch it off or charge it, which I find really annoying, although I can appreciate why this is very useful.

Keys

I liked the keypad because it is fairly easy to use. I get a bit confused with the buttons sometimes but mostly because the buttons on previous phones that I have used had a different layout. Otherwise, text-messaging is fairly comfortable for me (my fingers are a bit short and a bit fat so hopefully that's a good thing for most people). If you have large hands, I don't recommend this phone for obvious reasons.

On/Off

You have to press and hold down the on-switch for a few seconds to turn on the phone. The phone is not too slow to come to life after that, but the start-up is noisy if the sound is on, so often I switch off the sound before switching off my phone. I don't like the volume adjustment, because each time you turn the volume down a notch it makes a sound to demonstrate that volume, or vibrates for vibrate, which wastes battery if you often have to put it on silent and you can't just quietly turn it down in a lecture - that can be embarrassing! Also if you just switch it off, it makes another long loud noise similar to the start-up noise, so that too is not helpful.

Text messages/Memory

If you are the sentimental type, wanting to keep all your messages, this is not for you. You get only 20 outbox and inbox messages storage. The annoying thing is having to keep going through the message boxes and deleting old ones so that new messages come through. I guess with most older phones this was the case anyway. I also find that it is hard to tell, when you have long messages that take up more than 1 standard text message, which ones they are and how many messages each one is taking up. So it may appear that I only have 16 messages in my inbox, but if at least two are long messages, my inbox will be full. I also noticed some of the messages I have deleted reappearing and I have no idea why this happens.

Games

The games on this phone are very simplistic but fun all the same. Actually I have only 2 on my phone. One is fussball which I am rubbish at and haven't figured out yet why I keep losing, the other I haven't really played to be honest. If you're after good games, this is not the phone for you, they are just there to entertain you a bit during the worst lecture/meeting/serious conversation with gf/bf of the week; you know, a bit like doodling I suppose.

Other features

The alarm clock is a typical feature on most phones. I don't really bother to use it very often, unless staying away for a night or two. It is too easy to disable, and that's annoying, because I want to be sure my alarm will/will not go off when planned.
There is also a calculator, but it is too tricky to use and by the time you've done all the typing you will probably have worked it out in your head.

As I must not have spent enough time on the manual, it took me a very long time - up until the time of this review when I finally did some proper exploration of the things I hardly touch - to discover that the phone does in fact have a key lock. In the meantime, I had been accidentally ringing people and wasting battery power! I've finally found it, well, the instructions for it that state "press menu and * to lock and unlock" - words to that effect. I cannot believe it was so simple! But there it is, a very important feature, that is not, after all, lacking.

Conclusion

All in all this is a great phone for its basic functions, low price (especially as a 'pay as you go' phone) and durability. However, some features, like a key lock, are essential, and some, like better volume controls are highly desirable yet lacking in this phone. An improved version at £30 would probably have warranted 5 stars, but as it is, this phone deserves a fair 3.

Summary: For people who want a phone to just be a phone.

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