Perhaps the ultimate Girly phone? (Motorola MOTO U9)

Member Name: Lyrical

Product:	Motorola MOTO U9
Date:	26/01/09 (53 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Design

Disadvantages: It's slow

I'll be honest and start by saying i've only had my U9 for a week and i'll also admit that I bought it despite reading many damning reviews online about it. I could bore you with the techy stuff and number crunching but instead i'll give a simple review from a user to a potential user of this phone.

The U9 is a sleek clam shell design available in black, purple or pink. The front of the clam is dual purpose as it is also a secondary 'screen' allowing you to read text messages, see missed calls, the clock and of course it comes into it's own should you use your phone as a music player.

My initial impression of the phone was positive, maybe I'm fickle but it 'looks' nice and feels nice being small and light enough to be cumbersome but not so far down the minute spectrum that you'll forever lose it in the bottom of your pocket or bag.

Clam shells are my preferred style of phone having had two sliders in two years both of which have broke (and strangely enough both were Samsung) and this one is nicely shaped and easy to flip open with one hand.

The keys are a little disappointing. They look sleek but they're flat and feel slightly textured/ribbed so if you're a manic texter it takes ab it of getting used to as they can be abrasive on your finger tips at first.

Talking about texting, the input languages are shall we say interesting to say the least. Maybe i'm in the minority but I despise predictive texting and have turned it off on every phone i've owned. I tried to do it on this yet even on non predictive mode it still 'guesses' your words and tries to finish them off for you which is highly irritating.

The camera isn't brilliant but it is adequate especially wen you consider the price of the phone (I paid under £40 on PAYG) at 2mpx in good light you get some fairly decent shots and so long as you remember to change the 'scene' to night mode you can get some semi-decent results in low-light too. One thing I like is that the external 'hidden' screen doubles as another viewfinder which makes it very easy to take self portraits should you be so inclined.

People are often criticising the lack of storage memory on this phone, however what is often neglected to be mentioned is that you can add up to a 4gb memory card should you wish which can often be bought at very reasonable prices now if you shop around.

Another complaint people seem to have is that the phone is slow to react. I agree it is slow, if you try and do two things at once it will take a while to 'think' about it. However, although disappointing at first it is something you get used to and in the grand scheme of things it's not as slow as you perceive it to be just slow-er then a lot of other phones. Once again though if you want higher specs and performance, you would probably not be looking at this phone in the first place.

This phone has several voice functions asinsofar as to say you can programme your own voice functions to activate various elements of the phone and the phone also has it's on voice for instance it can read out your address book or menus and it can even read out your text messages (however as nifty as it may sound it is actually highly embaressing if you leave this setting on and you're on a bus!)

This phone has many pro's and cons, and at some point you have to look at the price it retails at and realise that maybe with this handset you may be choosing looks over intuitive design and operation.

I can't comment on the music function as I don't actually use it, i have a seperate mp3 player that i'm more then happy with.

So to conclude i'll summarise what are i my opinion the main Pro's and con's of this handset.

[+] Design - It's shiny and comes in gorgeous colours. It looks impressive and the hidden screen is a huge draw.

[+] Battery Life - So far i'm very impressed with the battery life. I've found it's good for 3-4 four days just from texting and browsing facebook etc. however, do remember that you really should try and charge it for 16 hours before your very first use to help prime the battery. If you want to save battery life, remember to turn off things such as bluetooth when not in actual use.

[+] For a camera phone at this price it's a decent camera.

[-] Bluetooth. For some inane reason it will not bond with my computer, I've never had this issue before with any previous phone and it is driving me batty!

[-] Predictive text - I find the auto completing of words exasperating especially when i've selected non predictive text.

[-] the keys take a bit of getting used to as they're flat and textured and can hurt your fingers.

[-] The navigation on the menu's isn't the most intuitive i've used and quite often it's long winded to get to what you want.

[-] It's a bit slow to react

For the price I paid i'm very happy with this handset however had I the original full price, I think i'd have been disappointed.

Summary: A decent phone if you can get it for the right price

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