The designer was the only one to get paid (Motorola RAZR V3i)

Member Name: NIck_Endeavour

Product:	Motorola RAZR V3i
Date:	09/09/06 (1257 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Sleek Look, Sylish, Thin, Easy to use, Good Camera, Free Handsfree Kit

Disadvantages: Clunky Menu, Not enough memory, poorly designed software, bad reception

The stylish Motorola V3i would tempt anyone that is not used to Motorola Phones. To give it some credit I loved the phone when I just bought it as I had made the shift from an I-mate Jam (T-Mobile MDA) and was nice to have keypad phone again. The phone fits nice in trouser pockets and is perfect for night out. It is as neat as freshly pressed shirt and you know that some money went to the designers. The feel is that you have superior product from the V3 and the larger view screen (not the screen itself) and a cool arctic blue Motorola light in front to make it stand out of the crowd. It is also (very) slightly smaller and thinner that its predecessor.
The camera is not bad too with its 1.3mgpx resolution but thinking of it most phones come with it, as the lower benchmark.

The gorgeous metal feels shell make up for most of the downfalls of this phone. It is sturdy, with a great finish and it feels razor sharp (hence the name for its older bother RAZR). It gets a bit dirty too so to keep it pristine a lot of cleaning is required to remove those annoying smudges.

The handsfree supplied in box works smoothly in terms of connection but the volume is horrendous unless you have hyper hearing (certainly not to be used in a car, let alone a truck).

The software provided is it not to bad to transfer files and synchronise contacts when the phone is empty, but made a right mess at my contact list on Outlook merging contacts with each other when you already have contacts in your phone. That was a very annoying business. The contacts on the phone were OK though. Also I don't like the way that you can't save contact's numbers under one contact card but it will provide as many entries with the same name for different phone number. This in turn leads to a snail slow loading time for the contacts menu.

Another annoying bit is that unless you install the drivers for this phone from the CD it will not charge through the miniUSB which is kinda daft to my opinion, especially when the old V3 does.

The menus are OK and slight improvement over hideous Motorola menus of the past. It is easy to navigate but the user interface looks dated compared to other phones from Sony - Ericsson or Nokia. The navigation is a bit clunky and doesn't appear to be smooth. On the other hand there are some well placed button to like the quick access text message button and the volume keys.

The camera button (when the flip is closed) is not so well placed as I found I was turning the camera on always by mistake.

My love story with this phone ended a week later when the phone would just lose reception for no reason giving a no service message all the time. My MDA on the other hand with another T-Mobile SIM never did it. The screen would be blank white and didn't the only way to get it back was to turn the phone on and off. Returned the phone at the store and got another one that worked for 1-2 months (still a bit iffy) until it started doing exactly the same thing. I found out that by removing the 64MB XD card it will work and the phone would improve its sluggish performance. So I am guessing they must have some problems with the XD reader or the system overloads when memory is extended.

These problems coupled with it unique feature of deleting all you txt messages if SIMs are swapped have definitely made dislike this phone.

On the plus side I always been against in using Motorola phones for txting but the V3i made me change direction already. The predictive txt is great and it will memorise the words you input so not only English but virtually every language can use predictive ( I have used in a different language that the V3i doesn't include a dictionary)

Don't get me wrong it has some nice features but unfortunately they are overcome but its faults. All in all I think is the triumph of vanity over functionality.

(Disclaimer: This review is also submited somewhere else by myself under the reviewer name, Nick_Endeavour)

Summary: This is a vain phone, good looking but vain

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