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| The Motorola v8088 - Is styling enough? |
Our editor bravely transferred his SIM card to the Motorola v8088...
The Motorola v8088
The Motorola v8088 is a great-looking phone. It's a flip-open
design, and when closed is extremely compact. It's got a cheeky
air about it, with its sleek miniature-high-speed-train looks
and distinctive multicoloured smile-shaped light (see the picture).
It really does look like a different generation phone, and some
users are going to fall in love with it.
Back here on earth, we scratched beneath the surface a bit. After
all, you spend a lot of time actually using your mobile, so being
a pretty face is not necessarily enough...
The mobile does have some weak points. You decide whether they're
a factor for you or not (the reviewer is 30+, and you may not
share his sensitivity to some shortcomings).
Hardware
Not being used to a flip-open design, I expected it to be an unnecessary
irritation. I'm used to being able to see who's calling without
answering the call, so that I can mentally "prepare". With the
flip-open design, you need to open the phone to see who's calling
- and opening the phone promptly answers the call. Check out whether
you enjoy this "auto-answer" or not.
When the phone does ring, it is a delight - multiple colours light
up "the smile". You can set different colours for different callers,
and have a lot of fun.
Some more thumbs-up for a flip-open design:
You don't need to continually lock the keyboard to prevent accidental
calls when you put the mobile into your pocket (as I do with my
Nokia).
Because the phone has a hinge, it appears to be more flimsy than
its single-moulded competitors like the Nokias, but apart from
a extremely thin battery compartment cover, is probably less likely
to break: the flip-open design hides the screen safely away in
the closed position, and is much less likely to crack if the phone
is dropped (or thrown - the v8088 looks like it could survive
that too!).
I enjoyed the angular shape when the phone is open - it fitted
my ear well, and the sound quality was good, but the presence
of a protuding aerial is a sorry second to the Nokia, and really
spoils the otherwise "aerodynamic" look of the phone - most important
if you're looking for extra distance when you throw it :-)
Software
So onto the functionality. First off, if you're not good at
small writing, avoid this model - the screen font is really small
(the screen is too).
As for the software, the phone is feature-rich, particularly when
it comes to voice:
one-button recording of voice notes to yourself (and you can set
alarms for up to 5 notes); the ability to record all or part of
a call; and voice-activated dialling and menu selection.
The phone is also WAP-enabled for getting onto the Internet.
I took a while getting used to the software, and found myself
consulting the manual (heaven forbid!) on several occasions. I
just didn't find the interface to be that intuitive to use. For
example, there are left-right scroll keys, but these frequently
used keys are inexplicably reduced to sharing the numeric pad.
Ultimately, I believe the phone's interface is severely hampered
by its lack of "variable buttons", as I call them. What's that,
you say? Well, if you look at the Nokia 6210 for example, the
top two buttons have nothing written on them: instead their function
(like Save or Back or Edit) is written on the screen right near
the button, and changes as you move between options. This
is not a new idea - bank autotellers have been using it for years,
and it works.
Here's why these "variable buttons" are so useful:
Let's say you want to save someone's phone number, so you type
it into your phone. On the variable button phone (the Nokia),
one of the variable buttons immediately changes to read Details,
and on selecting it, a Save option is presented. Game over, a
no-brainer.
On the Motorola, after you type the number, you now need to know
to press a special button labelled M+ to save the number!.
In fact the presence of some rather strangely labelled buttons
(the Nokia has none) serves as testimony to the corner that the
software designers find themselves painted into, because of the
lack of variable buttons.
Once you get the hang of it, it isn't too bad, though, why not
check it out for yourself?
The Editor.
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