Motorola V60i Review

Overall Rating

Earpiece quality.
Clock with date on permanent display.
Reasonable reception quality (on Orange).
Nice feature of a reminder tone for missed calls/texts received but unanswered.
Battery life when set to no backlight or service LED.

External aerial -- no phone should have one these days as they don't improve the radio performance.
Poor for texting.
Badly thought-out functions in general.
Dreadful for ease-of-use. Menus are a nightmare.
Slippery case prone to falls.

This Motorola V60i is a very average mobile phone. I have been using mine for three months having used my older Nokia 5210 before it. I've gone back to the Nokia today. Here's why:

The Motorola's are a nighmare to use due to their inpenetrable menu system, which is not at all intuitive to use and is hugely over-complicated. Nokia's are bliss in comparison, and all functions can be quickly learned and 'short-cutted' to. I have had Motorola's before and have never got on with their hopeless interface and this will be the last time I ever have one. You will certainly know what I mean if you have ever used both brands.

The V60i looks pretty cool, and is well equipped (if you don't want the contemporary obligatory silly camera or colour screen video nonsense that is). But that metal case is not as practical as the Nokia's. (Read my 5210 review). It dents, is slippery when in a top pocket (nasty!), and is cold to touch in the winter. Give me quality plastics any day. I have not got on with the flip style as it is fiddly to open with one hand, if not impossible, especially if your hands are cold or not-so-nimble as a child's. Give me a one-piece design--much more practical. I reckon flip phones are a gimmick. I doubt this phone could survive the slightly less-than-perfect environments I use my phones in at work for instance. I am sure it would break sooner or later.

Fot texting it is terrible--there is no reply function when you receive a text, so you have to clear down the message, press the soft key SIX times to get to the phone book, scroll down to the entry, press ADD, then OK, then you have to use Motorola's version of predictive text which is way inferior to the version on Nokia's... And even with animation turned off you have to do this very slowly as the phone won't keep up otherwise. And the keypad buttons are almost flat and awkward to press. Need I go on? It's a pain, and you don't get quick at it. On a Nokia I can bang out a text in no time.

Oh, and there is no option to set the phone to receive a delivery report for your texts which I like to do. You can't even make up a blank template with RCT at the start (or whatever) and keep it empty as the phone will change it and store the new message when you send the text... Don't get me going about the 'Inbox / Outbox' storage for texts--they make no sense at all in the conventional meaning of the terms.

What's good? Well the audio quality through the earpiece is excellent, way better than on any Nokia's I have had. The phone features a large Earpiece which is capable of a good volume.

But that's pretty much all that's good! Sensitivity isn't too bad but doesn't seem too great, not quite as good as a 3310, and texts get put into the 'Outbox' (or whatever it's called) and sent later on if you are not in a good signal area when you send a text--most odd as Nokia's don't do this. It has caught me out a few times as I've just assumed the message had been sent.

Another poor feature is that to mute the ringer or set the phone to vibrate, you have to open the phone and hold down the volume key. This makes a series of loud tones which cannot be silenced, and attracts attention at just the time you don't want it to. i.e. when you are entering a quiet place! Quite a design fault there I say.

No, Nokia are king I reckon.