Motorola E365 Review

Overall Rating

Good camera, nice big screen with good colours, funky styling.

Texting is slow and fiddly, menu a bit awkward, phone has small keys, and perhaps some of the childish graphics are aimed more at teenagers than at adults!

I bought my E365 online from orange.co.uk in February 2004 because I could get it FREE with a promotional minutes+ texts contract package. In general I am happy with it but it does have a few irritating aspects - just like all phones I suppose.

The camera facility is great fun and gives good quality pictures. I found a cable and software on the web so I could download my photos to my PC and then email them. When I was on holiday in May I just took photos with my phone, then downloaded them to my PC and they are fine!

One of the main irritations is that the four scroll key arrows have already been scratched just by my using them to navigate the menus. Most of the four arrows now look like black blobs! And the phone is only a few months old! Has this happened to anyone else? I wonder if Orange would give me a new phone casing under the guarantee ...

As mentioned in other reviews the texting is slow. If I look at the keys not the screen, I can find that I have tapped in the word "prob" expecting the phone to complete it to "problem" and then look at the screen and find that it has missed the first letter so only "rob" is on the screen, so I have to start again!

And the predictive texting offers all sorts of symbols I would never use, like ~ and , which just get in the way of symbols and punctuation marks that I do use!

Also, if I send a photo message, then go to my Outbox to check what I said in it, it takes AGES for that message to open - just because it has a photo in it.

And I find that the funky blue keypad lights go on and off whenever they feel like it. They are supposed to just come on when the ambient light level is low, but there really seems to be no logic as to when they switch on!

But having said all that, the phone still has a lot going for it. It's a good buy if you can get a good deal on it. But I can't wait till my contract ends because I want to get a phone with a movie recorder facility next!