Motorola V500 Review

Overall Rating

Screen Quality.

Build Quality, Battery Life, Clunky Menu System, Call Quality.

Oh Dear. I wanted the Motorola V500 to be an ace phone, got it as an upgrade on Orange, my old phone was a Nokia 6100, and was so pleased with it when I saw it in the box. Then I picked it up, the plastics felt shiny and brittle like my old TV remote. Switch it on and marvel at the quality of the screen, and pray that it won't affect battery life. I must have said the wrong prayer words! Three days is about the max I can get from the battery and thats if I don't touch it. Or even look at it, in a darkened room with soft music playing it might get more, I don't have the patience to try this method.
The menu system proved from the word go to be slow and poorly organised, the buttons sometimes take two or three presses to register the action. Not a patch on the 6100 I was used to.
The build quality, the outer screen, for displaying time, caller and message info etc, was badly scratched and scuffed after a week. It had only been in my pocket with a pen and a couple of coins. Not good. I'm a heavy handed guy, but I took care with this phone, extra special care, I get the feeling, if I hadn't it would have developed problems early on! The casing itself picks up marks real easy. It might look good in the box, buts that where you will have to leave it if you want it to stay that way.
The camera quality is good, by the way, and the actual features of the phone, bluetooth etc are pretty comprehensive, it's using them thats the pain.
Also put it on charge and it will sometimes swith its tones profile to loud. Bit of a pain when you put it on charge at night, when you are trying to sleep! Also the button to the side of the phone which is a 'shortcut' to change the phones profiles with the handset closed is easy knocked in your pocket, result phone ringing really loud when you really wanted it to be quiet, like in an interview.
All in all this phone is just not up to sratch, so much so, that I've switched back to me trusty old Nokia 6100, it can't take photo's, but I've got a AF SLR camera for that, it doesn't have bluetooth, but I don't wanna look like a fast food worker with one of those stupid headsets.
Not good, roll on upgrade time.