Motorola V500 Review

Overall Rating

VGA camera
Polyphonic ringtones
GPRS supported over Bluetooth
Support for Java applets
Loud volume on loud speaker
Support for any standard mobile headset
Plenty of security features
Support for MP3/AMR ringtones

Poor quality camera
Small internal memory
No video support
Some bugs with Bluetooth and Lock Application feature.

After previously being an owner of a Nokia 3120, I was relieved to finally have a phone in my mits with some features!

When first handling the Motorola V500 mobile phone I discovered how weighty these handsets really are, which is mostly due to the supplied SNN5683A Lithium Ion Battery. The battery covers almost the whole of the handset when removing the back cover, but it is relatively thin. The battery is easy to remove and so is the SIM card, which sits under one static and one movable clip.

The handset can be switched on with one press of the power button, but as with all Motorola's, it takes its time. The phone is annoyingly sluggish when scrolling through menus, and often feels like it has stalled, but it is fast enough to put up with. The phone book only allows you to search by single letter, and not by phrase, unlike Nokia phones. Despite this, the display is nice and clear, and the phone allows for multiple colour themes and wallpapers. Screensavers are pretty useless since most would simply close the handset once they have finished using it, and the timeout on the display is very close to the screensaver.

Support for a GPRS web browser and Java applications is particularly welcome, and some basic bluetooth support also comes in very useful. It is also possible to pair the phone with a laptop (with a bluetooth dongle) or a PDA, and access GPRS internet by dialing a code your provider will give you through the Dial-Up Networking service. The phone's Bluetooth service does not feature a Serial service which is used for system operations on the phone, but this would only really be used by the really technical-minded of people. Bluetooth does however allow you to transfer files and photo's between other devices, and also has support for a wireless headset. A slight annoyance is the fact that the phone only allows Bluetooth to be discoverable for a maximum of 60 seconds, and there is a tight limit on the number of devices you can have paired with the handset. It is obvious that the Bluetooth was only designed for light usage as it is often known to crash and require a reboot of the handset when trying anything too complex.

Polyphonic ringtones are supported and are produced at a decent quality and volume, meaning your phone can be heard in even some of the noisiest of environments. You can also upload your own tones to the handset's (approximately 4Mb) internal memory, supported in both MP3 or AMR format. Support for video would have been welcome, but perhaps it is a little too much to expect considering the small internal memory.

The camera is 0.3 mega-pixel with up to 4X digital zoom, but I would strongly recommend not using the digital zoom since it shrinks your photos practically beyond recognition! Despite the poor quality of the camera, I have found it possible to enhance photo's taken with the phone using software (not provided) to quite an impressive quality. Scrolling through photo's is, yet again slow and tedious, so it is probably a good idea to regularly back up images to your computer or portable device and clear the images off the handset.

Call quality is quite good and has a good volume output, which is useful for noisy environments. The handset supports any standard hands-free kit through a small jack on the top. However, the built-in speaker phone is perfectly adequate for using in quiet environments.

SMS messages actually appear slower on the screen than I am typing, sometimes delayed by a few seconds! Despite this, the predictive text is very good and learns from previous entries.

The phone features some impressive security features, allowing you to lock individual features on the phone with an "Unlock Code" (this is not the same as the PIN code). Pressing the "menu" key on a prompt for the unlock code allows you to override this with the phone's security code instead. There are a couple of bugs in this feature meaning that you are unable to block web access or camera features, but otherwise it works fine.

Battery life is good, but the adapter can sometimes take some fiddling with to get the phone to start charging. However, there are newer mains adapters available for Motorola phones which do not have this problem.

To conclude, this is an ideal phone for the technically-minded and security conscious user on a tight budget. It hosts a variety of features scaled-down from more expensive models, and should satisfy the needs of most people. This phone is built to the same specification as more expensive models, their only advantage being looks, so it is a wise choice for a Motorola shopper.

Members' Comments onthomascollett's Review

• playboy2 on 9th Mar 2006

  Great review told me every thing I would want to know. Sounds a good phone. Emma.