Motorola T191 Review

Overall Rating

* Good Features (Particularly SMS)
* Hard buttons (a bit small though)
* Clear LCD with strong backlite
* 6 games (snake,tetris,numbers,brick,five stone, box world)
* User group settings
* Calender with note ability and notification
* customizable quick access menu

* Unchangeable face
* Slow downs
* No suitable Silent mode
* Ni-Mh battery (heavy)

First of all, I would like to say that overall, the Motorola t191 is a great phone. It surpassed my expectations in the way of features, however, it seems to me that the OS was written in a hurry since while the menu is clean and organised, the sub menues tend to flood the screen. The Quick access menu offers some relief to this being able to create shortcuts to 9 commonly used functions.

Slowdowns occure when browsing menu but are much more frequent when the phone memory is being used (even when game hiscores saved). The reception is fairly clear and I have only experienced one or two dropouts.

The only valid reason which upset me was the silent function on the phone. Motorola mistakenly placed top priority onto user group settings EVEN HIGHER THAN THE SILENT MODE SETTINGS!!!!! This means that if you have user groups enabled and you placed the phone on silent, it would still ring a person in the group rang! (happend to me during a lecture!!!!) To top it all up, there is no way (apart from turning off the phone completely) to enter silent mode without vibration mode on. If you don't mind the vibra-alert during an important time, don't wory about it.

Another issue is the battery life. Motorola claims 5 days in standbye mode. I suspect this might be true *if* you 1. disable backlite, 2. disable animated screensaver, etc... . In reality, the battery lasts aprox 1.5 - 2 days in standbye (I wouldn't know if Motorola's claims of 5 hrs talktime is true cause I never speak on the phone for that long).

The two screensavers are pretty cool, the ones avaliable for download however, don't seem to fit the bill (and there isn't many of them). More wap sites are extremely hard to find (please email to me if you find any) All I found was
www.e-ideas.com.sg (worked at time of writing)
and they have prettymuch the same savers as the one specified on the mobile (mymobilesoft freezone)

This phone has a higher potential however, OS bugs and *far-streched* advertising lower my respect for such a company. I hope that in future, Menu design and SIMPLE LOGIC will be looked at more closely.