Motorola V3i Review

Overall Rating

Looks nice (no LG Chocolate though).
Voice dialing is good.

Battery life is awful.
Reception is poor.
Software locks.

I got this Motorola V3i phone as a free upgrade and I am so glad I did not pay for it. Previously, I have always used Nokia and though they are not perfect, I wish I had taken a Nokia rather than this thing.

Now, I should make it clear that I am not a user of the web over the phone, taking pictures with my phone (I have a camera for that) or video calling. I am looking for a phone which handles calls well, texts easily, has a good address book, and won't die on me if I haven't been able to charge it that day. On those counts this phone is a failure.

I have never had such poor reception with a phone. My home seems to have quadrupled the number of black-spots where I get no reception compared to my previous phones. What is even more annoying is when it is showing decent reception, yet the phone doesn't ring but I get a text to say I missed a call.

The predictive texting software takes a little getting used to but works well. However, I get about 10 times more "failed to send" errors with this phone than I have had before. Also, it doesn't seem possible to set a global policy of requesting a "text delivered" message - it has to be done on an individual basis, which is annoying.

The address book is nice, save that it keeps freezing. The biggest culprits for causing this, appear to be using the proprietary software for linking with your PC, or adding a contact from a received text or received call. Once it freezes, things like the voice-dialling will not work unless and until you have discovered and deleted the offending entry in the contacts.

As for battery life - well that is a joke. It is simply impossible to get away without having to charge the phone every day. If you use it a lot during the day, then it won't last the day. A couple of hours of calls in a day and the darn thing is running out of charge. Oh, and I was scrupulous in making sure I fully charged the battery before first use, then ran it down a few times to give it a full re-charge to try to get every cell of the battery activated.

For me, the only reason I have not switched back to my old Nokia 6230, is the voice-dialing using my bluetooth headset. This is so much better than the limited facility on my Nokia where you had to assign a voice-dial to an entry in your contacts, and were limited with the number of voice-dials you could assign. On the Motorola, you simply speak the name of your contact, it searches for the contact and, if the contact has more than 1 number, asks you which you want to dial. Now, the software is not perfect, but it works well enough and keeps me using what is otherwise a very poor phone.

There must be much better products than this out there.