Motorola Timeport P7389 Review

Overall Rating

Quite light, slim,
Tri-band,
2.5mm headset jack

User interface is a big pair of pants,
Battery life not much cop either,
Screen scratches easily,
Voice recognition a bit flakey,
Ugly.

Oh boy. Where do we start with the Motorola Timeport P7389?

The user interface is severely pants. My biggest gripes are:
* Having to navigate lots of menus to access obvious things like: Switching between vibrate+ring and Missed & recent calls.
* No distinction on LCD icons of 'vibrate+ring' as opposed to just 'ring'.
* Battery meter is almost useless. You only get a couple of minutes of call time once the meter has got to the bottom segment. My old Philips Savvy used to go for ages on what was displayed as an empty battery.
* No visual indication when there are stored voice notes.
* Can't erase individual voice notes.
* Can't store numbers from incoming calls, SMS's.
* No SIM management menus, like copying from SIM to phone memory, etc.
* Key lock doesn't lock the power button, nor disable the LEDs.
* Security lock feature obscures the clock.
* Voice recognition is erratic. Sometimes works a treat, sometimes refuses to work at all.
* The compose ringtone feature is the most deplorable pile of old pants that I have ever seen. It plays back the tune that you just spent an hour composing in an ugly, slow, staccato fashion. You can't do anything about this. Also, this feature is not described in the user manual.
* Just generally horribly clunky to use. I have a Nokia 2110 'brick' from the early 90's, and the UI on that knocks the socks off this thing.

The microphone broke on this thing (which is why someone gave it to me in the first place.) The mic is held in by a tiny silicon rubber cup, with conducting rubber strips in the bottom, much like what's used to stick LCDs to PCBs in many consumer products. This just doesn't cut the mustard on something that's going to be knocked about. I Repaired it first by simply taking it apart and putting it back together. It broke again. Fixed it for good with a sewing needle, some fine enamelled copper wire and a soldering iron.

There's no chassis in this thing. Just two plastic case halves and a skinny, multi-layer PCB.

The transparent plastic cover on the display bulges out of the case, which makes it prone to getting scratched. It's made of soft plastic which doesn't help.

The belt clip is ridiculous.

There are too many buttons. Why couldn't they assign multiple uses to the same buttons?

A battery charge doesn't last long. Only 3 or 4 days with the battery saving feature switched on (which isn't the default!), and with no call usage.

The phone's one saving grace for me is the fact that someone gave it to me for a plate of chips. Good deal for a tri-band phone. I would never have bought this thing at full price. My value rating is based on actually buying the thing new.