Motorola C380

The Motorola C 380 phone combines with business and pleasure. Front and back covers are rigid in design and made of black and chrome finish plastics that fits together alright. Keypad is of chrome finish too. Left/right soft keys, menu key, 5-way Navigation key, and send/end keys are carefully situated below the screen. Overall keypad design from top to bottom is quite attractive but I find the spacing of number/character keys somewhat tight that at times you could accidentally punch a wrong key. Perhaps this can be executed perfectly in time by getting used to it. Screen backlights are white and keypad backlights are blue in color in which I found to have added more attractiveness to this phone. Ringer/speaker is situated at the back of the phone. Charger, headset, and accessory connection point are situated at the bottom of the phone.

Functions are quite good and useful though you would at times get confuse with the menus and sub-menus especially if you are used with Nokia phones.

On stand-by/home mode you can only access the menus by pressing the menu or confirmation key. Menus can be switched from "Icons" into "List" format and vice versa. You can also personalize it by rearranging the order of menus imbedded as well as user-customizable for soft key functions, main menus, and shortcuts for frequently used menus and functions.

22 chords support for 17 polyphonic ring tones, 3 MP3 ring tones and a space for download. Motomixer is available for editing ringtones as well. Alerts/sounds are loud enough even you are in a very noisy environment so you don't miss the calls, SMS, and other important events.

Java and GPRS/MMS capable. Games imbedded in the phone varies by region according to Motorola; I'm living in the Philippines and I got "Billiards" and "1 and 1 Ball" games. Other exciting games, wallpapers, and pictures can also downloaded from Motorola web site.

Phonebook entries have a capacity of up to 500 entries but copying entries from SIM to Phone Memory is very slow. Caller group profiling, voice dialing, and hands-free speakerphone make this phone even more desirable.

MMS message can attached picture, text, and sounds. Concatenated and group messaging and iTap predictive text input supports MMS/SMS/EMS. IM and E-mail functions are also available if you have appropriate internet account.

Shared internal memory capacity is 1.8 MB. External display is 128X128 pixels for 5 lines of text and shows 1 line for icons. The color is excellent thanks to the 65K TFT color screen.

Other useful functions are also integrated in this phone i.e. calculator and currency converter, date and clock, and datebook with reminder alerts.

You can also bring the phone in every part of the world by its Tri-band technology. You can configure the function either to automatic or manual settings. I have no problems with the reception, I always got coverage. The size is comfortable enough and weighs only 80 grams.

Stand by time up to 275 hours and talk time is 350 minutes. The battery conserving management of this phone is really excellent. Locking the keypad will at once turn off all the backlights. Depending on the settings you like, the display will totally go from the screen after a preset time; you'll think your phone is dead. The other surprise of this phone is that, one time, while composing a message, after a few minutes the keypad backlights turned off leaving only the screen backlights still on. It amused me and I just went on working with my unfinished message.

I will not elaborate anymore all the surprises that this phone has offered. You'll get most the functions you like and you dreamed about but minus the Bluetooth, camera, radio, and infrared. But having all these functions means you have to pay more. Finally one mobile phone manufacturer, Motorola, is being fair to consumers; the phone is cheap but without sacrificing the design, functions, and awesome technology. I bought my phone for only approximately 90 U.S. Dollars.