Motorola V325i review from United States of America

1- I purchased a new battery at 166 hours.

2- The doughnut button is definitely aging. The “right” side has the silver part off and the blue line is crusty and flakes plastic. Since I made my “down” key the Tools menu, and I use that multiple times a day, I use the “down” more than the “right”.

3- The body is nowhere near scratch-resistant and that is one of the main reasons I bought the phone- I thought that because of the excess plastic on the outside, it would withstand scratches. For example, the light ring is dented, and the mirror is scratched beyond belief.

4- The “flip” part has a click in it and moves laterally.

5- At 216 hours (26 months of ownership), the charger is almost dead.

6- Every month, the light ring will light up and the phone will vibrate/ring, but you cannot pick up (you open the phone and see your wallpaper). The solution is to pop the battery out and back in.

Please note that issues 1-5 are due to wear and age, and come after over 200 hours of talk time. I think that issue 6 is a quirk with my particular model.

INTRODUCTION.

Please note that part of this survey is taken from MY review on Epinions.com.

Allow me to start off by saying that I bought this phone after having “an inferno between my palms” LG VX8300. Not to get off topic, but let me say that that was the worst phone because it had crappy voice reception, would not charge correctly, and the buttons would not depress when you lifted your finger.

Compared to the LG VX8300, the Motorola V325i is a dream. It’s not perfection, sure, but it is very close. For all the hell that the VX8300 gave me, living with the V325i every day for the last twenty-six months was a cakewalk. The VX8300 went back to the shop 6 times in four months for real mechanical problems, and the V325i once. Once I got the V325i, my sister got the VX8300, and, in one year, went through seven phones and nine chargers. To me, that is simply unacceptable.

Back to the V325i. It’s not chock full of features commonly found on today’s phones (like video) but it does its job and it does it well. I don’t know when the V325i was originally designed, but it was Motorola’s bottom-end phone at the time, and I was fortunate enough to be able to order the last one from the factory.

RELIABILITY.

I guess that I should start with reliability since people remember what they read first and what they read last. I touched upon this above, but the phone has been AMAZING! Since I got my phone, I had to take it to the shop ONE time, and that was for issue #6 (light ring) above. The technicians at my dealer (Verizon) said that only about 5% of the V325is that they have sold have been reported to have this problem. I don’t know how many phones this equates to, but it hasn’t been much of a problem for me. If it happened every day, I would be irritated, but since it is only about once a month, I understand. We all have our days, good and bad, so if my phone needs a rest once in a while, that’s fine by me. Since it’s a simple fix, I can handle it since it doesn’t leave me stranded.

The phone itself has held up well as far as technology goes. The “accessories” still work two years after purchase- the camera (although it never was and never will be the best in the league), the voice command (which I almost never use because it is faster to go through the menus), and the recorded ringtones still work.

But the phone itself, both inside and out, definitely shows its battle scars. The paint from the button on the back of the phone that releases the battery case cover has chipped away. There is no more paint on the edges of the inside of the phone where you hold it. The flip part has a click in it and if you hold the bottom portion straight up, the top may fall over. The doughnut button, as aforementioned, is showing wear. Early on in the ownership, the ear phone cover came off. By the way, no ear phones I ever put in there fit because they were too big! I have NEVER seen such a small ear phone hole!

All the lights on the phone still work, all the buttons are still functional, just the way it should be. The backlight is growing dim, because on my 3, 6, 9, and Pound keys, the lights are growing dim- the F, O, Z, and "Space Bracket" do not light up as well as the other characters on the keys. I am also experiencing this problem on the 1, 4, 7, and Star keys.

I truly have no complaints about any of these, however, because I understand the fact that it is not the world’s best-maintained phone; I drop it down stairs, in the street, I’ve sat on it, I’ve left it places, I even left it on the dashboard in my father’s car when it was 95 degrees out.

ERGONOMICS.

The buttons are all in logical places- except for the calculator, the “Calculator Clear” is on the opposite side of the “Clear this menu”. The doughnut button is useful, but I should think that more than one home key can be programmed- on this phone you can only program the bottom.

The volume button is on the outside of the phone and this makes more sense than having Redial on the side of the phone like my father’s LG EnV.

The camera eye is “embedded” inside the front of the phone, and this doesn’t make much sense. It fills up with lint and dust, and the only way to clean it out is to take a pen or a pencil and “scrape it”. But, this scratches the lens. It should have been like the mirror on the front. That only has one scuff from being dropped in the street. It probably could be cleaned, but I haven’t gotten around to it.

The antenna is not a bad idea, and although I have used it maybe twice since I have owned the phone, it works and is not a waste of plastic. It has not broken or bent; it is just the way it was when I opened the box. The reception is very good.

MAIN FUNCTIONS.

One must keep in mind, as aforementioned, that this was Motorola’s basic phone at the time. With that being said, music playback and the camera are about what you expect: average. I will not bash the phone for either of those aspects, but I will detail on calling and text messaging.

Calling is pretty much idiot-proof. Dial the numbers and hit the green button. You enter all of your numbers into a Contacts List, where you can store a contact name, a home number, two cell phone numbers, a work number, two emails, and a fax number. For each bit of this info you put in, it gets granted a speed dial (up to 500 speed dials). For example, if you program your friend Joey into your phone with his house number, email, and cell phone, he would take up three speed dials. To use speed dials 1-9, hold down the number you want to call. I have not figured out how to use the speed dials over ten yet, however. The only solution I have found is to dial the speed dial number and it will take you to that contact, where you must hit the green button. Another piece of noteworthy information is that speed dial number one will ALWAYS be voicemail.

For every contact entry, you can signify a picture, a ringtone, and/or a group.

-Pictures come from what you take with your camera or what is sent to you. If your friend sends you a picture of a rainbow, you might want to make that her picture. I don't see the point in programming a picture for each contact; the operation is tedious and you never see it unless that person calls you while the phone is already open.

-Ringtones can be purchased or recorded onto your phone. You can record songs onto the phone, but you are limited to five minutes. This means you can't record "American Pie" or "Life's Been Good" or "Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding" unless you do this in installments. You will barely be able to record "Southern Cross" or "Leader of the Band" or "We Didn't Start The Fire", but with proper planning and no wasted time this challenge can be met. When I want a song as a ringtone, I simply watch a YouTube video and record the sound or I record the sound from a CD of mine.

-Groups let you "classify" your contacts. The phone comes with four basic groups- no group, business, personal, and VIP (very important people). You can add your own groups, but they can only hold ten contacts each. In my case, I have one group entitled "Scouts 1" with ten people from my boy scout troop, "Scouts 2" with another ten, and so on down the line.

Text messaging is also straightforward. You have several modes of text, ranging from regular (tap the 2 button three times for the letter "c") to iTAP English or Spanish, to symbols, to numbers. I hate using the iTAP since it gets most of the words wrong, so I go with the regular. In the regular mode, the 1 button is used for periods, the "at" signs (the "@" sign), question marks, exclamation points, hyphens, commas, the "and" sign (the "&" sign), colons, underscores, slashes, semicolons, the number one, and the number zero, in that order. Symbols range from those to parenthesis, quotation marks, apostrophes, equals signs, percents and dollar signs. You can save your messages as a draft to be completed later (if you accidentally close your phone or get a call). You can send these messages with ease, simply add the number you want to send it to or add a contact (up to ten contacts). You can even send messages to yourself. If you choose, you may send a picture, called a Pix Message, and add text to it.

CONCLUSION.

On my cell phone plan, I am entitled to a new phone every twenty months. The charger is starting to go, meaning it takes a longer time to charge the phone from dead to full power (from the beginning, it would only take 1-2 hours, but now it takes 7 or 8) and I want to learn how to type more efficiently on a phone to send messages quicker. My next phone will be a Motorola, I ordered a brand new Motorola Rival and hope it will come in 4-5 days. I will keep the V325i as a back-up, including the extra battery, the wall charger, and the user guide.

I look forward to my next phone, but I will keep this one until gravity has met its fate or something becomes faster than the speed of light because it is that reliable, and I had high expectations going in.