New Phone

The battery on my cell phone has been getting worse and worse for the last couple of months. As early as July I was wondering if it would be better to get a new phone (I was eligible for an upgrade) or a new battery. As my battery was still functional (though the time between recharges was getting a bit ridiculous) I kept putting off a decision until either my battery went completely or a good deal on a new phone came up which would cost less. It finally happened.

Last week I ended up upgrading to a Razr V3xx for the price of $0 without any rebates. As this is a 3g phone (should I decide to get a data plan at some point in the future, not likely but you never know) I thought it was worth checking out. Given that my battery life has taken a nose-dive in the past two weeks or so the timing was great. So I popped on line and ordered it. I almost didn't order it because, while the phone didn't cost anything, there was an $18 "upgrade charge" that would go on my bill. Given that I already had a functional phone, I figured I might as well just go out and get a battery - until I found out the price of the battery was around $50! At that rate $18 was a bargain.

So, how do I like my razr? Well, let's review:

• I ended up naming my razr Hevel (הבל) because I want to remember that it's all smoke. This makes me happy.
• The inside screen is kick-butt. The screen on my old phone was functional, but that's about all I can say for it. The Razr screen is larger, and has a resolution of 320x240 with anti-aliased fonts. I like this. I also love with AT&T did with the menu layout of the Razr. A lot of folks complain about the look of the Razr UI, and I've not been that impressed with the ones I've seen in the past either, but this is clean and clear with a great screen.
• The charge port is a ordinary usb port. This makes life soooooo much easier in case I have to charge my phone while I'm out as I only have five or six compatible cables. Another plus is that my wife's headset charges the same way and Motorola says I should have no problems charging with that charger (just that it might take longer). The biggest draw for me and the Razr was always that usb port. I like.
• The Razr V3xx has an expandable memory slot for micro-SD (up to 2 gigs) which I can use for a music player if I want (I don't, but ok). However, if I get a card that means I could use my phone as a flash drive (or even just bluetooth files to folks). I like that. The phone also has 56.7 mb of free memory right now, which is a huge increase from my Nokia 6102i. Again, I like.
• Voice dialing is significantly different. In my Nokia I had to create "voice tags" for specific numbers in my address book - and I had a limited number of them (10, I believe). The Razr, on the other hand, has several commands that I can use for voice dialing, including name recognition and number dialing. That's a powerful feature as it means that I can dial a number from memory without taking my eyes off the road and that any number in my address book is able to be dialed with nothing other than my voice. The down-side is that it takes another step (or two if you have more than one number for a contact) - but the power of it blows my mind. I do wish there was a voice trainer so the phone would get accustomed to my intonation - I've had some mis-cues.
• The sound quality has be suburb so far working with my bluetooth headset (actually, I haven't even used the actual headset to make a call yet) - there is a lot less static with the Razr, which is what I would expect with a newer bluetooth stack running the phone.
• I have a 1.3 megapixel camera on my phone now. Not as much as other high-end sets (most have 2.0 megapixel cameras now), but it's a significant increase from my 640x480 vga camera on the Nokia. No flash though, bit of a bummer there.
  

All in all, I'm happy with this upgrade. Since it cost me less than a battery for a phone which usable and not much else - I'm especially pleased.

Tags: Razr, Review