Motorola V80 TriBand Mobile Phone w/Camera (3)
Bluetooth 8 Aug 2004

Multimedia

V80 comes equipped with only 6.5 MB of built in memory and that is quite limited if you are talking about a multimedia phone. Compared to E398, this seems to be a downside of V80 as it does not support any external storage.

The built in camera has a 4x digital zoom and you can enable auto-time capture and flash. Various lighting conditions can be set for best image capture. They are Automatic, Sunny, cloudy, Indoor (home), Indoor (office), Night. Picture quality is good. The colour reproduction is very beautiful and I don't see bluish corners in the captured images using VGA capture mode. (see photos on the next page).

The phone supports both MP3 and MIDI ringtones. You can use MP3 files as ringtones by transferring the MP3 files into the phone through bluetooth or cable provided. Do take note that  A 4 minute MP3 will definitely used up all the memory on the phone (internal).

The ringtones, whether be it MIDI or MP3 is loud. It seems to have that sense surround effect when playing the MP3 files. The audio output seems to be coming from the left and right sides of the mobile phone. The average vibration is very effective when the phone is placed on a hard surface but might not be strong enough if you put it in your pocket.

Connectivity

The package comes with a Bluetooth ear piece. It is very easy to setup and once paired up, you would be able to use it with ease. The built in Bluetooth can be used to transfer ringtones and images to and fro from PDA, phones or PC equipped with Bluetooth. The only problem we noticed is that the phone does not allow easy transfer of Java programs to the phone. Although the packages a data cable, the software in the CD-ROM does not provide an interface for you to transfer Java programs.

Similar to E398, we had no luck transferring JAVA into the phone. According to our correspondence with Motorola, they mentioned that it is locked so that the only way to download is via GPRS.

On some Motorola models, some people have managed to use Bluetooth to transfer Java apps. You would need to check if your Bluetooth device supports OBEX Object Push. My PDA and my friends notebook doesn't. Alternatively, you can download a software MIDWAY to transfer JAVA files through the data cable (It is not so straightforward).

GPRS is easy to set up as Motorola has already equipped us with the various Profiles. Just select and you are ready to surf. The problem we found is that the access speed is very slow. Something doesn't seem right at the firmware level.

Ringtones

Motorola V80 has MIDI and MP3 support for ringtone. The ringtones are generally loud but the designer has the speaker placed right below the battery compartment. If you were to place the phone on the desk, the speaker is blocked and you can hardly hear it ring except seeing the rhythm lights. The vibration of the phone is also average.

When the phone rings, you can answer that without rotating the screen 180 deg to the vertical. It would have been easier if we can just press a button to answer it via speaker phone.

Discuss >>>

Next >>>

(C) Copyright 1998-2009 OCWorkbench.com