Motorola V3 'RAZR' • Non-Gaming • Mobile Phones • Eurogamer.net

renzo 2 Feb 2005 10:09:32 3,195 posts
Seen 7 days ago
Registered 19 years ago

Does anybody here have one? I'm considering getting one, and all the reviews I've come across seem to be positive enough. I like the look of it, even if it does look a bit 'blingy'.

Anyone care to share their experiences?

Ginger 2 Feb 2005 10:34:25 7,256 posts
Seen 2 weeks ago
Registered 19 years ago

mates got one and it's a nice piece of kit. Does suffer from the unfortunate motorola user interface though.

renzo 2 Feb 2005 10:48:18 3,195 posts
Seen 7 days ago
Registered 19 years ago

Hmmm... I've never had a Motorola before, so I'm not too familiar with the software. I've had quite a few Nokias, and those are almost idiot-proof. Very easy to use. I've been using a Samsung E800 for a few months now, and it didn't take very long to get used to that. I'm also considering a Nokia 6260, but I doubt I'd use any of the 'Smartphone' features. And it's a bit bulky. But it does have Symbian on it... does that mean you can run emulators on it, ala N-Gage?

binky Moderator 2 Feb 2005 11:17:42 11,163 posts
Seen 2 days ago
Registered 20 years ago

I've got a Motorola v600 and frankly I really wish I hadnt been swayed by its free bluetooth headset.
Worst phone i've had tbh. I have to "reset" it once a day because the damn thing suffers from crappy button lag for no reason other than it cant wake up.

Battery life is quite good though, and aside from the phonebook thing that was mentioned I havent any other probs with the motorola interface.
Wont be buying a motorola again mind you, no matter how sexy it looks.

CyberClaw 2 Feb 2005 11:20:44 2,085 posts
Seen 3 years ago
Registered 19 years ago

Motorola has the most morronic user interface and menus Man ever devised.
They try to constantly reinvent the wheel, and they keep coming with square and triangle shapes if you know what I mean. I've always been a Nokia user, and I got used to the easy stupid-proof menus they provide... My mother has a Motorola. I spend about 5 minutes trying to write and send a SMS... And then other 5 minutes lost in the menus searching where on the fuck is some stupid thing... I finally get the hang of it, and pick up my father's motorola, and I need to relearn how to walk. But that's worst... 10 minutes aren't enough to write a fucking SMS, and the menus, I swear they show up at random... Now, don't get me wrong, I understand that they want to make their own style, but at least they should stick with it, and make it easy to use. :\ And why oh fucking freacking why, do they put spaces, simbols, and those things, in different numberkeys than nokia? Did nokia copyright those? Morons, soon they'll be using 0 to 5 numbers, because Nokias use 0 to 9...

I'll never buy a Motorola until they come up with something decent... It's just some flashy hardware for 30/40 something dudes anyway who want to show off their cellphone

Edited by CyberClaw at 11:21:27 02-02-2005

ssuellid 2 Feb 2005 11:28:26 19,142 posts
Seen 2 days ago
Registered 20 years ago

There were a couple of interesting Motorola phones using MS Smartphone coming out - which would resolve the awful inhouse Motorola interface issues. But they kept being delayed.

renzo 2 Feb 2005 11:30:29 3,195 posts
Seen 7 days ago
Registered 19 years ago

binky wrote:
I've got a Motorola v600 and frankly I really wish I hadnt been swayed by its free bluetooth headset.
Worst phone i've had tbh. I have to "reset" it once a day because the damn thing suffers from crappy button lag for no reason other than it cant wake up.

Battery life is quite good though, and aside from the phonebook thing that was mentioned I havent any other probs with the motorola interface.
Wont be buying a motorola again mind you, no matter how sexy it looks.

My cousin has a V600 he says it's great, although everything he buys seems to be buy is 'great'. This is the same cousin who thought buying an NGage was a good idea.

Tbh the only thing I use a phone for is to make and receive calls, and send the odd text message. Menu interface isn't such an issue for me, but button lag is just evil. I haven't seen it noticed in any reviews of the V3, so hopefully they sorted it out in that one.

I read a review of the Nokia 6260 and they ran some kind of Symbian benchmarking software, and the 6260 actually scored higher than the original NGage in quite a few of the scores, which is quite surprising considering the NGage was designed to be a 'gamedeck'. Anyone know where I can read up on the usefulness of the Symbian you get on phones?

Edited by renzo at 11:31:11 02-02-2005

Machiavel 2 Feb 2005 12:54:09 5,964 posts
Seen 1 day ago
Registered 19 years ago

Somebody mentioned S700i!

Very happy with mine: best screen I've seen, best camera on a phone (for now), nice ability to navigate without opening out the keyboard. Very stylish too.

Niggles: swivel-to-open takes some getting used to; Memory Stick DUO has 128Mb limit (although there's 32Mb internally as well); currently not a lot of free stuff on the web for it (or on the Vodafone live site)

Highly recommended, as long as you DO use camera phones.

Retroid Moderator 2 Feb 2005 13:10:39 45,464 posts
Seen 2 weeks ago
Registered 18 years ago

renzo wrote:
I'm also considering a Nokia 6260, but I doubt I'd use any of the 'Smartphone' features. And it's a bit bulky. But it does have Symbian on it... does that mean you can run emulators on it, ala N-Gage?

Here's a list of S60 devices - that phone is included ont he list, so yes, all those emulators I've mentioned will run on it. Possibly faster if it's one of the more recent phones with faster CPUs \o/

Looky here for most of the emus available.

Moose 2 Feb 2005 13:21:31 36 posts
Registered 17 years ago

I had a Motorola Razr v3 when they came out (the other half works for Carphonewarehouse) and I used it for about 10mins before I got completely frustrated with the UI and put it on eBay !!!!

I cannot recommend the Sony Ericsson phones highly enough - I have had the T68, T610, T630 and now the K700i and they are all a joy to use. The S700i has very good reviews and looks like a very nice phone - my only critisism is the size - it is a little on the porky side

So IMHO the v3 is great as a fashion accessory - however if you actually want to use your phone then look elsewhere.

st3ph3n 2 Feb 2005 13:27:16 2,833 posts
Seen 12 years ago
Registered 20 years ago

My dad has a V3. He gets on fine with it and he usually takes at least 3 months to learn a UI.

Having said that, the UI is shit, easy to learn shit, but shit.

The phone itself is nice, if not slightly on the big side.

Get yourself an SPV C500. That's where the real phone action is at these days.

Epitaph 2 Feb 2005 13:31:59 860 posts
Seen 8 years ago
Registered 18 years ago

I've had the same problem with my v525 as binky i.e. shocking button lag. Screen and microphone went tits-up on me, thankfully before the warranty expired.

And texting is an absolute nightmare as the predictive text puts an exclamation mark in whenever I press the "symbols" key (1). So bloody annoying

terminalterror 2 Feb 2005 13:42:05 18,932 posts
Seen 6 days ago
Registered 20 years ago

st3ph3n wrote:
Get yourself an SPV C500. That's where the real phone action is at these days.

/seconds

Its a great smartphone, looks great and is about the size of a t610 (not too bulky).

And you can run ScummVM on it.

renzo 2 Feb 2005 13:47:47 3,195 posts
Seen 7 days ago
Registered 19 years ago

Retroid wrote:

renzo wrote:
I'm also considering a Nokia 6260, but I doubt I'd use any of the 'Smartphone' features. And it's a bit bulky. But it does have Symbian on it... does that mean you can run emulators on it, ala N-Gage?
Here's a list of S60 devices - that phone is included ont he list, so yes, all those emulators I've mentioned will run on it. Possibly faster if it's one of the more recent phones with faster CPUs \o/

Looky here for most of the emus available.

SNES and Megadrive emus? w00t!

Cheers Retroid. This certainly makes the decision a lot tougher now.

Any word on how well they play on these phones though? I mean control-wise.

rauper Founder & CEO, Gamer Network 2 Feb 2005 14:25:22 3,379 posts
Seen 17 hours ago
Registered 20 years ago

Shinji's V3 is arriving tomorrow so I'm sure he'll let you know what he thinks of it.

I'm really happy with my Nokia 6230 - perfect if you want a simple but excellent phone - great interface, battery life etc.

Got a Sharp GX-30i arriving tomorrow (it was free) so I might just try it out for a bit... Anyone else tried it, what do they think?

Retroid Moderator 2 Feb 2005 15:18:58 45,464 posts
Seen 2 weeks ago
Registered 18 years ago

renzo wrote:
SNES and Megadrive emus? w00t!

Cheers Retroid. This certainly makes the decision a lot tougher now.

Any word on how well they play on these phones though? I mean control-wise.

Well, first, I'll give the caveats. The Megadrive emu runs pretty well but sounds support is patchy at best and it's not hugely compatible. A lot of fun to play Cannon Fodder on yer mobile, though!

The SNES emu is brand new and, whilst very impressive, I'm not expecting it to get all that playable. Certainly better than some efforts on other machines I've seen, but for now more of a curio.

Vampent's NES & GB emulators are supoib though! Highly recommended, as are the C64 emulators and both Spectrum emus.

Controlwise; that's why I bought an Ngage, so I'd have decently laid-out controls for games