Motorola V710 Phone (Verizon Wireless)

Rating:
Summary: Don't buy it for Bluetooth
Review: As others have mentioned, in an attempt to force customers to use their "Get It Now" service, Verizon has crippled the Bluetooth so its only function is to let you use a cordless headset. In other words, Verizon is targeting this, their first Bluetooth phone, to teenagers who spend all their time talking on the phone and all their parents' money downloading silly ringtones and graphics. Working adults who want a phone they can use to store information and transfer it between devices should choose another carrier and another phone.

You can find a good overview of the phone's pros and cons--as well as a breathtaking sample of Verizon's arrogance and uncaring attitude towards its customers--at http://www.nuclearelephant.com/papers/v710.html.

Rating:
Summary: I wish i had a choice between this phone and another...
Review: But verizon only had this for the bluetooth. I got it when it came out and, i was extremely pissed off. For a month i could take the lousiest pictures that i have ever seen. It was like you pause your vcr on a horribly recorded tape. I had another phone before this with AT&T for over a year, and that was not a megapixel but 640x400, well it was less resolution but each picture came out 1000 times better in light and otherwise. Even outside the fotos come out very bad. Put it this way i never use the camera anymore even when i say i wish a had a camera to take a funny foto of someone. Its a bluetooth enabled phone which works so so with the 820 motorola headset. I dont think you should buy this if you need a camera phone, only if you need a bluetooth phone with verizon if there are none others around. Very dissapointed with the motorolla phone, it was my first and ia had heard many good things about it, which this phone made me forget them and just think of the horrible quality of this phone. ...... OH, and i heard that there is, or was a recall on the first wave of these phones on the camera lens. I returned it and i got another replaced for free, at least i made motorolla pay for its crappy phone they put out there. And its quite big for phones out there which are getting smaller every day. The v600 is much better and a bit smaller. If they had it for verizon i wouldve gotten it in a heartbeat.


Rating:
Summary: CRIPPLED LIKE CRAZY!!!
Review: DO NOT BUY THIS PHONE. This phone is GREAT in terms of RF and use BUT thats about it, everything you would expect from motorola such as camera and bluetooth have been CRIPPLED SEVERLY!!! You can even use BT to transfer pics or mp3s. You have to FLASH the phone for it to work which is a pain. VERIZON has crippled this phone by disabling other features like MULTIMEDIA function from their program Mobile Phone tools so the ONLY way is to use their EXPENSIVE Get it NOW Program.

STAY AWAY!!! DONT GET THIS PHONE TIL THEY FIX IT IN THE FUTURE!!!

Rating:
Summary: Great phone!
Review: Have had this phone for a couple of weeks. Traded up from a T720i, a great improvement, much more usable, the screen resolution is just awesome. Menus and "get it now" features are much faster. I have been using a sandisk 128mb transflash and USB reader to transfer images and ringtones/mp3's with no problems.You can fit a ton of pictures/mp3's on that card. you do have to copy any audio files from the card over to the phone memory to use as a ringotne. There is a ton of free audio editing software out there to create & edit your own ringtones. This is a good way to get around Verizon's pay-for-pictures/ringtones junk. Buttons have a nice solid feel. Speaker phone is loud and voice dialing works very well. I had some trouble with the unit turning off unexpectedly, but has not happened since I fully charged the battery. I have not used bluetooth yet, and don't plan to. Camera is decent for a phone, video is pretty choppy. All of the applications I have downloaded look great on the display.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful display, great sound quality and sturdy frame...
Review: I am one of those that gets a new cell phone every year so I have to have the latest and greatest. I also require the phone to do a little bit more than just simply allow me to make calls, although that is the most important thing.

Let me start off by saying that this phone is the best phone I have ever owned, hands down. Yeah some people on here are crying about how the Bluetooth is "crippled" or that the battery life isn't all that great but I haven't had a problem with either. As far as BT is concerned I only use the headset function so the rest doesn't matter to me. I bought a transflash card for $25 with the phone and use that to transfer songs and pictures, real easy. The battery life is great. I can go four days in between charges even when playing music, taking pictures and talking on it all the time. No other phone I owned had a battery that lasted that long. Learn how to "condition" your battery people, it will make it last so much longer.

As everyone has said the picture quality leaves a lot to be desired but hey, it's a camera-PHONE what did you expect? It's great for snapping shots when you just don't have your digital camera around (like if you get into a fender bender or something). The internal display, on the other hand, is amazing! This is my third color phone and it is by far the best display ever, so vivid and crisp. I actually uploaded high quality pics from my computer via the transflash card and use that for my Picture Caller ID and the display is wonderful!

The media player is great with the 128mb memory card. I am able to store more than 30 songs on it and the sound quality of the external speaker is excellent. Yes, it does not allow you to assign mp3's on the memory card as ringtones but I just use a free utility called MPTrim to make 20-30 second clips of all my favorite songs and then transfer them to the phone's memory. Then you can simply assign those as ringtones and since the files are only about 20 seconds long (which is longer than the time for the phone to ring before forwarding to voicemail) it only uses up about 250kb at CD-quality sound so you can still fit dozens of them on the phone's 10mb internal memory.

The speakerphone isn't as lound as my last phone (Nextel i730) but is still loud enough to use in a room with a reasonable amount of noise. It's definitely loud enough to use in a car with the windows up or in an office environment.

The phone's menus and buttons are so easy to use and well thought out that it will only take a matter of minutes to get used to. I also like the fact that you can customize the soft keys and the shortcut buttons to your liking. Makes it even easier to navigate through.

There are a few very very minor issues that I have found and I will tell you about those so that you know I'm not some sort of Motorola rep trying to increase sales. One thing I don't like is that you can't adjust the ringer volume with the phone closed. I think that's an important feature when you forget to shut the ringer off when you're in a meeting and you get a call which begins playing that new mp3 ringtone you downloaded. You also cannot disable the "Low Battery" warning beep (which doesn't happen often but when it does can get annoying). To me it seems like it defeats the purpose to have a loud beep every two minutes when your battery is low since that in and of itself uses up energy. I also haven't been able to figure out how to ignore a call without opening the phone, which if set to do so could actually cause you to answer the call (forgive me if I missed the section in the manual that shows you how to do this).

As far as the service goes I cannot be happier with Verizon. I work in a large office building and I park four levels underground. No carrier, other than Sprint, get's coverage down there and with Verizon I can make calls sitting in my car. There were also two dead spots that I would always run into with Nextel on my commute home and with Verizon I have at least 3 bars in both areas. I also called their customer service three times since receiving my phone just to ask simple questions about my plan or about features and never had to wait longer than 3 minutes. With Nextel and ATT/Cingular (wife's phone) I had to sit on hold for over 20 minutes each just to cancel service, goes to show how much they care. And every time I've called in their reps were polite and got my questions answered quickly.

After going from LA Cellular to AT&T Wireless to Airtouch to Verizon back to AT&T Wireless to Nextel and then back to Verizon I really think I have found the provider I am going to stick with (at least until someone else comes out with a better phone and better coverage :p ).

Rating:
Summary: DO NOT BUY
Review: I purchased the phone because of the Bluetooth technology. This technology has been mostly disabled by Verizon. Do not buy if you plan to use this phone with Bluetooth. VERY DISAPPOINTED. WILL SELL SHARES OF MOTOROLA AND VERIZON AS ONLY RECOURSE. BURNED ONCE NEVER AGAIN!

Rating:
Summary: Not Perfect, Not Bad
Review: OK, I'm sick of all the people that buy this phone and expect it to slice their bread and wash their laundry, then rip on it for not doing that.

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I have been very pleased with this phone. Yes, it has a camera; yes, it plays mp3s; yes, it has bluetooth. But it's not a digital Elph, it's not an iPod, and it's not a PDA. It's a phone. No, it's not perfect, but it works well.

Some weaknesses:
-The "1.3 megapixel" camera takes 1280x960 pictures, but it is not a digital camera replacement. Pictures in bright light turn out well. The camera is effectively useless in low lighting, the LED light doesn't help.
-Some people would say it is oversized. I like its size and weight.
The external "color" screen is not very high resolution, and does not have very bright colors. Picture ID's are very small. (unlike many screens though, it is visible in sunlight)
-Battery life is uninspiring. It comes with having such a huge screen and so many features.
-mp3s work well, but to use them as a ringtone, you must put them on the phone's embedded memory (10 megs) instead of being able to play from the transflash card (I have a 128 meg card).
-Bluetooth is pretty much only useful for a wireless headset. Know this before you buy it: No bluetooth data transfer. Get a transflash card and reader to transfer pictures, movies and music.

Some strengths:
-Excellent reception, the best of any phone I've ever used.
-Huge, high definition screen.
-Strong phone speaker, mp3s sound good.
-Takes good pictures with plenty of light.
-Very customizable interface and software: You can choose the commands for both soft keys and all four directional keys. Some people are confused by the menus, I personally like customization. This might not be the best phone if you are not somewhat tech savvy.
-Speakerphone is loud and works well.
-Superb digital voice recognition, even with quite a bit of ambient noise. I have a lot of names in my phone book, making calls is so easy when you just have to push one side button, then say the rest.
-Other little bonus features are great. A battery-saving one that I like is that the phone senses how bright surrounding light is, then will light the keypad only if necessary.
-Durable, attractive construction. It doesn't look or feel like many of the flimsy, lightweight plastic phones out there.

My experience with this phone has been great. Verizon seems behind the technology curve when compared to some of the other providers, but this phone has helped level the playing field a bit.

Rating:
Summary: Verizon has taken a decent phone and turned it into garbage.
Review: This is the buggiest phone I have ever used. It has all sorts of problems with bluetooth integration to the Acura Handsfee Link system. Also, Verizon has crippled the phone so that you cannot transfer files using Bluetooth to force you to use their Get It Now service which is much much slower in addition to the fact that you have to pay for it. Finally, the camera is aweful. I've seen better pictures from cheap 640x480 cameras and don't even try to take a picture indoors. I am very disappointed that this is the best Verizon can come out with in a Bluetooth handset. Why pay hundreds of dollars for this when you can get a better Bluetooth phone for use on the Cingular network for $50.

Rating:
Summary: DO NOT BUY THIS IF YOU WANT FULL BLUETOOTH CAPABILITIES
Review: This phone is great, I love it. BUT Verizon crippled it - they disabled object transfer over bluetooth, so you won't be able to get pictures off your phone, put mp3's onto your phone, or download your contact list withouth buying a Transflash Card and Reader.

This is something Verizon did because profit is their middle name - they want you to pay $.25/picture to send them to yourself. They want you to buy THEIR ringtones through Get It Now.

Other than this problem, the phone is great. Pictures are a bit grainy and dark, but they are as good as can be expected from a phone. The form factor is a bit bigger than expected, but the screen is absolutely huge!

For more info about this phone, there is a user community at:
www.howardforums.com - it's under the Verizon heading.

Rating:
Summary: NEW MOTO E815 PHONE TO REPLACE V710 in Q1 2005
Review: This V710 phone has had terrible reviews because of its many bad features and numerous problems. Verizon will be releasing Motorola's new EVDO E815 phone to replace this phone very soon. I urge people not to buy this V710 phone anymore and wait for the new replacement. The E815 looks very similar but has an improved keypad, better bluetooth capability, better quality camera and a new version of the speech recognition software. The E815 has been previewed at this month's CES electronics expo in Las Vegas with great reviews. Here is something you can read: http://www.mobileburn.com/news.jsp?Id=1038.

Verizon is expected to release the E815 by May 2005.