Motorola i710 Phone (Nextel)

Rating:
Summary: Great Phone.
Review: I liked this phone it seems to be tough and stylish. But had ordered it off of Nextels site. They even gave me a code that saved me $50.00. Here it is for you all to share (CL897L) case sensitive. On the shopping cart page in the promo box. It is like an invoice thing. But I think it is a very good phone. You will enjoy the phone. Happy shopping.

Rating:
Summary: new features, none of which are free
Review: It's shameful that Americans are usually the last country to have the latest in phone technology. Sweden is the cell-phone capital of the world - followed by Japan, then Europe... so whatever phones we're using, the Swedes got to play with 2 years ago. Oh well. The way our phone market is here, we're slaves to the industry.

My phone is set up w/ 500 anytime minutes, unlimited nights & weekends and unlimited walkie-talkie minutes.

I also have Internet access on the phone, but just the limited access - it's all text, and only access to 80 sites... so few are WAP compatible nowadays.

The color screen is fairly sharp in resolution, all things considered. Unlike the more primitive black-n-white phones, these phones don't come with games - only demos you have to pay for. I bought a data cable so I could put my own photos (wallpaper) on the phone w/o buying someone else's wallpaper. After all, I want my dogs on there, not some else's dogs!

The data cable is not sold with that intent, however. The cable cost over 30 bucks, too! I searched all over the Internet until I found a 3rd party utility called WebJal that lets you put your own wallpaper and ringtones on the phone. So far, I've only had success with the wallpaper. Webjal is only available for Windows, and as a Mac user, I found the lack of support by Nextel and Motorola extremely frustrating. Apparently, Motorola & Nextel don't want you fiddling with their phones (even though you actually buy the phone, they still want to believe it's their phone!), so don't expect Nextel or Motorola to help you in any way to get your personal photos or sound effects on your phone - if you want this ability, wait and pray for the next version of the iPod to be a PDA & Phone combo, or else you'll have to search online like I did for several days to find the appropriate software, etc. to put on your own content.

The phone comes with about 10 ringtones, only one of which isn't absolutely horrible to listen to.

The phone is very easy to program and the buttons are fairly intuitive and there are a couple of "soft" buttons which are context sensitive - so applause to Motorola for that! The phone comes with the battery and a wall charger - and that's it. I had to buy the case (by Bodyglove - it's nice), the car charger and the data cable separately - I spent more on the accessories than I did for the phone and I haven't even bought a hands-free ear-thingy yet!!

The speaker works very well - I was able to have a conversation with my mother on the phone and she didn't even know I was using the speaker until I told her - another star for that!

Also impressive is the volume control that's on the side of the phone. Without even messing with the keyboard, you can quickly adjust your volume without even looking at the phone, just listening as the sound gets quieter and finally goes to vibrate mode. Another star for that.

The speaker and ringer are impressively loud and have a long acoustic range (you can hear it clearly when it's jammed deep in your pocket or purse.

Adding names and numbers is fairly intuitive. I really haven't had to consult my manual for everything, since there is context sensitive help on nearly every screen if you need it.

I'm annoyed that simple games that are free on other phones are not built-in. Considering how much money people spend on ringtones, wallpaper, etc., the phones should be free, since they charge for everything!

The walkie-talkie button can be programmed so you only need to PPT (push to talk) instantly with someone else using Nextel. I have the "local" PPT, which is all of Texas... you have to pay extra to talk nationwide. It's cheaper to have a more expensive plan than to pay for overages - they don't dilly around - 40 cents per minute on overages!

If you talk an hour every day to a friend, your 500 minutes will be eaten up very quickly, but if you're like me, you'll have plenty to spare - I'm hardly on the phone, but it's nice to know I can talk if I need to.

There is supposedly some built-in GPS stuff, but you have to pay for the service, so it's not like a stand-alone GPS device if you want to go GeoCaching or anything.

The phone is conveniently small, but not so small that you need a microscope and/or a toothpick to dial and read the buttons. The accessory clip (sold separately) is really meant for hooking onto belts - so unless you wear slacks with belt, it's not too sturdy to hook onto your jeans or pocket - so I just stick the whole phone in my pocket - and it makes a wierd bulge w/ the clip, etc.

I'm still waiting for my friends to get Nextel so I can use the walkie-talkie feature. Nextel should have a site where folks can exchange their walkie-talkie numbers - because they're totally different than phone numbers, so it's not like you'd lose any privacy - almost like SMS chat, but different. I still pine for the abilities in the "Global" used on "Earth: Final Conflict," but this may still be 10 years off - I hear that Dallas Semiconductor is still working on the flexible/expandible viewscreens.