Motorola W385-Can you hear me now?

Author's Rating:

Pros: Small, compact, good camera, good storage, sleek design

Cons: A little touchy

The Bottom Line: 
Not a kid's phone, but durable enough and portable for anyone.

Author's Review
Well...as every cell phone contract goes, mine was up. I'm part of my mother-in-law's family plan, and she had just replaced her phone with the Motorola W385 and loved it, so I got the same one. Yeah. Well...

The phone is slim, though not so slim that you lose it under papers. Don't laugh, I have done that before. It has several great features that I will touch on briefly, but one thing I really like is the lack of an antenna. Reason being that it was what broke when I got my last phone and why (the only reason) I chose to upgrade when my contract was up a couple months ago.

The phone is a clamshell type, but does not open flat, so if you happen to have it open and lay something on it, say a Biology book, it can um...break the hinge, causing the phone to need to be repaired or replaced. It's soft rubber cover makes it comfortable to use, and keeps it from sliding across the whole table if you happen to, oh, throw it at someone.

It is a digital phone, duh, and is a camera phone, which you know from reading the product details. You can get the size there, as well, along with all the other important specs like size, capabilities, etc. Now...how do I like it??

Well, like I said, I didn't really want to replace my old phone, but got this one because I was told it was nice. And it is. The first important thing I liked was the battery life. Once it was fully charged, I started transferring my contact information to it, called a few important people who care to know the status of my electronic devices, etc. Four days and about 12 calls later, the battery had lost one bar. My old phone had a battery life (2 month old battery) of about 2 days, if it wasn't used at all and about 9 hours if half of that was when the phone was in use for one thing or another. So battery life gets an A+.

The size was a seller for me. I am a cowgirl and wear tighter jeans than some of the skater chicks out there with their undies hanging out, so I don't care to have lumps in odd places. This phone is small enough that it fits in my front or back pocket without an obvious bulge. And again, the lack of the antenna makes it less likely to be hurt by this sort of treatment.

The camera in the phone takes good, clear pictures, and has a couple interesting features like borders, sienna mode, black and white mode, and a couple others, so that is cool. You can also customize the display with 12 or 24 hour time, which I prefer, so that was nice. I guess that is pretty standard now, but is a feature my other phone did not have. It does have bluetooth capabilities as well as text, graphics, email, and web support, all of which are features I don't use. Come on, it's true. If I wanted all that other stuff, I would get a laptop. I want reliable cell service from my phone, nothing more.

It has 32MB of internal memory for contacts, photos, texts, etc., which I guess is pretty good. You can download games and custom photos, wallpaper, screensavers, etc. Again, not something I use.

Durability is only a C, in my opinion. Reason being that I have already had to replace my phone once and have only had it since the end of May. What happened was that five nights ago, my battery was just about dead, so I turned it off, planning to charge in the morning. Well, morning came and went, and I tried to turn on the phone with no result. Figured the battery was dead, so tried to charge, "tried" being the operative word. Three chargers and a few curses later, there was still no response from the phone. Called tech support and they said you are not to allow the battery to go all the way dead and to allow it to sit on the charger for two hours and it should begin to register that the charger is there and so I tried it. Nothing.

Long story short, the phone was dead. Tried the battery on my MIL's phone and the battery was fine, so the phone was dead. Hadn't ever been thrown at anyone (I swear its true), or dropped, or washed. It just died. No apparent reason, and I am still waiting to find out if there was something wrong from the beginning, so I don't know.

There are a fair number of stored ring tones, and the capability to download many more from the net. Contacts are customizable, etc. The phone came with a AC charger, and I purchased a car charger, both of which have sufficiently long enough cords, are easy to use, and work well.

All in all, I like the Motorola W385 and would recommend it to most. Because of the touchy? nature, I don't think I would want it for a teen's phone, but anyone who knows how to take care of one should be okay with the W385.