Mobile Phone Review

Somewhat overshadowed by the endless RAZR handsets, Motorola also makes some pretty inexpensive monoblock devices, including the excellent MOTOFONE. These W-Series phones are aimed at the value end of the market, and they promise to combine good value for money with a attractive looks.

We don’t know much about these low-end Motorola W-Series phones at present other than what we can tell from the pictures.. in fact we can’t even say for certain if they’re all GSM phones as Motorola also has some CDMA versions. So, while we wait for the full technical specifications.. here are the pictures.

Motorola W156 / Motorola W160

The Motorola W156 (left) and W160 (right) are two identical looking monochrome phones with 128x128 pixel displays and an illuminated keypad. The W160 comes with an FM radio, where the W156 does not. There’s a standard jack plug connector on both, although it’s hard to see what the W156 would use it for as you can bet it doesn’t have MP3 playback! There’s a USB connector too.

The display does look rather like the digital paper unit found on the FONE F3, but we can’t say exactly what it is.

One characteristic of these very low end Motorolas tends to be light weight and very long battery life. If Motorola stick to their past form, then the W156 and W160 will probably make very dependable low-end handsets.

Motorola W175 / Motorola W180

Add a colour screen to the W156 and W160 and you get the W175 (left) and the W180 (right). The W180 is the variant with the FM radio, and both handsets have the same illuminated keypad and connectos as the other ones.

As we said, we don’t know much about the technical characteristics of these devices but we’d expect them to weight around 80 grams and have 5-7 hours talktime.

Neither of these handsets has a digital camera, and we don’t expect them to have Bluetooth either.

Motorola W206 / Motorola W213

A return to the styling that Motorola was using a couple of years ago, the W206 (left) and W213 (right) are both quite low end handsets. Again, the W213 has an FM radio, the W206 doesn’t appear to have one.

Surprisingly, neither handset has a digital camera. It’s a little hard to see what differentiates the W175/W180 from the W206/W213 as they both have similar features.

Despite the basic features, in our view the W213 looks to be a very attractive and well-proportioned  handset. With the built-in FM radio it should be a welcome Christmas present for many consumers.

 At the moment price and availability of these handsets are not known. We hope to look at these phones again at a later date when we have the full technical specifications.

The Motorola RAZR2 V9 looks almost identical to the RAZR2 V8 - it’s just a little thicker but otherwise the differences are slight.

Unlike the V8, the RAZR V9 is a 3G phone with HSDPA support giving a maximum download speed of 3.6Mbps. It’s not the first HSDPA RAZR though, Motorola have been an early adopted of 3.5G in their clamshell devices.

As with the V8, the RAZR2 V9 features a very large 2.0" 240x320 pixel display with a touchscreen and haptic (tactile) feedback. This means that many of the V9’s functions can be controlled from the external display. At 2 inches diagonal size, we believe that the RAZR2 has the largest external display of any phone we’ve seen.

Motorola tell us that the RAZR2 V9 features video calling and a close examination of the handset reveals that there only appears to be one camera.. so presumably video calls are made using the external camera and screen.

The camera itself is a disappointment. It’s just a 2 megapixel affair with no autofocus or flash and a pretty low video resolution of 176x144 pixels. In this respect the V9 isn’t that competitive with a lot of the high-end 3G phones it competes against.

The RAZR2 V9 can play back a variety of audio and video formats, using the external display as a media controller. Internal memory is 45MB (a lot less than the V8) but this can be expanded by up to 2GB using microSD cards. Stereo audio playback is either via a wired headset or compatible Bluetooth accessory.

The phone is designed to be tough with a stainless steel casing around an internal chassis to make it strong, and the external display has been coated to resist scratching.

Again, there are many other improvements that the RAZR2 V9 shares with the V8 including a much improved user interface, voice recognition and feedback and a web browser, email client and a range of other applications.

It may not be the first HSDPA RAZR, but it’s certainly the best effort to date. The two elements that are most offputting are the so-so camera and the somewhat unimaginative styling.