Motorola RAZR V3i (with iTunes) Review

Now how did this thing of beauty came to me? I was very much satisfied with my E398 but we had to give it to my mother-in-law whose phone got stolen, just so that the pain of getting something valuable stolen from her would be eased a bit. So, back to the web I sought for a phone similar to the E398 but better.

I’ve been praising the original RAZR V3 for its visual appeal. However I wasn’t really a fan of it in terms of features and price, since it’s quite on the expensive side yet it’s got features that my E398 would laugh at. Then later the next generation RAZRs came — the V3c, which is the CDMA version of the phone, then the V3x, which is a much improved V3 complete with 3G capabilities. Engineers at Motorola might have given some thought on improving the original V3, which resulted in another version of the phone, the V3i.

The V3i caught my attention. Just released sometime late December, it has a much-improved camera, MicroSD secondary storage, 12Mb free internal memory, and a dedicated music player (for the phones sold here in the Philippines, it’s iTunes). So there I was on the phone calling a Motorola distributor and inquiring about the V3i. Fortunately they already have it in stock, so I went there to check it out.

The V3i came in a sleek black box. One thing I discovered about it is the way it is opened. It isn’t your ordinary box — it has two levels where you have to pull one on each side of the box (just like you would a drawer) to access everything inside. Quite a nifty design I think, and one that gives the impression that what you’re holding is a special, one-of-a-kind phone. It reminded me of how the iPods are packaged.

The upper level of the box contained the accessories, which are as follows:

- 256Mb MicroSD card with adapter
- Travel charger
- USB data cable
- iTunes CD
- Motorola Phone Tools CD
- Stereo earphones
- Leather case
- Leather Strap
- Screen cleaner
- Warranty card
- Manuals

The lower level of the box held the V3i, in all its glory. I must say that upon opening the phone I wasn’t really appreciative of how it looked — you can open it  and turn it on, but it’s totally wrapped in plastic protectors! This may have been to prevent scratches and dents while it’s not yet sold. I tested the phone for a while — maybe it took an hour, but fortunately the salespeople were kind enough to let me make sure that I’ll be getting what I want before making the purchase. Needless to say, I have made the purchase — or else I don’t have anything to make a review for right now!

The phone has the following features:

- Slim clamshell profile
- Quad band (850/900/1800/1900)
- 176×220 256K TFT Primary Screen
- 80×96 64K CSTN Secondary Screen
- 1.23MP Still Camera with 8x zoom
- H.263 Video capture with sound at 176×144
- Alarm Clock
- Calculator
- Datebook
- iTap predictive text
- Speakerphone
- Voice Recording
- PC Sync using included Motorola Phone Tools software
- SMS, EMS, MMS, IM, Email capabilities
- MIDP 2.0 support
- Polyphonic and MP3 ringtone support
- Video Playback
- iTunes music player
- GPRS Class 10
- WAP 2.0 support
- mini-USB connector for data, handsfree, and power
- Bluetooth Class 1
- Speaker-independent name and digit dialing

Quite a lot of features, huh?

Still Camera

At last! After getting myself used to a phone having a decent VGA camera, I got on my hands one that captures more than a million pixels for every image. Honestly, the camera included in the V3i maybe quite disappointing — depending on the lighting condition, the CMOS sensor produces low to decent quality photos. When using this phone I have to constantly remind myself to take pictures at well-lit locations, or else I’d get grainy photo output. The camera does have several photo functions available, like Lighting conditions (Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Indoor-Home, Indoor-Office, Night), Zoom (up to 8x), Photo Style (Color, B&W, Bluish, Antique, Reddish, Greenish, Negative), and Exposure (+/- 2). When taking pictures, the fullscreen viewfinder shifts from the primary to the secondary screen and back whenever the phone is opened or closed.

Video Recording and Playback

My wife took a video of my son while preparing him for a good night’s rest that I later played on the phone and uploaded to my PC. The resolution at 175×144 is enough for posting videos in websites. I’d say that the video recording function of the V3i is better than its photo capture function with regards to quality. The sound recorded is monaural, so no left/right panning sounds for videos taken from this phone. Playback is excellent too, it’s not choppy when playing my wife’s recording. With the V3i’s large screen, I’m being tempted to try to convert a full-length movie to 3gp format and watch it on my phone while commuting to and from work.

Voice Recording and Playback

I’m not really into taking voice notes as I go along with my daily tasks, but I did a bit of testing with this feature by letting my wife record her voice. Sound capture is clear enough when played through the inbuilt speakers.

Media Player

According to the Motorola product sheet, two versons of the V3i are available, depending on the market: one is installed with the Motorola native music player, and another (which this phone has) has iTunes installed. I installed the included iTunes 6.x and connected my phone to my PC. Just like a regular iPod would behave when connected to a computer with iTunes installed, it automatically launched iTunes and started syncing audio data. Compared to my E398, the V3i transfers files roughly twice as much faster. The iTunes software in the V3i does have a 50-song limit though, but reasonable enough with the included 256Mb MicroSD card (about 50Mb was left free after putting 50 songs in it). Sound quality is superb, though not as bass-y as the walkman phones from Sony Ericsson. However, sound playback is not as loud as that of the E398 when listening to music using the included handsfree stereo headset.

Added Applications

The Motorola applications present in the E398 are here — the datebook, alarm clock, and the calculator. I won’t be talking about these in detail, since they are very much identical with that of the E398’s. It’s enough to say that I’m as satisfied with these as that of what’s in the E398.

Connectivity

Two methods are available for connecting the phone to a computer — through the supplied USB 2.0 cable and Bluetooth. I get to appreciate performing data transfer using the cable more now than before, since it is much faster. Another plus is that the phone gets to charge its batteries when connected this way, unlike the E398 which doesn’t.

Bluetooth connectivity is typical motorola. It won’t be able to find devices, rather it makes itself discoverable after clicking on the “Find Me” option in the Bluetooth connectivity settings. Data transfer is faster here (again) as compared to the E398. An added security would be that this phone requires you to ‘pair’ it first with another device before allowing data transfers. This is not present with most Nokia phones (hence the Bluetooth trojans easily spreading through Nokia phones).

Customizability

The V3i has 3 preinstalled themes and skins. However, when you get bored of them you cannot change them (legally), you have to use a third-party program to tweak the filesystem of the phone and insert the theme or skin. Ringtones and wallpapers may be changed, but for the tones to be seen by the ringtone settings they have to be stored in main memory. MP3s and polyphonic ringtones may be used. Wallpapers and screensavers may be in GIF or JPG file format.

Call Quality

Call quality has been superb with this phone. I tried placing a voice call while riding a train (with all the noise of the train itself and the boisterous people you occassionally encounter when riding public transport), and I could still clearly hear the person I’m calling. I’d also like to note that the speakerphone function is very much usable, the voice from the other side of the call can be heard clear enough on a moderately noisy environment.

Battery Life and Talk Time

My daily routine of using the phone as an MP3 player (about 1-2 hours a day), sending about 20 SMS messages and placing a call or two took the battery roughly 3 days before signaling empty. If some people would be using the phone as a music player for a longer time the battery life would significantly be shorter. I wish Motorola would have an option for a ’stronger’ battery — I could have used this as my own iPod if I could get 4 or 5 days out of it while using it as a music player for 4 hours a day. But then I might be dreaming.

Gotchas

- I tend to press the wrong button at times when making a quick SMS message. It might have been the flat keypad, which takes a bit of getting used to when composing a text without looking on it.
- The rubber ’separators’ of the keypad tends to smudge the screen of the phone — I recommend buying a screen protector to prevent scratches.
- It seems that I cannot delete a song from with the phone — I still need to connect it to my computer and sync it to delete the desired file.
- Since the iTunes songs are in a separete directory, it cannot be accessed from the phone.
- The screens (main and back) easily gets dirty
- You can play or pause a song while the phone is closed but you still need to open it to skip the currently playing song.
- When in USB drive mode and connected to a computer, the phone would periodically display a warning message. This is quite annoying when you try to access the phone’s menu system while it is connected to the computer.
- You cannot set a separate display image for the back display when the phone is closed. It would always follow the wallpaper in the main display.
- There is no way to determine from the status bar when Bluetooth is on.

Conclusion

The phone is a worthy successor to the original RAZR phone. It makes up for all the shortcomings of its predecessor. Not meant to put down the developers of the ROKR, but this should have been the phone that Motorola advertised as an iPod phone. It has all the features of the ROKR, and it does it much more efficiently. The UI may be quite antiquated as compatred to other phones, but old time Moto users would appreciate the fact that what they have been used to is still here. The price is quite affordable, and I recommend this to those looking for a phone with style and more than decent feature set.

(NOTE: I have tried to verify the tests I made by performing several trials, but I may have missed some details. Please let me know if I have committed some errors. If you have other questions, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. Thanks!)