Cell Phones

I was just thinking the other day about all the cell phones that I have had in the last year (or in the last 2 months) and I thought "hey, I should write something about these phones." Here it is, a review of the phones that I have owned.

Motorola C120

This phone sucked. This was the first phone I had when I signed up with Verizon back in the spring of 2002. I signed a two year contract and got the cheapest phone. It actually wasn't that bad. It had no games (which was fine by me) and I never updated any ring tones and it had a monochromatic screen, but it worked (for the first year or year and a half). I was glad to get a new phone though. One cool thing I could do is use "Dial Up Networking" to connect to the internet and because I had free long distance this was really cool for "on the road" browsing - it was not reliable though.

Sony Erricson T630

This phone was awesome. I guess it would be hard to evaluate a phone unbiasedly after having only had one previous phone, and that with no features. But this phone, even as I look back at it, was a great phone. It had Bluetooth so that I could use iSync to sync my addresses and calendar. I could also control iTunes from my phone which was cool. It had a high-res color screen and some cool games. The problem was it didn't have as clear a signal as my other phone and the ring wasn't very loud (which meant I missed calls a lot). Good phone though.

This is where my phone history gets interesting. My dog ate my T630 and so I had to get a new phone. This is when I discovered what SIM technology is most useful for. I thought it was just a good way to save your phone numbers. The awesome thing was that I could remove the SIM card from my devoured phone, put it in to a new phone and that new phone would have my old phone number automatically assigned to it.

Motorola V220

Kim Berner gave me this phone and it worked well, for a week or two. I had the same problem that a lot of flip-phone users experience, the phone had a short. This caused calls to cut in and out, I couldn't hear unless I put a lot of pressure on the joint of the phone. Sometimes I just had to turn on speakerphone so that I could hear the person I was on the phone with. It was really annoying. I like flip-phones, I think the design is cool and I like how small they can be, but I don't know if I will ever get another after that one. I am often surprised at the life-expectancy of cell phones. Often the service plan that people sign up for is longer than the expected life of their phone.

Siemens S55

For this next phone I got a little greedy. I wanted a cheap phone and I wanted Bluetooth. This phone cost me 20 bucks on eBay and is one of the smallest phones I have ever seen. It has bluetooth which works with iSync (but not with iTunes). It has some annoying "features"... like this voice-recording feature that you always accidentally press and start recording phone calls. All-in-all I think it is a pretty good phone. I wouldn't buy another, but it works just fine.

Motorola ROKR E1

This is the phone I just got. It is one of the larger phones I have seen (at least, larger than the Sony and the Siemens, it's still smaller than those phones from the late 80's). It has bluetooth (and came with a bluetooth headset, which is cool in a geeky kind of way - it's kind of like the universal communicator). The "cool" feature from this phone is that it actually has iTunes installed on it. I can put 100 songs on it and listen on the built in stereo speakers or plug in a headset. The keys are easy to use. The screen is nice and big, high-res, and really bright. All-in-all this phone rocks! The downside, it is kinda pricy. I think it retails for $400+, but on eBay I got it for $100 (including S&H). I actually won two auctions so I had to sell the other one (which sold for $160 - nice profit). I am happy with this phone and I hope it last a little longer than some of the other ones did.

PS. The only thing I don't tend to like about Motorola phones is the power plug. Instead of making one that stays connected to the phone (like everyone else does) they made one that sucks. It always comes out and after a while it won't even charge the phone. Why don't they just make AC style ports like Nokia phones?