Customer Reviews

MOTOROLA C155 SILVER PREPAID NET10 CELL PHONE

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you don't mind a phone without a lot of options and sophisticated ringtone selections, this phone is great. I first bought this for my husband, but then I took it over after a few days. I've had it for 1.5 months at the time of this review.

LET'S DO THE CONS FIRST ... then the pluses:

1. It comes with only one standard ringtone. With Net10, they do have a fair amount of ringtones you can purchase from their website, but I wasn't interested in any of the selections and didn't care for the quality of the sound (high pitched).

2. I edited this comment (if you saw it previously). I said a con was that the ear speaker was too low. My husband couldn't hear people talking to him very well in his noisy commercial truck. HOWEVER, this is no longer a "con" ... it was "operator error." He thought he turned it up, but didn't. I figured out how to find the meter inside the menu's, turned it up; and now it is very very nice. In fact, he had to turn it down a bit. He now really likes this phone!

3. It only shows 3 bars when battery is fully charged. The problem is that when it goes down to one bar, it then starts warning you of low battery. Sometimes it doesn't take long for it to go dead once it hits one bar. I would prefer four bars for a better gauge. You can go into the menu, select "setup", then select "phone status", then select "battery meter", and then it will show a picture of a 6-section bar with a minus at one end and a plus at the other. This is a much better gauge of how much battery is left. Unfortunately, it won't give the option of going into the batter meter without going through all those steps. Once you get use to it, it doesn't take that long, but I would prefer to get to it with fewer selections, or to have more bars on the face. When this internal meter bar goes down to two bars, usually you don't have a lot of time left. I bought a car charger for $9.74 at Walmart so I don't have to worry about suddenly running out of battery if I forget to check the internal battery meter or it needs charging in the middle of the day when I'm out. The car charger works great. Just plug it into the cigarette lighter, put the cord end into the phone (with the phone off) and it takes about 30-40 minutes to charge. Easy!

POSITIVE REMARKS:

1. I love the styling. The face is unusual with the round screen section and it is nice and small, so will fit in pockets or those special small sections in a purse. It is comfortable in the hand, although there is no rubber on the sides to prevent slipping. You can purchase a case for it, but I prefer to slip it inside a pouch on the outside of my purse that is the perfect size for it. If you carry it in your shirt pocket, you definitely need to buy a case or it will easily slip out. The roundness is also very comfortable against the ear. (Since my now likes it and took it back, I'm trying out the NET10 Nokia 1600. It is very flat, so isn't as comfortable against the ear. The ear piece volume truly is barely passable ... unless I just can't find the volume for it ... and it isn't as user friendly as the C155 ... so far.)

2. Buttons work well on the C155. As with most small phones, they aren't large buttons, but seem ok unless a person has very large fingers. My husband has large hands, but he didn't complain about the buttons. He actually likes the fact that they are raised a bit so he can feel for the buttons to answer and hang-up without looking when he need to watch the road.

3. It has the look and feel of a quality phone. I always had flip phones before, thinking I wouldn't like the candy-bar style. However, I really do like this one since it is small. The talk button and the end button are both plenty big to press and easy to find. However, they both are toggle buttons ... the top portions are to select or to go back. Once you are are use to that, it's no problem. I find the bar style to be much easier to answer if I have my arms loaded down with stuff or am driving when I get a call. The flip was more awkward since it was sometimes difficult to open with one hand. By the way, the hands-free headset isn't included, so you will have to purchase one separately.

4. Signal is good with this phone. I've been able to use it inside Home Depot and inside Walmart which frequently are trouble areas for many cell phones. It works inside our home also, whereas my husband's T-Mobile prepaid Nokia will not. He has to step outside our door for it to work.

5. If you procrastinate and miss adding airtime before your expiration date (you have 60 days for a $30 airtime card), they will not roll over your unused minutes AND you will have to reactivate your phone and get a different phone number. If you are not a procrastinator, this is not a big deal, especially since the expiration date is alway on your display when you use your phone.

THE NET10 SERVICE:

Before I start my discussion about Net10, I want to say that many of the websites are inaccurate. They have not kept up with the positive change that Net10 made. When you purchase 300 minutes for $30, it is good for SIXTY DAYS ... NOT 30 days as many websites still report. That is a very good deal. If you only use about 150 minutes or less a month, that means you are paying only $15 a month at 10-cents a minute!

A plus about Net10 is that it is always 10-cents a minute. You don't have do buy a more expensive prepaid airtime card to get that rate. With T-Mobile, you have to buy $100 to get 10-cents a minute. If you buy $10, you are paying about 28 cents per minute! They do have some kind of break once you've paid $100 accumutively (each year), I believe. My husband complains that the minutes don't seem to be accurate with T-Mobile according to what he uses, even rounding up. I don't find that to be a problem with Net10. It is easy to keep track since they are always displayed and the tally seems to be accurate each time I make or receive a call.

I like the fact that as long as you add airtime before your expiration date, your unused balance of minutes rolls over to the next expiration date. As I mentioned elsewhere in this review, as long as you don't procastinate, it is no mystery when to add minutes since it is always on your display.

This is my first experience with Net10. I did a lot of research first, so I knew the negatives about dealing with them because of the difficulty with English. If you speak Spanish, be sure to go into the Spanish option and you will have many fewer problems communicating.

I bought my phone elsewhere instead of ordering from their site. One, because I heard warnings that you may get the wrong phone; and two, I had trouble with their website during the ordering process. I had decided to try them first in spite of warnings from users, because the phone is cheaper through them. However, I gave up and ordered it elsewhere for more money.

Once I bought my phone, I had no trouble with the activation process. It did take quite awhile for the phone to actually activate after I went through the steps. However, it was just a matter of patience and was within an hour or so. (Adding a comment here: When I activated this phone, I had two idiots in the kitchen making a lot of background noise. I think I probably didn't follow the step quite right since I was distracted. When I activated the Nokia 1600 I'm now trying out, it was simple and quick. It was activated within about 7 minutes of my starting the process ... impressive.)

I absolutely love the way the current balance of minutes and the expiration date of minutes always show on the display when you are using the phone. (In fact, please excuse me for repeating this fact more than once.) When the phone is idle, then it displays the time, only. The display is a little dark when in idle, but has bright colors when you are using it. With my husband's T-Mobile prepaid, it is annoying to always have to dial in to find out his balance. Also, his coverage isn't nearly as good with T-Mobile. Net10 in my area of west Georgia uses Cingular, so I'm very pleased with the coverage. It even works in the area Alabama we go frequently, where T-Mobile will not work there at all.

So far, I have absolutely no regrets having purchased this phone and using Net10. I am very happy about it. I wish they had a better selection of phones, because I would like to get another Net10 phone for my husband with a better volume for listening to callers. I don't care for their flip-style phones, because do not have the window on the face. You always have to open them to see who is calling. I'm sure they will eventually get a better selection of phones.

Hope my review was helpful to you.

I had been very happy with my Motorola phone until the battery started losing its charge within a day, even when the phone was turned off. The friendly but incompetent customer support kept me on the phone for an average of 40 minutes for the repeated calls trying to figure out the problem. After the phone had finally been sent to their technical service center, they returned it to me that the phone was irreperable "due to customer abuse." I have done nothing to that phone that could have caused any damage (unless using it to make phone calls counts as "customer abuse"), but got the same comment, without explanation after I had sent the phone in for a second time for reevaluation. It seems that Motorola is just trying to get out of fixing or replacing the phone free of charge under warranty. You'll be fine with a Motorola phone as long as it works. After that, you're on your own.

Very good phone. Nice color screen. Easy to read. Lots of features.

My experience using the TracFone has been good. Coverage and connections are not a problem.

My tracfone has good reception. i like that it has free call waiting and free caller id. if you haven't activated your tracfone yet then the 'refer a friend program' will give each of us 100 free minutes. please send me an email and i will send you a fast referral. it's a win/win! thank you.

I've had my Tracfone for about 5 months now. The reception has been generally good. Once i got the phone activated, I haven't had any problems. Tracfone has a 'refer a friend' program that will give each of 100 free minutes. All you have to do is send me an email asking for a referral. My email is debsclay@gmail.com

thank you.