Customer Reviews

Motorola - Cellular phone cable kit - USB - 4 pin USB Type A (M) - cellular phone connector (M)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I purchased MobilePhonetools 3.0 with the USB Cable and Mobile PhoneTools software for my Motorola v810 phone.

First, the advertisement for this product indicates that you can upload and download pictures and ringtones. Beware, your carrier may have disabled this feature on your phone -- mine did.

Secondly, the calendar sync software has issues with Outlook and recurring appointments (crashes the sync), rendering it essentially useless.

Third, the address sync software is very buggy. It doesn't sync as conveniently as a Pocket PC or Palm would.

Forth, the LiveUpdate feature of this application is easily the WORST that I have ever seen. The live update feature repeatedly crashes, hangs, etc... Spent over five hours trying to upgrade, only to have an upgrade not function properly.

The data cable's probably useful here, but if you're looking for a sync solution, I recommend you look elsewhere. If I could give this 0 stars I could.

We have both the BlueTooth and the cable version. My comments apply to both. After loading the software the phone was not recognized by the PC. Ours are Motorola V551,s. I then updated the software over the internet, about 25 meg for each, after which the phones were usually recognized, but not always. The Sync operation is very very slow, at least 20 times slower than a Palm connected to a serial port. The program will not sync holidays, birthdays and other dates automatically added to the calendar from the Outlook 2003 contacts folder. Pictures will not transfer from Outlook contacts either.

The worst part, which is actually dangerous if your counting on the phone datebook to be accurate, is that the software sporadically does not enter the appointment that is clearly in Outlook 2003 into the datebook. The result that is displayed claims the sync operation was without errors but some of the appointments are not there. No way to tell which ones got missed. To then try to resolve the errors with the very slow sync operation is extremely frustrating. At this writing I have still not been able to get some appointments into the phone. One last point, the error rate for a recurring appointment is incredible. Several times I tried to sync a meeting that repeated daily for 5 days and filled the whole year with that appointment in the phone. I am still carrying my old Palm because I do not trust this thing. Everything shows up correctly in the Palm and of course the Palm is reading the same Outlook 2003 files.

Since writing the above another update also requiring a 25 meg download became available. Should not have had high hopes! None of the problems were cured and a new one was introduced. It decided I should show up for all my future appointments an hour early and just changed all the times in DateBook by one hour for the rest of the year. Palm is still 100% OK.

I have little good to say about this product. As several others noted, it was impossible to get the thing operating until a sizable software update was downloaded, but that was the least of my problems. Even after I got the update, it still could not recognize my mobile phone. After (literally) hours of tinkering, I discovered that a major part of the problem was that the software wasn't using the correct protocol to communicate with the phone, which corresponds to the phone's make and model. By telling the software that information, I was able to (finally!) get the software running. FWIW, the phone is a Motorola v551. I don't know if the software was too dumb to figure out phone's make and model on its own, or if the phone-computer connection was too weak for the software to figure it out. Either way, the episode doesn't say much about the product's robustness. Now that the software is running, it usually (but not always) identifies my phone after I boot it up and plug in the phone.

The software, once it's up and running, is competent if uninspired. The interface, which is built around a large icon that's a near-replica of the actual phone, is attractive and reasonably straightforward to sort out with the aid of the of the online help.

Conclusion: It's an OK software package that isn't remotely good enough to offset its horrifying setup problems, or ongoing connectivity problems.

Much like some of the other reviews, I found this product very dissapointing. First, the documentation is minimal. I had problems with the software initializing the phone and after searching through the discussion boards online I finally found out that I needed to download a 25meg update. Couldn't they just make the software available for purchase online? The update did get the phone to work with the software and I can synch my contacts with my phone. The software interface is poorly designed and not very intuitive. It looks like software that was designed in a college computer programming class. Motorola should really take this product more seriously and design something that is more user friendly.

I spent two days trying to install this, downloading the enormous updates, search the Motorola website for support, and troubleshooting the whole setup. There is little documentation, the error messages are uninformative, and the troubleshooting instructions (if you can find them) are not quite accurate or complete, and certainly not easy for a non-techie to follow. It still refuses to recognize my phone.

Like Apple, Motorola are now relegated to the bottom rungs of commercial extortion for forcing extra bucks out of your wallet for items that should be packaged with the goods when you buy them (or free for download), i.e. - all new Motorola phones should have been packaged with the FULL VERSION of Motorola Phonetools software and not the *lite version. So although you have heard about the PC software that comes free with some Motorola cell phones, what they don't tell you is that you only get the *lite version free which doesn't allow any syncing with Microsoft software and with limitations on SMS text word counts and other impaired functions that cost you an extra $30 (not $40+ like here on Amazon, do a search for the free online download unless you absolutely need the USB to cell phone connection if it didn't come with your new Motorola phone... sigh... but they should have at least given you that, or check to see if your phone has Bluetooth technology, and if so then just get a Bluetooth USB connection and use your wireless Bluetooth phone to Bluetooth USB to hook up to the software). So apart from allowing you to now do the things that you should have been able to do from day #1 it doesn't really do much else. However the Bluetooth USB setup doesn't always work right and I have found that not all cell phone work with this software yet either, so it is a bit of a buggy program. To be honest it is certainly not worth the money unless you really want to send long SMSs and sync with your MS Outlook, and it solves both these problems (that their own company created so that you would have to buy this). Basically there is no reason to be charging this much extra for such a bad piece of software that just allows for unlimited SMSs and syncing with Outlook. It doesn't work with all Motorola phones either, has a buggy Bluetooth and even USB setup and is not worth the money by a long shot. However if you need to have longer SMSs and need to sync, as I did, then you will forced to shove more cash into the hands of Motorola for this... and you should have had it from day#1.

BAH!

Note that Verizon crippled the Mobile Phone Tool Mobile Media function so that you have to pay for the messages if you want to transfer music/video/picture files between the PC and the phone. So if you have this kit, you WILL be able to back up your contacts using this kit, but you WONT see the Media button, and you WON'T be able to transfer any media.
The way to circumvent this Verizon meddling, use your TrasnFlash. 1st format the card using the phone interface. Next, use a USB/TransFlash reader (or, if you have another USB/Trans device, such as most digital cameras, you can use that) to transfer files as you would to any other external storage device.

I got this from Motorola to work on my RAZR to keep my calendar with me on my phone. The sync for the calendar works with Outlook 2003 but it won't sync recurring events that have an end date.

The shipping version 3.0 did not install properly on two of my computers for the Motorola RAZR. You need to run the provided Live Update utility to download what I consider the working version (4.04b) from Motorola. This was Motorola cutomer support's advice. Version 4.04b appears to have been developed by a different provider and detects and communicates with my phone properly.

Hard to believe that Motorola would put their name on such garbage:
Recurrent events fill up all days
Daylight time arbitrarily syncs one hour early or late
Alarm alerts change to thousands of minutes
Some events simply skipped, others replicated endlessly
Contacts shuffled numbers/types
SLOW SLOW SLOW
This is not sync software, it's just TRASH. Don't even THINK about wasting your time and money on this manure. Like a previous reviewer said, too bad there's no zero-star rating. Negative would be even better.