Customer Reviews

Motorola i710 Phone (Nextel)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

It's shameful that Americans are usually the last country to have the latest in phone technology. Sweden is the cell-phone capital of the world - followed by Japan, then Europe... so whatever phones we're using, the Swedes got to play with 2 years ago. Oh well. The way our phone market is here, we're slaves to the industry.

My phone is set up w/ 500 anytime minutes, unlimited nights & weekends and unlimited walkie-talkie minutes.

I also have Internet access on the phone, but just the limited access - it's all text, and only access to 80 sites... so few are WAP compatible nowadays.

The color screen is fairly sharp in resolution, all things considered. Unlike the more primitive black-n-white phones, these phones don't come with games - only demos you have to pay for. I bought a data cable so I could put my own photos (wallpaper) on the phone w/o buying someone else's wallpaper. After all, I want my dogs on there, not some else's dogs!

The data cable is not sold with that intent, however. The cable cost over 30 bucks, too! I searched all over the Internet until I found a 3rd party utility called WebJal that lets you put your own wallpaper and ringtones on the phone. So far, I've only had success with the wallpaper. Webjal is only available for Windows, and as a Mac user, I found the lack of support by Nextel and Motorola extremely frustrating. Apparently, Motorola & Nextel don't want you fiddling with their phones (even though you actually buy the phone, they still want to believe it's their phone!), so don't expect Nextel or Motorola to help you in any way to get your personal photos or sound effects on your phone - if you want this ability, wait and pray for the next version of the iPod to be a PDA & Phone combo, or else you'll have to search online like I did for several days to find the appropriate software, etc. to put on your own content.

The phone comes with about 10 ringtones, only one of which isn't absolutely horrible to listen to.

The phone is very easy to program and the buttons are fairly intuitive and there are a couple of "soft" buttons which are context sensitive - so applause to Motorola for that! The phone comes with the battery and a wall charger - and that's it. I had to buy the case (by Bodyglove - it's nice), the car charger and the data cable separately - I spent more on the accessories than I did for the phone and I haven't even bought a hands-free ear-thingy yet!!

The speaker works very well - I was able to have a conversation with my mother on the phone and she didn't even know I was using the speaker until I told her - another star for that!

Also impressive is the volume control that's on the side of the phone. Without even messing with the keyboard, you can quickly adjust your volume without even looking at the phone, just listening as the sound gets quieter and finally goes to vibrate mode. Another star for that.

The speaker and ringer are impressively loud and have a long acoustic range (you can hear it clearly when it's jammed deep in your pocket or purse.

Adding names and numbers is fairly intuitive. I really haven't had to consult my manual for everything, since there is context sensitive help on nearly every screen if you need it.

I'm annoyed that simple games that are free on other phones are not built-in. Considering how much money people spend on ringtones, wallpaper, etc., the phones should be free, since they charge for everything!

The walkie-talkie button can be programmed so you only need to PPT (push to talk) instantly with someone else using Nextel. I have the "local" PPT, which is all of Texas... you have to pay extra to talk nationwide. It's cheaper to have a more expensive plan than to pay for overages - they don't dilly around - 40 cents per minute on overages!

If you talk an hour every day to a friend, your 500 minutes will be eaten up very quickly, but if you're like me, you'll have plenty to spare - I'm hardly on the phone, but it's nice to know I can talk if I need to.

There is supposedly some built-in GPS stuff, but you have to pay for the service, so it's not like a stand-alone GPS device if you want to go GeoCaching or anything.

The phone is conveniently small, but not so small that you need a microscope and/or a toothpick to dial and read the buttons. The accessory clip (sold separately) is really meant for hooking onto belts - so unless you wear slacks with belt, it's not too sturdy to hook onto your jeans or pocket - so I just stick the whole phone in my pocket - and it makes a wierd bulge w/ the clip, etc.

I'm still waiting for my friends to get Nextel so I can use the walkie-talkie feature. Nextel should have a site where folks can exchange their walkie-talkie numbers - because they're totally different than phone numbers, so it's not like you'd lose any privacy - almost like SMS chat, but different. I still pine for the abilities in the "Global" used on "Earth: Final Conflict," but this may still be 10 years off - I hear that Dallas Semiconductor is still working on the flexible/expandible viewscreens.

Just got the phone on monday and I am returning it for the i850 the phone is slow really bad screen display...overall I'm kind of upset about it

I have had this phone for less than 2 years, and it is a piece of junk. When I purchased it with Nextel, they advertised free roaming. This led me to believe that I could go just about anywhere and still get service. WRONG!! I flew to S.D. one day after my 30 day return policy was up. I had 0 reception, when I contacted Nextel, they told me that they roam to their own towers, no one elses. Well how can you call that free roaming? It's a joke. I have basicly no service if I get out of my area. Now I have 3 months left, and have this phone that doesn't hold a charge for a day. I even replaced the battery, and still no help. Please look elsewhere for a phone and service other than Nextel.

I have had my i710 for over a year now, and from the first day I had problems. I suffer from overages due in largely to the phone dropping calls constantly. At first I thought it was the rural area where I live, then I thought it was Nextel. Last month my boyfriend switched to Nextel and got the i560 (the yellow one), and surprisingly enough he never drops calls and has not problem with reception no matter where we are. I have contacted Nextel and they have tried to assist me but can find not problems with the network. It is the phone, I believe that Motorola should actually recall this piece of junk or at least offer a credit to those people who were suckered into buying this model. If you look on the Motorola website, you will find that they no longer offer this phone, as well as no longer support it.

As for the software, you will constantly battle the way the text messaging system on this phone works. You actually have to go through several screens of web services to send a message, and that is if you can hold a signal.

If I could give it a 0, I would. Doesn't hold a charge for more than 24 hours, sometimes less! A friend of mine has the same phone and exact same problem. Don't bother trying to save your battery life by turning it off. Nope! Turn it off with half a bar, turn it back on beeping because the stupid think is LOW to NO BAR! Reception is great for me, but what good is that if the thing is dead most of the time? Are you trying to conduct any kind of business? Do you need a cell phone to make phone calls? Well... this may not be the phone for you. Contract. Contract. Contract. Don't do it. BIG mistake... I can go on, but I won't. Piece of junk!

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.

My problems with nextel did not stop when I canceled my service. I will get to the problems with the service. When I went to get a new phone a day before my contract expired, I of course wanted to keep my number. So as I went to get my Cingular phone (highly recommended), I had the old number switched to my new number. Today, I get in the mail my nextel statement for the month with a $200 early termination even though I had not canceled my service, but had simply got a new phone and switched my number over. This was on icing on the cake after 2 years of absolutely amazingy bad service from nextel. In my town, not a small town by any means, there are very few places that have any service. In the largest subdivision, you cannot get service anywhere. I constantly get comments from people trying to reach me that get the classic nextel line...Please hold while the nextel subscriber you are trying to reach is located. Most of the time I would not even recieve incoming calls, calls would go straight to my voice mail. Not only would I not get the calls, but often I would not even get the voice mails until days or even weeks later. When I did actually take calls (and call out), I cannot count the number of times I've had my call dropped. I recieved so many different error messages sometimes I wonder if they just spend all their time at nextel thinking of different error messages to program into their phones. That brings me to the selling point of nextel, the famed and well-loved direct connect feature. This is an absolute joke. Direct connect only works MAYBE half the time I tried to use it. Even then, in the middle of the conversation I would be greeted by the loud beep of my phone telling me I wont be talking to that person anymore. Of course, I would expect nothing less from the nextel network. Text messaging with nextel is next to impossible. If it did not take hours to send or recieve a message, it took days, or maybe didn't even come at all. The internet access was fine, it the rare instance that it worked. Of course, when you don't have service, you don't get the internet access either. I was constantly getting the message "network not available". Calling and trying to complain to nextel is futile. Trying to get through to customer service takes forever and once you get through they do nothing. My experience with nextel has been nothing short of a disaster and I write this trying to warn anyone considering nextel. Stick with Verizon or Cingular and you will be much happier in the end. Don't make the same mistake I did.

I liked this phone it seems to be tough and stylish. But had ordered it off of Nextels site. They even gave me a code that saved me $50.00. Here it is for you all to share (CL897L) case sensitive. On the shopping cart page in the promo box. It is like an invoice thing. But I think it is a very good phone. You will enjoy the phone. Happy shopping.

after using it for a year it is plain bad, battery doesn't last a day, reception is bad

When I read other customers' reviews I got quite upset. I've got the phone 3 days ago, and haven't learned all of it's features, but it seems to hold the charge pretty well so far, in fact much better than my previous Samsung e315. I do not like the fact that there is no external screen, but I think I can live with it. What I really like about the plan is free in network direct connect (walkie-talkie) calls and free roaming in Canada. We have unlimited local direct connect, which means we can connect for free in our local area, which includes upstate NY and VT. Nationwide direct-conect is 10c/min, but as they explained to me it's charged per second, i.e. if you talk 10 seconds you are charged for 10 seconds, not for 1 min. I kind of don't like the fact that direct-connect apparently is done through a different network or something like that, and for direct-connect you need to dial a number that is different from the phone number - it makes the amount of numbers to remember double, it would be more convenient to just make unlimited in-network calling like Sprint does. Anyway, this is still good because most calls that we do are between family members and we do travel. The only major problem with this phone is that I think it's really ugly, especially compared to the old samsung, however, I like the fact that it's bigger and heavier than my old phone, because I can more easily press it between my cheek and shoulder and talk on it while doing something else with my both hands - it's kind of important when you take care of your small kid and try to talk to your mom at the same time. The ring-tones that come with the phone are quite horrible, there was only one that I didn't particularly dislike, but I won't bother downloading anything, it's a phone after all, not a music player. The only problem is we have two identical phones, with the same ring-tone. :))) I can not deny that the problems with batteries and bad reception in West coast/FL that other customers mentioned got me a bit upset and I'm thinking wether I should return it and look for a better phone/plan, I wouldn't care about style or functionality flaws as much, but I do care about sturdiness and reliability. As for the plan, Nextel seems to be the only company who offers free phones with a 1 year contract and free roaming in Canada which is not entirely without a catch, because long-distance charges apply when you call from Canada. T-mobile does offer 1 year contract as well, but we just cancelled our account with them, and frankly speaking reception was very bad in our area.
If we keep the phone I'll keep this forum updated.
Update: Nextel customer service really sucks. If you don't have an issue with a 2 yr. contract and don't travel to Canada, go for Sprint, they are so much easier to deal with. I really hope now that when Nextel/Sprint merge is complete Sprint will take over the Nextel's customer service and bring it up to standard.
About the battery problem: I heard that the battery needs to be completely discharged regularly, that that increases the battery life. I do this with my laptop battery all the time.