Customer Reviews

Motorola Renew W233 Phone, Green (T-Mobile)

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

 

 

The W233 Renew is a cute little phone with basic features. The phone came with a simple manual, battery, AC charger, and stereo headset with mic. The W233 will accept a standard MicroSD card (not included) up to 2GB for picture & MP3 storage. The MicroSD slot is located under the battery. The handset and speaker phone audio quality is surprisingly good, the CrystalTalk noise reduction feature works well. The battery life is tremendous, so you don't need to charge it all the time. Two games are included on the W233, Sudoku and Tetris. If you need a low cost phone that feels solid, the Motorola W233 Renew is just what you need. What is good for the environment is good for you too!

This phone is small, light, nice looking and inexpensive.

The big problem with it is that Motorola Phone Tools (latest version is currently V5.24a) doesn't recognize the phone. This means that, you cannot sync your contacts or your calender to your computer, backup your contacts or transfer your old data from your previous phone.

According to the Motorola customer support message boards, the phone will never be supported by motorola phone tools, not for a technical reason, rather the functionality has been deliberately withheld. So despite what you may read on Motorola's main website, much mobile phone advertising, and review sites that claim to have tested the phone; but clearly just paraphrase the marketing materials (I'm looking at you CNET); the phone will never sync your calender or contacts with outlook and you'll never be able to backup or import your phone data.

You can transfer music to it, but there's a trick to it. You have to plug the phone into your USB port and quickly follow a prompt on the phone's screen to switch to storage mode. It then pretends to be a thumb drive.

So in conclusion, the phone is hobbled, and by Motorola's own admission, deliberately so. In my opinion, it is deeply disrespectful of Motorola to pull this bait and switch on it's customers. Shame on you, Motorola.

Pros: I have very basic needs in a cell phone: I just talk with
co-workers. Important features to me are good reception, long battery
life and ease of use. The Renew offers all of these. I also wanted a
speakerphone. Buttons have nice tactile feedback.

Cons: My previous phone was a basic Nokia, and they do the user interface
better. Battery reserve and signal strength icons are hard to read. The
speakerphone is of marginal quality; I found it annoying after about 20
seconds. Buttons are on the small side

Summary: I've only had the Renew for a couple weeks after my previous
phone wore out. I'm getting used to it, but the major features I want
all work well. Text is easy to read, but the indicator icons (battery
and signal strength) are not very pronounced and difficult to interpret.
My previous Nokia had even lower resolution but managed to convey that
info clearly.

The Renew's green features are what prompted me to take a look. The MP3
capability is handy but I doubt I'll ever use it. Others have reported
that 8 GB microSD cards work, although only 2 GB is advertised. The web
browser is fairly useless because of the small screen.

This phone is an excellent basic cell phone, but if you are looking for
smart phone features, this phone won't fit the bill.

Motorolla makes a big deal that this phone is environmentally friendly; made from recycled plastics and other materials.

Truthfully, I believe them. In fact, the packaging it came in is probably the least EV friendly thing about the product.

Here you have a basic GSM phone. You can goto another website that Amazon's editors 'redacted' from my review, and that site actually has REALLY good tech details on this and any other phone. It would only make sense if they actually provided a fraction of the detail that you can get the scoop on, but their approval process on notes apparently needs better oversight. So instead I'll focus on actually using the phone here.

This phone doesn't actually support any syncing of any of its applications, like its organizer. It DOES have a microSD slot (2gb). The literature from Motorolla isn't very clear, but there are 2 drivers for this phone, both can be downloaded for free on their website. One is for 'power charging' thru USB, the other is for accessing the phone as a data device (pc only). This lets you copy music MP3s, MID, and a few other formats over to the microSD card on the drive. (You could also just use a card reader ahead of time, which I would recommend, as the phone is very slow, usb1.1 slow.)

It comes with a 2.5mm stereo earbud/handsfree headset, ac charger, sim card, and ...that's about it. You have to buy a microSD card if you want to play MP3 because the phone has no usable internal memory you can access.

Physically, it's your basic candy bar phone. Call sounds clear, reception holds pretty well. The LCD is bright and vibrant even in direct daylight, but it is very laggy (ghosting response time is probably above 100ms). The buttons are VERY firm and 'clicky'. I prefer this as it resists accidental dialing in your pocket. A standard mini-usb jack is on one side for data/charging and the 2.5mm jack on the other. The speakerphone is very loud and clear.

Software: The music player has no extra features, like eq, but the scan/seek, shuffle, play and volume are simple and responsive. It has a picture jpg viewer. It includes 2 full-version games of Sudoku and Tetris (both versions by EA) instead of crippled demo-games. The calender scheduler is easy to read, the alarm clock is straight forward...

Ask me for more details if you want, but this is a really decent 'phone-first' cell phone that has an mp3 player.

Cons discovered after 2 months of ownership:

Either I have a bad unit, or the quality of firmware programming for this phone leaves much to be desired.

1:Even if the phone is set on VIBRATE ONLY, it will still chirp a tone out when the battery reaches 'low.' Thats a majorly dumb oversite of the firmware programmer. If you want a phone to be quiet, that doesn't mean "except for the battery getting low, go ahead and make distracting noises then."

2:Battery performance very erratic. Talk time battery life is predictable, but all other uses good luck at predicting it. It will drop from full battery to one battery bar inexplicably.

3:Sometimes when powering on, the phone doesn't load the MicroSD slot, requiring a power cycle/reboot. This means it also forgets all your ringtones that are on the card.

4:When the media player finishes a song/playlist, it emits a terrible subsonic noise. I wouldn'tve noticed it if I didn't have it plugged into a big stereo when playing. It goes away when it changes menus.

5:The keyguard time-out isn't adjustable... happens too quick for me.

6:The t-9 entry method isn't selected by default, and you have to pick it EVERY time you make a new txt.

If you buy this for 'Just A Phone' you'll be ok. But all the extra features they gave it to give it some value are so buggy...

After my previous phone's screen broke last weekend, I was trying to decide whether to just get the screen fixed or whether I should check out a new phone. My warranty was up, and fixing the phone would have costed $30, but I wouldn't have had it for about 2 days. I decided to head over to T-Mobile because I had been looking at some phones online. I decided on this phone easily. While it's features are basic, it's very easy to use, and the design is very cool. I've gotten multiple compliments, and some people even said that they wanted the Renew also, but they would have to change networks. The reason I really decided to buy this was because it was cheaper than most phones, it has a sleek design, and it is environmentally friendly.
The only downside I would have to say is that it is "supposed" to have a nine hour talk time. I would have to say that it's not even close to that. While I do tend to play the games fairly often (Tetris and Sudoku are included! And they're not just lame demos), I have noticed that the battery gets low pretty quickly. I have charged it with my old Motorola charger as well as with my new one. My new one seemed to do a better job than my old one, but I'm not really that impressed with how I have to charge it every day. Oh, and the ringtones and backgrounds are pretty limited, but you could just download some I guess.
Other than that, it's a nice phone. It automatically locks when you're not using it so that it doesn't dail anyone from your pocket or purse without you knowing.

It makes phone calls. It receives phone calls. It can also send and receive text messages. It has tetris. It's easy to turn on and off. It was cheap. The case is made of recycled plastic so that's nice. I like the color of the case (green so you remember that it's an "enviro-friendly" device).

Sometimes, the phone freezes when dialing and you need to take the battery out and put it back in again to reboot it. The good folks at T-Mobile tell me this is normal. I don't believe them.

Although it says mp3 on the front panel, I was never able to get it to store music. Another reviewer figured out how to do it but you'd be better off having a separate mp3 player rather than bothering with it on this phone.

It definitely is a nice, sturdy little beast. I got it to replace a much fancier but unfortunately, more delicate phone. I've had it for over a year and the battery life seems to be diminishing. When it becomes unusable, I look forward to replacing it with a less environmentally conscious phone with some fun bells and whistles.

call clarity is exceptional and better than any I've ever had.

Prepaid with tmobile is also wonderful.

For the whole year it's cost me $40.00!!!!!

I am thrilled with the phone and the service.

This was a backup phone for travels. Had this phone for a year now, and sometimes has problems charging using the wall charger. I've had problems connecting it to a computer via USB but now it won't charge from the wall plug. I guess it was meant to be a cheap phone. As for the phone when it worked it worked great. Long battery life, I could leave it on for more than a week w/o recharging if I only made about 1 call per day. It also had good reception.

Good thing it was made from recycled materials because I feel less guilty recycling it into the garbage.

My wife and have been using "pay as you go" plans for awhile. We have used several different types of phones with these plans. Eventually, the phones get banged up or just excessively worn from normal daily use, and/or the batteries wear out. Even when we've had phones we were satisfied with, we usually replace them when they start to wear or the batteries die, as many of the providers have specials and will include free refill minutes that offsets the cost of the new phone almost entirely. This is how I happened to buy two of the Motorola W233's.

The phones are just basic, and that is all we want them for... the only other attribute of any importance, is battery life. I don't think I've ever owned a cell phone that needed charging more than once a week; with these Motorola W233's (both of them), we are lucky if we can go two days before they die. And so there is no mistake, I am talking 2 days of strictly STANDBY TIME only, no phone use, no anything!, just fully charged and then standing by. This is how it has been since day one, when the phones were new and fresh. I thought maybe the batteries had to "break-in", but we have had these phones a few months now, and the battery is truly horrible, a real piece of crap.

This is the first time we've ever had a phone that we are looking into replacing before it has reached the end of its useful life. This Motorola W233 is not a good phone to charge up once a week, and then leave in your glove compartment for emergencies... it will be dead when you need it.

If all you want is a very basic phone to make phone calls, along with a very good speaker phone, this is an excellent phone. Battery life is very long. Call quality and speaker phone quality is very good. And it's not expensive. I really hate the ugly green color, but I wanted a cheap phone with a good speaker phone, and this phone works excellent for that. I've been using it for a year now.