Motorola V195 T-Mobile gray clamshell GSM cell phone

by Motorola

Product Details

• Item Weight: 5 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• ASIN: B000G2TOM2
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #156,600 in Cell Phones & Accessories (See Top 100 in Cell Phones & Accessories)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

The sleek and stylish Motorola V195 Phone combines the most advanced features with T-Mobile service for a first-class mobile phone. An update to the Motorola V190, the V195 adds Bluetooth to let you integrate your phone with your other portable devices, giving you a powerful and convenient mobile office. Extremely lightweight at under four ounces, the V195 includes quad-band GSM, full-color interior screen and monochrome external display, speakerphone, Java version MIDP 2.0, 10 MB memory, a phonebook capacity of 500 entries, and much more.

Design
Using the classic clamshell design that packs more features in a compact package, such as including both internal and external displays. The external display is a monochrome LCD screen measuring 96 x 32; the internal LCD screen supports up to 65,536 colors at a size of 128 x 160 to give you brilliant images. An ergonomic keypad makes dialing, text-messaging, and online surfing comfortable and easy. On the left side are the volume control and smart keys to give you quick access to your most frequently used functions, and a built-in miniature USB port helps maximize your connectivity options. The V195 also has a 2.5 mm headset jack for hands-free communication.

Calling Features
With the V195's phone book capacity that allows you to store up to 500 contacts, it's easy to stay in touch with friends, family, and business associates. To help you keep track of who you're talking to, the V195 lets you assign picture and ringer IDs to each contact. The phone uses polyphonic ringtones, which provide a more natural and realistic sound for melodies, whether you've downloaded them or created them yourself using the built-in customized ringtones feature. And when necessary or desired, the V195 can also be set on vibration mode so that you won't disturb people around you.

And when you don't need to worry about disturbing others, the V195 offers voice dialing for up to five of your favorite contacts, so all you have to do is speak a name, and the call is made for you. In addition, if you need to make group calls or just like to have hands-free operation, the V195's speaker phone is the perfect feature for you. And like all T-Mobile phones, the V195 supports voicemail, caller ID, call forwarding, call waiting, call hold, built-in paging, and access to T-Mobile's 411 service. Lastly, the phone's Bluetooth connectivity means that your favorite Bluetooth headset is fully compatible.

Messaging, Internet, and Tools
The V195 offers versatility in messaging. Employing both EMS 5.0 (Enhanced Messaging Service) and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service), the phone lets you included various media when you are communicating with friends. from small pictures, melodies, and animation, to larger files, such as graphics, photos, and audio and video clips. You'll be able to share ringtones and wallpapers, as well as send files to email accounts. And of course the V195 includes SMS (Short Messaging Service) to give you basic two-way text messaging.

Internet connectivity is also a breeze with the V195. Enabled with the GPRS class 10 protocol, the phone provides a high-speed wireless internet connection without the need to establish a full connection such as a phone call. And with the industry standard web browser capability of WAP 2.0 / xHTML Mobile Profile, you'll be able to navigate the web easily on your phone's main display. When used with T-Mobile's t-zones service, the V195 will keep you up-to-date with the latest news headlines, weather updates, traffic reports, and sports results.

For added convenience, the V195 includes a number of handy productivity tools such as an alarm clock, a calculator, and a calendar. Equipped with PC Sync, the phone can make a cable connection with a computer to synchronize calendar and contact information between both units. And because the V195 is data-capable, you can use it as a modem to connect another computer to the internet.

Extras and Entertainment
With its remarkable internal display screen, images show up in sharp, brilliant colors on the V195, so go ahead and customize screensavers, backgrounds, and themes to suit your mood. And with Java version MIDP 2.0 installed, the V195 is an excellent gaming companion. Games are available for download through T-Mobile's t-zones service.

Vital Statistics
The Motorola V195 weighs 3.55 ounces and measures 3.58 x 1.85 x 0.94 inches. Powered by a 1020 mAh lithium-ion battery, it will give you up to 10.4 hours of talk time and up to 525 hours, or 21.9 days, of standby time. This phone operates on the GSM 850/900/1800/1900 frequencies and comes with a one year limited warranty.

Product Description

A compact classic: AIM® and Yahoo!® instant messaging, Bluetooth® wireless connectivity, and a speakerphone let you easily keep in touch with family and friends.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty Good Basic Phone, July 6, 2006

By 

Thomas (Starkville, MS, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Motorola V195 T-Mobile gray clamshell GSM cell phone (Wireless Phone)

I got this phone a week ago. I am Dallas with T-Mobile service.

Call Quality: Very Good
Bluetooth: Motorola Phone Tools cost a lot of money and will not put recurring calendar appointments with end dates into the phones calendar. I have used XP bluetooth support to upload a few images. That is very easy and fast. i haven't used a bluetooth headset.

Usability: The menu seems a bit slow and complex. The keys are okay size, but there are too many of them. Also, my old Nokia had the "back button" on the right and the "select" on the left. Moto is the opposite. I constantly hit the wrong one.

The speed dialing is odd. You press speed number followed by # key. This just brings up the phone book entry. Then you have to press the call button. There is also a press and hold speed dial function for buttons 1-9.

Speakerphone: This seems to work well. It is quite loud.

Battery life: very good. It seems it will last well past a week on the full battery level without a charge (if you aren't talking). On recent 1 week vacation I charged before leaving, never turning off the phone. After one week the phone showed 2/3 battery level. I talked about 2 hours during that time frame.

26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Exactly the features I wanted but hampered by poor voice quality, June 23, 2006

By 

Brent Dombrowski (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Motorola V195 T-Mobile gray clamshell GSM cell phone (Wireless Phone)

Pros: Bluetooth, mp3 support, USB connector, nice large external display
Cons: Internal screen is just ok, software is just ok, voice quality sucks.

This phone had exactly the features I was looking for. I don't use the camera on the phone I have now and did not want to pay for another camera phone. The bluetooth worked well. The ability to use mp3s for ring tones was great. The phone has a mini USB connector for data transfer and charging. You'll need to pay for the Motorola Phone tools if you want to charge it from your computer (Windows XP). It will charge just fine with no software on a Mac. Coming from a Sony Ericsson phone, it took me awhile to figure out where things where on this phone. The handy date book and calculator were buried under settings->tools. The menus and buttons are highly configurable and after spending a few hours customizing it, I had things set up where I found the phone usable.

Where this phone fell flat was on its most basic function, talking to other people. Incoming calls sounded muffled, like the other person was talking through a pillow. I had to just about yell so other people could hear me. The same was true using a bluetooth headset. I didn't want to be the loud talking cell phone guy, so I returned the phone. I was at the end of my 14 days, so I did not elect to try another one.

If you are considering this phone, try it out in the store and be sure to make a call on it. Try the same call on your current or another phone to make sure its good. I noticed the difference immediately when I went back to my old phone. If motorola gets the voice quality fixed, this will be at least a 4 star phone.

For the Apple fans out there, iSync does not support this phone as of this writing. You can hack iSync to get this phone to work.
For the Salling Clicker fans, Clicker does not support this phone as of this writing.

Update:
I decided to give this phone a second chance and got a new one.

The 2nd v195 I had worked better, but still had problems. The sound quality was much better. The voice dialing would recognize me. It would also lock up the phone sometimes.

Round two resulted in reception problems. The 2nd phone was at least one bar lower on the signal strength then another v195 in the T-Mobile store. I also tried dialing my v195 from a Nokia 6103 in the store. I never did receive the call.

This phone still has potential, it just needs some Quality Assurance back at the factory. Maybe Motorola can take the two bad ones I've sent back and make one good one. If you are serious about this phone, be sure you buy it from a place that is easy on returns.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Basic Cell Phone, August 2, 2006

By 

GeekBoy "Mark" (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Motorola V195 T-Mobile gray clamshell GSM cell phone (Wireless Phone)

I got this phone to replace my home landline, and so far, I have zero complaints/issues. The battery life is exceptional, and here in the Philadelphia suburbs, T-Mobile provides great service. The call quality is outstanding, and the phone is comfortable to use. The build quality seems very good, so if you're looking for a no-nonsense phone, without the bells and whistles, this is the phone for you.

Update:
At about 2 weeks into ownership, I can confirm that the phone continues to work flawlessly. The only very minor "con", is the bottom usb/earphone jack cover. You have to wrestle with it a bit to move it aside to make room for whatever you plug in. Rather than deal with that, I found a great deal (on that popular auction site), on a spare BT60 battery w/desktop charger. I just swap batteries in and out of it, as opposed to plugging the charger into the phone. Other than that though, still 2 thumbs up!