Customer Reviews

Motorola V300 Phone (T-Mobile)

5 star:		(132)
4 star:		(88)
3 star:		(52)
2 star:		(54)
1 star:		(87)

 

 

This is just an incredible phone. I got it through Amazon with T-Mobile's service. I will try to go into this phone with as extensively as I can, based on my personal use.

First about the phone. As a company, Motorola has been in the wireless business for a long time. Before they had cellphones, they had pagers. Before that, walkie-talkies. They know what a good phone should be, and they've definately shown that here. Their flagship V60 series was king of the cellphones for a while, but then it lagged behind other companies for a long time when they came out with color phones with competitive features. Their T720 series didn't do so hot. Motorola really is coming back, though, with the V600 line of products (this includes the V300, sister to the V600). The V300 is special in this series since it is the only one with an uniquely soft cover that feels great to the touch. Filled with an appealing combination of features (I'll list them below), the V300 (especially through Amazon) is really an unbelievable phone for the money.

After I received the phone and absolutely loved it, I was quick to purchase a data cable for very cheap (including overcharged shipping prices) on eBay. With the help of Howard Forums (do a search on Google, you'll find them) I was able to find free wallpapers, ringtones, and games and transfer them from my computer to my phone FREE via the data cable. The same goes for downloading pictures I took to my computer. This made my phone, not only the envy of my friends, but also my favorite little toy since my digital camera purchase. :)

Features I love:
- Soft cover, comfortable to hold
- Great call quality
- Big and high-resolution screen (better than most out there)
- Screen supports alpha blending (transparency)
- SEVEN customizable buttons
- Improved phonebook with multiple viewing options
- Quality ringtones, both MIDI and MP3 (Dido's "Thank You" MP3 for my ring? Heck yeah!
- Huge 5 MB shared storage between pictures, rings, and games
- Best speakerphone I've ever used on a wireless phone
- Improved alarm clock system (set up to 5 different alarms, with the ring of your choice!)
- Good battery life (but I also recommend getting a car charger if you're on the road a lot)
- Speed dialing
- Improved iTAP predictive text feature for easy text entry
- Sort phonebooks entries, ringtones, pictures and wallpapers into distinct categories
- Ringer ID (different rings for different people/groups)
- Switching ring styles (loud, vibrate, silent, etc) without having to open phone
- Useful, uniquely blue outer display
- View minutes and text usage online with T-Mobile
- With data cable: free wallpaper, ringtone, and games transfer
- With data cable: free pictures download from phone to PC

Features neutral to me, but still cool to have:
- Better-than-average VGA-level camera
- Picture ID (Assign a picture to display when a certain friend calls)
- Useful calendar with month-view and week-view
- Easy to use calculator
- AOL Instant Messenger client built-in (uses text messages)
- Voice dialing
- Voice memo
- Tri-band world phone
- Potentially free HTML browsing with WebViewer software from ReqWireless (since T-Mobile gives you free basic WAP service), or some other third-party HTML browser

Features I didn't like, or wish it had:
- Sometimes phone seems a little slow, but this is just minor nip-picking
- Wish it had Bluetooth or infrared
- Better phonebook search system (can only search by first letter of name)
- Wish it had an integrated flash for the camera
- Antenna stub (I prefer internal antennas)

Arguable features, depending on personal preference:
- Color of the phone
- Size of the phone (3.50" x 1.93" x 0.98" / 89mm x 49mm x 25mm)
- Weight of the phone (4.30 oz / 122g)
- Unique alternating keypad button shapes
- Built-in ringtones (not bad, but could be better in my opinion)
- Menu system (I think it's great, but some don't)

As you can see, as far as my usage is concerned, this phone is pretty much perfect, deserving its full five stars.

Next, since you'll probably be purchasing this phone with T-Mobile's service, let me tell you about T-Mobile. I came from a respectable local company called SureWest that offered me unlimited California calling, but no roaming outside of the great Sacramento area. Now I am on T-Mobile's 3000 minute local plan for $50 a month, which allows me to roam and call California and Nevada cheaper than what I was paying with SureWest. I love it! I also used to be a Verizon Wireless store manager, and although they are nationally number one in quality, they are relatively expensive minutes-wise compared to T-Mobile. I can tell you that T-Mobile also has very good in customer service. See for yourself: just give 1-800-T-MOBILE a call, 24-hours a day, if you have questions about their service, even before you buy the phone. I've called a billion times with questions before and after I got the phone, and I've got to say, they are the most courteous telephone customer service agents I have ever talked with. EVER. Not just in the wireless business.

As far as call quality goes, mine is EXCELLENT. I live Davis, just outside of Sacramento. Only one dropped call this month, and I am pretty sure it was from the other end of the line. However, with my experience in the wireless field, I recommend going out and checking out T-Mobile's quality IN YOUR AREA before you buy. If you have a friend with T-Mobile, borrow the phone for a while and test out the service. If not, go to a store and test out a T-Mobile phone. A nationally top-ranked service and a phone with great call-quality potential is useless if it does not work well in YOUR local area.

I hope the extensive review helps you in choosing a phone and wireless plan, and remember, the best phone for you is not necessarily the one with the most features, but instead one with all the features you will actually use. :)

This phone is by far one of the best phones offered by Tmobile. It is so great that it is always out of stock. This phone might be lacking bluetooth as well as irda but it has many features not offered in other phones at the moment. If you are looking for a normal phone, this is the one, if not and looking for something to sync with computer applications please look into the Nokia 3650 and the SE T610. If you want to know more please inquire,

Pro:
1. Best TFT Screen (better than E715)

2. LOUD speakerphone mode
3. easy to use, very similar to older T720 menus.
4. easy to sync with computer via usb cable
5. Voice dial
6. did i mention the Camera?

Con:
1. No BT or IRDA
2. Cant answer via speakphone without opening.

This phone has a very nice leather grip on the outside and has a nice solid feel to it. Buttons are also very spacious and click when you press and does not feel cheap.

I recently switched wireless phone companies because I had been having some issues with my old provider, and because the ability to port numbers over to other carriers became available. As such, I was forced to purchase a cell phone that would be compatable with the service of my new company, T-Mobile. After researching tons of different cell phone brands online (Samsung, Nokia, etc.), I finally decided upon the Motorola V300 . . . and boy am I glad that I did.
This phone is fantastic, and offers some of the lastest technological advances in wireless devices. A few of it's best features include:
1. Full color LCD screen
2. Illuminated, external caller ID and clock (perfect for movie
theatres)
3. Plastic-coated, scratch-resistant exterior
4. Voice activated dialing
5. Hands-free speaker phone
6. Digital camera
7. Text messaging with iTap option
8. AOL instant messaging
9. Internet accessability
and,
10. download capability for lots of different wallpaper and
ringtones from off of T-Mobile's web site.
Additionally, the V300 offers many little extras, making it all the better. With this phone, one is able to customize screen color (i.e., can choose to have background teal, orange, yellow, etc.), the placement of options within the phone (e.g., icons can be hidden or exposed; messages can be accessed from top, bottom, right, or left of key pad depending upon preference; etc.), and the arrangement of names in the phonebook (i.e., can be either alphabatized or chronologically listed). Plus, the V300 comes with an alarm-activated datebook and a few demo games as well. The Motorola guide manuel says that you are supposed to be able to download the full versions of the included games (along with select others) from T-Mobile's web site, although this option dosen't actually exist. Big deal though; all of the demo games have enough levels anyhow, and that deficiency is the only shortcoming of this phone. Everything else about the V300 is great, and I certainly wouldn't suggest that one snub it because of it's inability to obtain games via the internet unless he or she is a hard-core player.
Furthermore, the V300 is cute and compact, and it comes in a sharp blue/silver color (which is paramount if you value size and appearance). In short, it is my opinion that this phone is definately worth the money; invest in buying it over some of the other brands, and I promise you that you won't be disapointed.

Got this phone 2 weeks ago and have been thrilled with all the new features it has when compared with my old Nokia 3360. Took 10 days to get my phone shipped because of an internal problem at Amazon. However, I was highly delighted when T-mobile was able to transfer my number from AT&T within 12 hours! Much better than expected and I'll highly recommend the process to anyone. As for the phone itself, here are my pros and cons:

Pros:
- Very nice screen
- Voice dialing works well
- iTAP typing seems to work well, although it takes a bit of an adjustment initially for a Nokia user
- Rubberized feel to the exterior. Very elegant.
- Good weight. Phones that are too light feels flimsy. And it's still lighter than my previous Nokia
- Moto Mixer. Wished there were more MIDI tones to play with though.
- Picture ID

Cons:
- Speakerphone volume is too low even at max volume
- Cannot lock the master clear setting. Wished I could do that since I don't want ppl to just come over and delete all my settings, phonebook and pictures with one button press!
- Picture of the caller does not come up if phone is set to connect a call upon opening the flip
- Battery life. 2 days between charge for normal use.
- Battery indicator is not accurate during charge. Sometimes I remove the phone during charge-up and the indicator will jump from 1 to 3 dots upon removal of the cable.
- It vibrates every 5 min when there is unread voicemail/message. This is annoying because sometimes I don't want to pick up the message til after a meeting.
-Somewhat tedious to add extra numbers to a single person since the entries are individually stored inside the phone. For example, the picture ID needs to be added to each number.

Overall I love the phone and spent hours testing out its features. Highly recommended.

-Vi

Overall this is a pretty good phone, especially when one considers how much functionality is included for the price. The MP3 ringtones are pretty neat (and you can use the phone as a poor man's MP3 player since you can set it to play MP3s with the phone closed), speakerphone in general is louder than Nokias, and the rubberized exterior means I can put it on my dash and not worry about it falling off! I'm pretty satisfied with the phone, and though the camera isn't the best out there, it does include a nice slideshow feature. Motorola also improved their user interface and it's nice and responsive unlike my prior Sony Ericsson T68i. And the alarm clock gets nice and loud, it really works well.

This phone is plagued with some bugs though, with people complaining of: random restarts, random shutdowns, hangs in browser. (I bought two of the phones and haven't had these problems though.) In addition, there are little annoying bugs like the backlight takes close to a second to turn on when you open the phone, when you set a custom ringtone for a contact number, it will use that for phone calls or SMS messages from that phone number (ignoring the SMS ringtone you may have set). Worse yet are the T-Mobile annoyances: they removed the e-mail client which Motorola will include in non-T-Mobile V300s, they seem to have removed the ability to send recorded voice notes in an MMS unless you record it while your composing your MMS, and they've added links to various T-Zones features throughout the phone, which serve as nothing more than annoying advertising really.

In the end, value wins here, if the phone were priced higher, I would not have purchased it because of the annoyances above.

(Tip: if you don't like having contact entries for John's Cell, John's Home, John's Work, etc, you can set it to display just the primary contact, in this case "John" and then it'll show an icon to the right of the contact name. Pressing right or left will go through all the other phone numbers/email addresses for that contact. Even handier than having to click on the contact name and then scrolling to the number you want.)

I just bought this phone a few days ago and really didn't want to believe the commonly-said mantra that cell phone companies are evil, will steal your money, will stuff your contract with hidden charges, etc. I asked my rep. all the questions I could think of, and thought I had it all squared away; thought I know all that I was getting into.

Hm...nope.

First off though, this is a great phone. It has every feature you could want and anything that doesn't come with it originally you can just pay extra for. The phone is sturdily built, has a very loud, clear ring (which can be set lower or to vibrate), has a decent phone for a camera (the zoom and brightness control features help out a lot), and is adorable.

But beware AIM when you use this phone (or any T-Mobile phone, for that matter). It doesn't just charge you for when you receive or send IMs - it charges you for getting your buddy list when you first sign on, for *refreshing* your buddy list, for adding a buddy - and it usually will charge you two messages for each of these things because it'll say that adding a buddy, for example, requires both you sending a message to AIM saying to add a buddy, and AIM sending you a message back confirming the buddy add. I've sent and received no more than 20 messages in the past few days, but when I go online to T-Mobile's website to look at how many "messages" I've racked up, it says *147*.

Also, T-Mobile will tell you that the only way you get internet access is if you pay extra for their t-zones thing. This is not true. If you go to Menu -> Office Tools -> WebAccess -> Go To URL, and then enter a web address, it'll bring you there regardless of whether you have t-zones or not. Confusing at first, but that's apparently how it works. I'm not sure what the charges are associated with it, if there are any; I emailed T-Mobile three consecutive times asking about it and they wouldn't give me a straight answer, like they didn't understand me or something.

Just hope this helps someone out there.

**UPDATE 09/08/04**
So yeah, about the internet service...I tried to check my e-mail with this phone the other day, like I'd been able to do for more than two months, when suddenly I'm told that I need to subscribe to T-Zones for this service at at least $4.99 a month. Confused, I call T-Mobile, and am told that I was never supposed to be able to access the web from my phone in the first place; there just happened to have been a glitch recently where people who weren't paying for T-Zones were able to. Now that's apparently fixed, so my above point about that you can access the internet through this phone without T-Zones is no longer true. I'm really sorry to anyone who bought this phone thinking they'd get free access; it's just how it seemed at the time. Sorry.

And seriously, what's up with a company that messes up like that? Gah.

You can read about how to receive a family plan after purchasing a
phone from Amazon.com at:

http://www.amazon.com/o/tg/feature/-/472828

You can order a phone and service plan from Amazon.com, and then
once you receive the phone you can change the service plan to a
family plan with your service provider.

If you are interested in a family plan through T-Mobile, you will
need to contact T-Mobile after receiving your phone in order to
update your service agreement. Doing so should not incur any
additional fees and will not disqualify you from any of the
accompanying Amazon.com rebates.

This is a stylish, terrific phone. And for the most part, it's almost perfect with its easy to use camera, brilliant color screen, and attractive blue soft-touch shell.

You should know, however, that T-Mobile is aware of a bug in this phone, where sometimes the programming gets screwed up and doesn't allow you to edit your stored phone numbers. I have ordered two replacement phones, and called up the phone company about it. They say that it's surprising that this would happen to me twice, but this is a known issue with the phone. There is no solution to fix it, except to get it replaced under warranty with another phone.

So my advice is, if you want this phone, make sure that you buy a data cable to go with it. You'll want this to back up your contacts quickly and easily to your computer, just in case anything goes wrong. Another reason to have a data cable is that you no longer need to buy ring tones. Just upload your own MP3 or MIDI files to the phone with the included software (you might need to edit them down to little 10-30 second snippets) and voila! Free ringtones. Another good reason to have a data cable is to transfer photos from the phone without having to email them.

I recently bought the v300 with T-mobile service and am very pleased so far. I will break down my review into "phone" and "service."

PHONE:
The unit arrived 1 week after I ordered it, despite being backlogged in Amazon's system. I had a motorola m331(?) TDMA with Cingular, but because of some upocoming travel, I did not want to incur significant roaming fees. Also, that phone wasn't a flip phone, and hence buttons were easily pushed (= lower battery, unintended calls, etc.).

The v300 is a VAST improvement. Sturdy phone, numerous features, relatively simple to navigate menus, and highly customizable. Battery life seems to be excellent, reception is amazing, the screen is easy to read and bright. Of note, I've graduated from college, from graduate school, from medical school, and I'm almost finished with law school - so you'd think operating/programming a cell phone wouldn't be a major challenge, yet cell phone software and functionality often escape me. This phone has largely solved my "cell phone impairment" and has been easy to operate and program. It has scads of features, many of which I haven't even tried yet (camera, data transfer, etc.). Two noteworthy features I love are the ability to type in names with phone numbers on T-Mobile's website and they are sent to your phone (saves typing names on the handset, an ability that still eludes me), and the ability to change ringtones to silent/vibrate without having to open the unit and navigate menus (great for lectures, meetings, etc; however I do wish there was a recessed "instant silent" 1-button option to make it even easier and faster to turn off ringer and then turn it back on after meetings without even looking at the phone).

A few "cons" though these are minor points. First, the menus sometimes lag to respond, but indeed not terribly much. Second, the keyboard on my unit is not evenly backlit, so when the backlight is on, in the dark I can only see some of the buttons (this is due to uneven removal of ink from buttons to allow light to pass through). Third, I do wish there was wireless connectivity to my laptop/PC for data transfer.

Summary: this phone is a great phone, far superior to my 331 unit. I rank it 4 stars because I am a tough grader and there is always room for improvement!

SERVICE:
This is where I've really been impressed, with T-Mobile's service. Signal strength is very high in my city and seems to penetrate further into buildings than the Cingular TDMA signal did. Clarity is strong and no dropped calls to date. I ported my number over from Cingular, which only took 2 hours (total) from the time I placed a call to T-Mobile to initiate the process. Yes, that's correct, my number was ported in only 2 hours!

Perhaps most importantly (to me), I've called T-Mobile 3 times before and after the purchase for questions, porting, etc. I've been stunned by the high level of customer service (get a real warm-blooded person almost immediately); representatives are both helpful and extremely courteous. Many of you know that over the last several years customer service in the U.S. has sunk down into the metaphorical septic tank. By comparison, for example, the very WORST customer service in Japan is about 10X better than the BEST cust. service in the U.S. Well T-Mobile seems to buck that trend, perhaps because they are a smaller firm (let's only hope they arent merged any time soon - another reason I left Cingular) or perhaps because the people in charge of CS have spent time in other countries. Even as a tough grader, I give TMobile customer service a 10/10 - and megakudos to their customer service managers and employees who have set up a top notch class act (for example, and anyone with hypertension take your lopressor and sit down before reading this...on two of my calls the representatives actually ASKED me if it was okay if they put me on hold while they got more information...I honestly can't recall the last time anyone has done that!).

So in the end, I am very happy with the phone and practically jubilant about the TMobile customer service. I have recommended both to my friends and colleagues, and hope that TMobile continues to take the rarely-traveled high road and treats paying customers as, well, paying customers - a real diamond in the rough in the United States these days!

You will be happy with this phone, and, inter alia, the service that comes with it (so long as you are in their service area and not in the sticks somewhere).

I just went from Sprint to T-mobile. I replaced my Sanyo 8100 with a Motorola V300. So this is not my first picture phone.

The Motorola V300 is an amazing phone. For the price (-$50) on Amazon it can not be beat. I highly recommend this product.

Pro's
-------
1) The display is great. It is bright and crisp.
2) The User Interface is very straight forward and very easy to learn. This is my first Motorola phone since my Startac and unlike the Startac this is very easy to use. The Sanyo 8100 only has 9 speed dial locations. The V300 has 250. Much better!
3) The camera is very good for a phone. It will not replace my digital camera yet but it is does take a decent picture for sharing.
4) I really like the feel of the phone. The "rubberized" housing feels good in my hands.
5) The battery life is good. On par with my 8100 (maybe better).
6) The audio quality is amazing! So much better then my 8100.
7) The built in speaker phone works very well.

Con's
--------
1) Only available in Blue. Hard to tell my wife's and my phone apart. I need to open the flip and look at the wallpaper picture.
2) A little heavier than my 8100.
3) Wish it had blue-tooth built in. But that feature is only in the V500/600.