Customer Reviews

Motorola W260g Prepaid Phone (Tracfone)

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

 

 

This is a slim flip style phone that you get the basic description up above. I will concentrate reviewing what may help you decide if it's right for you.

First go to the Tracfone website to do several things. You will input your zip code to see what phones are available in your area (on the buy phone tab). After confirming your city, carefully check the web address page that will appear in your browser. Somewhere in the string of characters there will be either a GSM5AT (ATT and Tmobile), GSM5 (Tmobile), or GSM4 (ATT). Those are the two providers that Tracfone currently uses. This code will tell you who is in your area. If you are lucky to be in a dual provider area, select your W260g (or actually any other) carefully by looking at the white label on the bottom of the box (if shopping in a store). The phones (and sim cards) are specific to only one provider. The top line of the white label will have a string that will contain either TFMTW260SP5PSDM (Tmobile) or TFMTW260SP4SDM (ATT). Pick a phone for a provider that you have better coverage with in the area that you will be using the phone most often. You cannot swap a P4 sim into a P5 phone and vice versa. They are sold married to each other only.

Second, select this phone in a "Bonus Pack" package only. It is only a couple of bucks more and includes car and home charger, a case, earphone and most important "Free Double Minutes For Life" (FDML). That is what the last two digits in the code above stand for. This means when you buy a 60 minute card, you will get 120 minutes, etc.

Third, always Google "bonus codes" and Tracfone when buying air time for current offers that will add even more minutes to your card/phone. I typically buy a 60 minute card, get double minutes up to 120, then get 60 additional bonus code minutes. So a 60 minute card can get you 180 minutes.

Fourth, activate on line on Tracfone website. You will get 10 minutes free.

Fifth, when you first get assigned a new phone number, be aware that someone may have had it before you. They may have had a "history", such as bad credit. If you don't want to load up your voice mail with unwanted messages, do not set up the voice mail for a couple of weeks, or have Tracfone "unset it" up for you. You can also set the unwanted caller numbers up as "ignore a, b, c, d etc" in the directory. You then hit "ignore" soft button (the one on the right of select circle)when they call, and not lose any minutes.

Now the rest of the review. The phone looks nice and modern with a sleek shiny black surface. Feels good in the hand. The charging and earphone openings have plastic covers that swing out of the way when needed. Unfortunately when you unplug the charger you tend to grab the both the plug and the cover, and the plug feels like it does not want to come out, or worse it does come out with the plastic cover.
The battery life seems optimistic at 6.5 hours talk time and 18 days standby. While futzing with the phone and all its features (not on the air, but with screen on all the time) I managed to run down the battery in about 3 hours. Not using the phone much at all I had to recharge it in 4 days. That is still good for a GSM phone.

Keypad is just OK, the circular pad is a bit small and I wind up occasionally hitting one of the arrows rather than the center circle.

The screen quality is good. You can only set the contrast, not the brightness. The various W260s I saw, had a good degree of variation between them some bright with a bluish tinge, some dimmer and yellowish. Both are very acceptable.

The reception and voice quality are good to very good (not excellent). I had both the Tmobile and ATT versions, and in my case the ATT had much better signal strength.

The supplied earphone (bonus pack) is single ear, pretty good quality, the clip on holster is very good, and both home and car chargers fully recharge the batteries in about three hours (updated information).

PS Tracfone customer support has been excellent. They answer on the first ring, sometimes are a bit difficult to understand, but get the job done.

I purchased this phone from another site. I have had it about 3 weeks. So far, it is a good basic phone, and the battery life seems pretty good. The Tracphone pre-paid rate is good if you have the double minutes, and they offer promotions that give you extra minutes when you purchase time.

The main problem I had with it is that the instructions in the manual for selecting a different ringtone were poor. Neither I nor a friend could figure out how to get to the advertised 35 pre-loaded ringtones. (Both of us have owned cell phones before.) After several failed attempts, Tracfone's customer service (both a tech rep and his supervisor) said it didn't have different ringtones. (They also said that feature wasn't advertised for the phone on their website, although it is.) I called back a second time to complain that the features listed for the phone on Tracfone's website were misleading. This time, the technical rep led me through several different series of steps, similar to what I had tried before and, finally, after several different attempts and conferences with her supervisor, it worked, and the ringtones were displayed for me to select from. I don't know why it was so hard to do at first, but I have never before had this much of a problem setting this on a cell phone. I am pleased with it now that the ringtone is set--you can set the volume for the loud ring so that it is fairly loud. The customer service has always been courteous.

(If you have a problem with the ringtones, here is what you do:
from main menu select Ring Styles -> Style -> Loud Ring -> Select.
The phone will display "changed style", then return to Ring Styles with "Loud Ring Detail" on 2nd line.
Select Loud Ring Detail -> Alarms, and an "Alarms" menu will be diplayed, begiining with "Silent". If you continue to scroll down, you can see (and hear) the ringtones. Seems straight-forward, but like I said, I made numerous tries with no success. Repeat for "Soft ring". Ringtones will not display if phone is set to vibrate.)

I haven't noticed any other problems. My needs are relatively basic, and I don't talk on the phone frequently, although I keep it on during the daytime. I don't text, so I can't comment on that.

btw This is my first experience with Tracfone. I activated the phone after purchase, was given a number, then started the process to transfer my phone number from my previous cell phone carrier. They said they would send me a new sim card for my new number. I assumed I would have use of the cell phone using the number assigned on activation, but instead I was without cell phone service until my new sim card arrived. They did FedEx the sim card to me, but in the past I have not had a disruption in cell phone service to transfer my old number. I don't know if this is their standard procedure, but it was unexpected and somewhat inconvenient.

We got rid of our land line, we hardly ever used it anymore and long distance was too expensive in our area. We chose the Motorola W260g Prepaid Phone (Tracfone) because it was affordable, and came with the proper accessories and it also came with a plan that everytime we bought minutes it doubled them. The minutes are easy to buy, either you go to the store and purchase them, purchase them online, or you can buy a plan that adds them every month. Its super easy to set up and use, adding phone numbers is a cinch, and its display is simple and direct. I didnt want any bells and whistles on this phone, we didnt want a camera, or internet capability, or whatever else all the more expensive phones have to offer. I wanted to be able to make calls, send texts, and recieve both. I also didnt care about different ringtones because to me thats not what is important in this product.
The battery lasts a long time, charging is easy also.

I would recommend this phone for anyone who just wants a plain, simple, product that works!

I have had cell phones since the 80's. I always had phones from the big carriers. They would die/break etc. They came packed with features i never bothered with. After getting completely aggravated with my last service provided I did not renew my contract and I picked this phone up. It is very simple, it seems flimsy but it's actually worked better than some of my higher end phones. I use my phone for the occasional phone call home or to a friend. I don't live on it. I have also used it to text a few times. My son has dropped it a couple of times and it's fine (not so with my last 3g phone) If you just need something basic without the hassle of a contract I would not hesitate to recommend this phone.

DO NOT BUY A TRACFONE! I recently bought a year and 800 minutes service for my tracphone. This past week I received a text message from them that said they were canceling coverage in my area and I need to find another provider. No offer to pay for my remaining service. The wife called their help line in Asia and they had no idea what was going on. After some time they talked with someone that knew and we were told that our service would be shut off on the 25th. They had to have known this was coming but they took my $120 and never said a word. What a bunch of crooks!

I saw a TracFone claim that they cover over 95% of the US. If you go to the tracFore web site, you can see that there alot of areas where there is no service.
I spend alot of time in central Wisconsin and am unable to use my TracFone unless I am close to an interstate highway.

I purchased this phone from Tracfone for my 11-year-old, knowing that it doesn't have a camera (because we don't want her to have a camera right now). It works well for basic functions and seems very durable. We give her 50 minutes per month automatically through the Tracfone monthly value plan, then she has to earn any additional minutes (good life lesson!).

The one big limitation that I was disappointed in was that it has no MMS receive capability (i.e. it can't receive pictures from other phones). The previous phone that we tried from Tracfone (the Motorola W370) also did not have a camera but it did include MMS messaging, so we assumed that the W260g did have MMS.

If you want to receive MMS/picture messages even if you don't have a camera, choose the W370 rather than the W260g.

Tracfone should make this very clear on their website: right now it's very misleading and leads you to potentially choose the wrong phone. To determine which non-camera phones have MMS, look in the phone description details on Tracfone's site to see if they list "picture messaging" in the features.

I purchased this phone from another site and had nothing but problems from the start. I wrote Tracfone that they wouldn't get any word of mouth support from me! The phone quit working at least six times, and I had to call each time to have the phone recoded which would take at least a frustrating 20 minutes. The phone would work for a quick check call, I'd go to make a call an hour later and the phone would have "broke". I went through three or four days of this, and they finally agreed to send me a new phone. I had the same problem with the next phone, but THIS time they didn't have to recode the phone, making me feel like THEY were disrupting my service deliberately. I ended up taking the second phone back to the store after feeling completley jerked around, without getting my money back for the airtime I had purchased. I have never been so mad about buying a product, or customer service, or feeling GIPPED! I wrote them a scathing e-mail, and they couldn't even offer me an apology- just a form e-mail in return. I will NEVER deal with them again! Completely taken for a ride! I'd give it zero stars if this would get published.

My family already had two Tracfones and we had no problems with them. Since we use them infrequently the pay-as-you go feature makes a lot of sense for us and has saved us a lot of money. So when my old ATT&T Razr phone putzed out I bought this w260g phone direct from Tracfone and attempted to port my old number to the new phone during the online activation. I was aware of the many problems people have had activating these phones so I made sure I followed the instructions to the letter.

During the online activation process I was required to enter two long codes. I did this very carefully, double checking. The first one was accepted the second was not. Started over and had the same problem. Had to call "Customer Care' This is where the nightmare began. First of all, the "Care" center is obviously a call center somewhere on another continent. It was very difficult to hear the service rep and their English was also hard to follow (amazing the call quality is crystal clear when you are on hold having the Muzak blasted into your ear--which happens a lot). After an inordinately long amount of time I was finally given two new codes to enter to activate my phone which worked. I thanked the rep and rang off, thinking my problems were over.

I then went back online to buy minutes. I purchased a 60 minute card, paid an extra five bucks for another 30 minutes and used a promo code for another 30 minutes. I went through checkout and paid and got a receipt for 120 minutes. Problem was that the minutes never showed up on my phone. I call "Customer Care" again three hours later and the call center was closed for the day. I called back at 8:30 the next morning. It took three calls (the first two were dropped after 36 minutes and 62 minutes into the process, respectively) to FINALLY get a code to enter into the phone which gave me the minutes at about 12:15pm.

Now for the final straw. When I purchased this phone on the website it was advertised as having double minutes for life. They informed me that my phone did NOT include this and that I would have to pony up another 50 bucks for a card for this. Naturally I refused. Why should I pay 50 bucks for something I was supposed to get the first time around? Also, they are advertising phones on their website for as little a 10 dollars with this feature. When my 120 minutes expire I will either throw this phone in the trash and try again for the double the minutes with a new phone or just go back to my basic ATT&T monthly plan (they offered to cut my rate $10 per month when I called up to cancel--and by the way their customer support was very good). Haven't made up my mind yet. They gave me two months to decide.

At any rate I am a sitting here in shock after being on the phone for 3 hours and 45 minutes to get the minutes I bought online yesterday actually added to my phone. Unbelievable. If you are thinking about a Tracfone, be advised that you may be one of the lucky ones that has no problems, like we were the first two times, or you may be one of the unlucky who experiences the most amazingly dysfunctional customer support imaginable. You roll the dice and you take your chances.

The phone itself has no frills but works fine, so far. I have had good experience with Motorola products in the past, so hopefully that won't be an issue.

I am a new Tracfone customer, but I have been impressed with the value, phone quality, clear reception and customer service. I opted for the basic Motorola W260G phone, because I only use the phone for calls. The phone is very simple and seems to work well. I could not get the phone to charge initially, but Tracfone customer service worked with me and quickly sent a new battery. That did not cure the problem and instead of sending a new charger, they promptly sent a whole new phone. It turned out that the original wall charger was defective. I was given additional time for my trouble and customer service was excellent. I should mention that support is out of Belize, so accents might be a little difficult. For value and no-hassle service (no contracts, no penalties, no sneaky add-on charges, etc.) I don't believe you can beat Tracfone. Reception can be a problem for any carrier depending on your location, so I would not hold Tracfone responsible for such an issue. It has been fine for me, where Sprint could barely connect - this is in their corporate area of Overland Park, KS. Good luck!