Motorola C650 Cellular Camera Phone - Not Sure If I Will Keep It
Written: Jan 18 '05 (Updated Dec 20 '05)
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Pros: Good reception, large bright screen, good backlight, sturdy feel, modern look
Cons: Charger doesn't work in Europe, polished black upper part gets smudged easily, difficult to open
The Bottom Line: I am still unsure if I should keep this phone. I dislike its charger that doesn’t work in Europe, its slower battery charging than my...
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| dkozin's Full Review: Motorola C650 Cellular Phone with Camera |
Since T-Mobile was kind enough to offer me a decent deal on a new phone (with a one-year contract extension, of course), I decided to get a Motorola C650 Camera Cell Phone.
I wanted a "world" phone (to be able to use it in Europe and Asia) and I wanted something inexpensive and slim (not a flip-phone). The C650 is a tri-band GSM world phone. It also has a camera - a functionality I couldn’t care less about. It also has a large, bright and colorful screen - a nice feature but not critical.
Upon receiving and using this phone for a week, I might still go back to my previous phone, which is a Nokia 6610. And here is why.
What You Get
I got the phone itself, the battery, the charger, the hands-free device and the manuals. With new activation, you will probably also get a new SIM card (the little removable card where your phone numbers and messages are stored).
Photo
You can see the picture of the phone that I took as well as the larger photo of it at
http://www.review-shop.com/MotorolaC650/MotorolaC650_1.html
(you can copy and paste the address above into your browser's address bar).
Battery
The battery is small and took several hours to charge. My previous phone (Nokia 6610) charged its battery faster.
Charger
The charger that comes with the phone is of the so-called "travel" type. It is relatively small and has a cord with a little round jack that plugs into the phone. Unfortunately, the charger is larger and heavier than the one that came with my Nokia. It is also designed to work with 110V 60Hz current only, rendering itself unusable in “real” travel (e.g. in Europe). The Nokia charger was smaller and could accept European current as well as the US one.
Phone
The phone follows the current trend on upper black and lower silver design. Looks good at first, but the polished black upper part (screen included) gets covered in fingerprints/oil, etc. Doesn't look good at all.
From some of the pictures online it looks like the upper black portion is matte. It is not - it is smooth and gets oily.
The rear of the phone houses the little VGA-resolution camera with 4x digital zoom. I never understood why somebody would want a poor-quality camera in the phone. The pictures it takes are pretty bad, but at least you can adjust the exposure (brightness) and zoom in (in steps) using the joystick on the front panel.
The case of the phone feels sturdy and solid as well as its buttons. The screen is bright, large and colorful and the button backlight has just the right brightness to it (less bright than the overly bright backlight of the Samsung R225, but more bright than the Nokia 6610).
The phone is not super-light, which contributes to its solid feel. The problem with solidity arises when there is too much of it. Although many people will not open the phone again before they get a new one (to replace the battery or the SIM card), the ones that will have to open it will have a surprise awaiting them.
The phone is extremely difficult to open once it’s closed. The back panel has two holes for you fingernails, but I had to augment my nails with little screwdrivers and still struggled for several minutes (and scratched the back cover in process).
Make sure you don’t close the lid before inserting both the SIM card and the battery, otherwise you will have to struggle to open it again.
Connectivity
The phone has three connectors at the bottom end: a mini USB jack, a DC power jack and a hands-free jack. No USB cable or software is included and I had hard time with the USB connection in question. The mini-USB cable from my digital camera fit perfectly, but my Windows 2000 computer (as well as another computer with Windows XP) requested a disc with a USB driver, which was not available.
The lengthy online search for the “USB driver for Motorola C650) yielded no results. Motorola’s web site suggests than the software called Mobile Phone Tools lets you do many things like sending faxes and managing your phone’s rings and images, etc. I assume it includes the newest USB drivers as well. I am not paying for it though...
Ease of Use
The phone is pretty easy to use. The only sections of the manual I looked at were the sections describing battery charging and SIM installation. The usage is easy with two soft buttons, a menu button in the middle and the little joystick, which is a bit over-sensitive.
One, slightly disappointing, aspect is the fact that sometimes you get no confirmation message (Are you sure?) when you are about to do something (e.g. delete a photo). Once you press "delete", the photo is gone.
Thus, if you are in the menu with dangerous items like "delete", be careful with the joystick as it also serves as an additional "select" button (when depressed).
Also, be advised that the joystick serves as volume control and is not as convenient to use as Nokia 6610's separate volume control. Example: if you called some customer service number and had to "select 1 for English, etc.", there will be several numbers on the display and, instead of changing the volume, moving the joystick will cause the cursor to move.
Performance
The phone provides excellent reception (without using a protruding antenna) and good sound quality. I didn’t see (hear) improvement over my Nokia 6610 in sound quality, but reception seems to be slightly better.
The display is bright and fits more information in a higher-resolution and more readable format. The battery status indicator and reception indicators have less precision (less bars) than Nokia though.
The predictive text entry is easier to use than Nokia’s and menu item access is faster due to the fact that all main menu entries fit on the screen at the same time, unlike Nokia where you have to scroll through them one at a time.
The available rings are good with some approaching the quality of the cheap stereo (but in mono, of course) and you can download more. The battery life is decent and easily sufficient for my (light) usage.
Bottom Line
I am still unsure if I should keep this phone. I dislike its charger that doesn’t work in Europe, its slower battery charging than my Nokia and its polished black upper part that gets smudged/fingerprinted easily. I do like its reception, large bright screen, backlight and sturdy feel.
If you are looking for a modern-looking camera phone that can be used in many countries, is sturdy and inexpensive, Motorola C650 may be a good choice.
See also: my Motorola RAZR V3 Review
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 100-50rebate
Recommended for: World Travelers - Works Anywhere and Everywhere!
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Epinions.com ID:
dkozin
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 in Electronics |
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Location: California
Reviews written: 838
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About Me:
I love to push buttons on electronic (audio and video) equipment. It makes me happy.
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