Motorola RAZR V3t T-Mobile Camera Phone, Black

I upgraded my former T-Mobile phone which was a RAZR V3 Pearl Gray for this so-called updated model of the RAZR. While reading all the previous reviews, I thought I was going to enjoy this phone thinking it would be somewhat better than my V3. Little did I know that the "T" in the model number would stand for trouble. While inputting phone contacts into the V3's phone memory bank was virtually a breeze, the memory of the V3T is too complex for itself. Preset speed-dial numbers which do not give the user the flexibility of utilizing the speed-dial number they desire, instead, it becomes a battle between consumer and machine where the phone tries to dictate where the speed-dial number will go. To shift your phone contacts of your old phone to SIM card in order to transfer them to this new phone is an adventure that will take a fully-charged battery to a new low. You can barely put the names or phone numbers into their respective catagories such as home, mobile or work without this thing putting everything in the other catagory causing you to go through the whole process of entering just one number again. Imagine having a great amount of numbers to enter. You can't even see a speed-dial listing for contacts in speed dial. This phone is a real bummer compared to the V3. A lot of hype and it's really a loser compared to the V3. I wonder what the hell Motorola was thinking with the software they put into this thing? Could have and should have been a lot better than what it is. A disappointment to those who really know how to operate a phone with technical features.

The phone is wonderful and the built in MP3 player is not so wonderful. I will review the phone and then review the MP3 player's problems and good points.

THE PHONE:

My previous phone was a Motorola V330 -- the blue one. After almost 2 years, I lost it. Now, I'm glad I did. The V330 had many good features, which are continued here. It also had many problems which are rectified by this new phone.

The good features which are carried over:

1. Clamshell design with big color screen with SVGA quality
2. Bluetooth for wireless headset
3. Built in speakerphone
4. Voice activated dialing with the touch of a button, including with bluetooth
5. 1.3 megapixel camera with 8X digital zoom
6. AIM Instant Messaging
7. Plays JAVA games
8. Internet and instant messaging
9. Large memory capacity, including micro SD memory expansion, which can store lots of pictures, video and games.
10. You can purchase software to help u/l and d/l pictures, ringtones, etc. directly from your computer.
11. Most thematic elements can be changed including Polyphonic ringers, wallpaper, screensavers, etc.

IMPROVEMENTS OVER THE V330:

1. The phone book has been reorganized so that there is now one entry for each name, and then a subdirectory for each of the person's different phone numbers.
2. The 5 way navigation key is improved, although still a bit difficult to use due to the flat keyboard.
3. The "call" and "hang-up" keys are now properly backlit so that it is possible to see them at night.
4. The hands-free voice dialing on the V330 required you to record a sample of the name. It would only dial by name. And usually, it would not understand you. The RAZR uses phonetics. It is activated with a button on the side of the phone, which brings up a voice menu. You tell it "name dial" or "digit dial" (or one of several other commands) and then you can dial by saying the name, or phone number. You say the name, then tell it to dial work, mobile or home. This is a great improvement, and works almost every time.
5. The RAZR front screen is not the typical little motorola blue/gray clock display. It is a proper color screen showing signal strength, battery strength, your main screen wallpaper and a clock.
6. It comes with USB cable so you can transfer songs, pictures, and ringtones. It will also charge directly from the USB cable.

MP3 PLAYER

The MP3 player seems to be an afterthought, and is not well thought out. First, it does not play enough audio formats, pretty much limiting you to MP3s with bit rates of 192K or less -- no variable or high bit rate MP3s. Having to mess with the audio formats gets me to the point of saying "Why bother?" To me, the main advantage is that I'd lose an MP3 player in about 10 minutes, and I lose my phone about once every 2 years. The MP3 player sounds good. It is java based rather than hardwired. Since it is software based, it takes some time to start up and the controls are not wonderful because it does not have dedicated control keys.


However, the main issue I have with the phone is not the MP3 player, but the things which are not included in the box. The phone only comes with a 128k micro sd memory card and does not come with the stereo headset. The memory card is mounted inside the phone on top of the battery, rather than in a slot on the side where it should be. This is only a minor inconvenience.

T-mobile wants $30 for the headset, and a lot more for an adequate 1 Gig memory card. (You can find the headset here on Amazon or on Ebay for a lot less, and memory should be around $20.) The headset does not connect into a standard jack, but plugs into the mini-usb port which doubles as the connection to the computer and charger. This means you cannot plug it into a home stereo, although you could probably connect it to a USB connector on a car stereo.

The motorola stereo headset is very cool in that it has a microphone built in and doubles as a wired headset for the phone. It sounds good, with nice high end and good, although not excellent, tonal balance.

CONCLUSION

Excellent cool looking flip phone which doubles as an adequate MP3 player, if you are willing to put up with the player's quirks and the cost to make it functional.

I just got this phone, but one of the things I needed was the Voice Recorder but T-Mobile cripples the Voice Notes function by not allowing you to save your voice recordings to the phone; inexplicably, you can only forward them to voicemail. YES, that's right -- you CANNOT save them to memory for review later, so the "Voice Notes" function is basically worthless. (The other lesser RAZR's from T-Mobile let you, and CIngular and Verizon's version do too.) But with the V3t, you're SOL on Voice Notes. Great decision T-Mobile -- I'm returning the phone and going with Verizon.

I don't understand the good reviews for this phone... The menus are a pain in the neck and look like they were designed by a second-grader, I tried unsuccesfully to add phone #s to the speed dial,an easy thing on most phones, after reading through the poorly written manual and trying everything, I just gave up ! Even the 1 megapixel camera sucks, I took better pics 5 years ago with a Nokia.
I went back to the store and exchanged it for the Samsung T629, within minutes I was putting #'s in speed dial and going through the easy to use menus, all on a high resolution screen. It felt like driving a Ferrari after having been on a go-kart.What a difference ! I will never buy a Motorola product again.

This is the best cellphone I've ever owned. Very happy with it. It has everything from camera for picture and video, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN messenger and ICQ. And of course good ol' fashioned text messaging/email. And don't forget MP3 player!

I was very excited to find out that not only could I easily drag and drop MP3's directly onto the phone from my PC but also pictures from PC. You can use any picture as your wallpaper and the picture will "stretch to fit" the screen.

True, the phone comes with a mono earpiece, but for listening to MP3's all you have to do is buy the stero headphone accessory which is easily available on accessory websites. (I got my V3t stereo headphones for $5.99!)

The phone's very easy to figure out. I rarely had to look at the owners manual to find out how to do something.

This is a fun, exciting phone and I highly recommend it.

The new BLACK T-Mobile Motorola V3T defines a "sexy" phone. I bought this phone specifically for the music player, yet the stylish slim design that the Motorola's have (unlike the formless Nokia bricks).

Pros:
- The blue-glowing Motorola symbol (that the V3's don't have)
- Very impressive signal strength and battery life (Only need to recharge 1-2 times a week)
- Black is way sweeter than the mainstream silver (although the Dragon tattoo is pretty nice)
- Setting Songs from your microSD as a ringtone (though it is a little tricky to figure out. You need to transfer the ringtone from your microSD to your phone's RAM via "Switch Storage Device")
- Cool MyFaves Icons to assign to each of your friends (MyFaves is where you pick your 5 favorite phone numbers and get all the calling for free). Most people call their top 5 people for 80%-90% of your minutes (prove it to yourself and check your bill). I usually have at least half of my 1000 minute plan left over now that I've switched to MyFaves.


Cons:
- Only comes with a 128 MB microSD card which holds about 35 songs. A 1GB microSD card costs about $25.
- Ships with mono headphone jack (not 2 ear headphones)
- Non-standard headphone jack. Uses mini-USB instead of normal earbud/iPod headphone jack.
- Can't find the mini-USB adapter so that I can use my earbuds

Conclusion:
Solid phone for 2007 if you're looking for a Music Player phone that still maintains a sleek design. Get T-Mobile's myFaves if you tend to call your tight-knit circle of friends a lot.

i love this phone. it is a great phone to take pictures or video. the built in mp3 rocks! and the sleek metal design is great! also t-mobile just makes it all the better with the my faves. if i didnt have that i would spend most of my minutes on just 5 people. all around great phone!

Motorola has definitely improved on their popular razr design. Having owned the previous generation razr for nearly two years, I can confidently say this one is far better. Lets start with the quality of the phone. The hinge is much smoother as you open the phone. The buttons are easier to push and respond to input better han the old phone. The speakerphone works great and the microphone in the earpiece is easier to hear. The digital audio player is great and plays mp3 media with excellent sound quality. I upgraded my phone with a 2G sandisk micro SD card so now it holds a ton of media. Next, it is aesthetically it is a very attractive phone and the finish appears to be durable. Finally, it is user friendly enough for the average consumer and the manual points out everything you'd expect and then some.

Basically this phone is like the V360. With fully customizable softkeys. The only gripe I have is the MP3 player software. I have a 2GB micro SD card. The phone works with it with no problem. But when I try to load more than 800MB worth of music in seperate folders, I think the MP3 software has problem generating the directory of songs. I tried reducing the number of mp3's to put in and it works fine. Also the mp3 player doesn't have fastword. All else works very well.

This is a great phone. I just got this phone this weekend and I love it. A lot more features although the menus are different and take some time to familiarise with. Don't rely on the manual. It is pretty much worthless as the paper is so thin; it literally falls apart in your hand. If you have a Razr before, it's quite easy to figure it out. I recently also bought a Motorola T305 Bluetooth Hands-Free Speaker which is great. Set Bluetooth on and every time I walk about 15 feet from my car it sync up with the speaker.

I got this phone for Christmas and was really excited because all my friends had one. Then i discovered how easily this phone freezes. It dropped off my couch on a carpeted floor and froze. When I got text messages it would say the text is from another person in my phone book, not the person who actually sent the text, It also sent random picture messages to people. Then it would turn off randomly, and one day I couldn't get it to turn back on and had to reset my phone!
It was really a pain, cool graphics though, I guess.

I upgraded to from the Nokia 6103 to this one and I'm loving it, much bigger screen, 8x zoom camera, texting it easier, with the nokia you had to hit ok like 4 times before it actually sent the message. Even those it was not listed on the box that it was suppose to come with a memory card mine did and I'm loving that I can store my ringtone and pictures on it so that heaven forbid anything should happen I can tranfer them with no problem. I'm addicted to the blockbreak game that came preloaded. The digital music player is another great feature for playing MP3s. Overall this is a A+ phone.

Edit: I just used the mini usb cord that came with my phone (also not listed to come with)and I'm VERY impressed with how easy it was to transfer songs, pictures and emails to my phone. I run window XP and instantly recognized the connection and after that it was as simple as going to the removable disk drive and dropping the files in the folder. Never again will I purchase another ringtone

As stated above my wife is sort of tech-challenged but loves pictures and loves to talk. Her old phone was a chore to say the least! It was bad and she wanted a new one but didn't know what to get. My contract was up and so I got a family plan deal from T-Mobile and got her one. She felt it was too delicate for a phone but as long as she could get and make calls it was fine. Our youngest daughter has since put on her "favorite" song -in hi-fi- as a ringer and a special song for those calling, pics to show who's calling, speed dials for frequent dials, and a wallpaer of Captain Jack Sparrow -Johnny Dep. As the saying goes; if Mama ain't happy - then nobody's happy... I'm pleased to report we're all very happy. :-D

It's not colorful enough. They should take a page from NOkia and Samsung. The color looks real dark. It looks like 64k but in fact it's listed at 260k colors. I thought they would have improved on this from the original Razr but I guess not.



I recently got this one from t-Mobile(returning the Blackberry Pearl) and i am more than happy. Very sleak and easy to use. Motorola has indeed taken care of so many problems with the older RAZR phones. Now the battery lasts longer, phone charges faster, has a 1.3 MP camera(works okay) and a Micro SD card slot for all the music you want.

The bluetooth works like a charm( i am using a Plantronics 510 headset). Its missing some of the features that my Nokia 6600 has, but i am okay with without them.

I would give it 5* but the user interface lets me down. For instance, to turn on Bluetooth, i have to navigate thru quite a lot.

Overall a good phone with decent features.

This phone is a big step up from the regular RAZR V3 as it has the same features as some of the newer phones on the market, but still has the same RAZR design. To all those people who like the RAZR, but would like to have a better camera and more features, this is a definite choice. As long as this phone is priced reasonably, I think it is better than any other T-Mobile branded phone right now. (excluding smartphones & pda's)