vB Easy Archive - WTD: Excellent performance quad band phone

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WTD: Excellent performance quad band phone
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Posted by: schuster

Looking for something for domestic use/travel. After trials and tribulations with so many phones that just haven't worked out, I've compiled a list of what features I'm looking for.

1. Quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900) at a minimum.

2. Excellent audio and RF performance.

3. LOUD ringer that can be heard from inside a pocket in a noisy mall.

4. Transflective (i.e. mirrored) main display that can be easily read in bright, direct sunlight. Think of the mirrored LCD displays on Nokia smartphones ... that's the idea.

5. Excellent battery life. By that I mean, say, 5-7 days of real world, mixed signal quality standby on a single charge. (This pretty much excludes most of the smartphones with their hefty CPU's and puny batteries ... as well as newer Nokia non-starters like the 6270/613x etc that get horrible real user reviews for actual standby time). If the reviewers say "it's OK but I have to charge it every day" ... I'm outa there.

6. Relative freedom from fatal firmware bugs.

Web browser, music or video playback, camera, bluetooth, memory expansion, WiFi, PDA functions, etc. etc .... don't care. In fact, if they consume more power and can't be turned off ... I'd just as soon that the phone not have those features at all.

Any suggestions?

Posted by: Telyx

Everything but the display requirement points pretty well at an unlocked Motorola V195 or (T-Mobile "MyFaves") V195s. The display isn't great outdoors unless you cup your hand over it (then it's average), but it is quad-band, the speaker and earpiece have nice volume, and they claim 21 days of standby or 7 hours of talk time. I've never seen the battery meter on mine go below full even with a bunch of talking and WAP web access/PDA tethering.

Nothing but a phone with Bluetooth (which can be turned off).

Posted by: schuster

Quote:

Originally Posted by Telyx

Everything but the display requirement points pretty well at an unlocked Motorola V195 or (T-Mobile "MyFaves") V195s. The display isn't great outdoors unless you cup your hand over it (then it's average), but it is quad-band, the speaker and earpiece have nice volume, and they claim 21 days of standby or 7 hours of talk time. I've never seen the battery meter on mine go below full even with a bunch of talking and WAP web access/PDA tethering.

Nothing but a phone with Bluetooth (which can be turned off).

Thanks for the suggestion ... I'm pretty sure the display washes out in the sun. further, most of the user reviews of the V19x series (e.g. see Phonescoop) are uniformly terrible.

The Sony Z710i looks promising though. Mixed reports on whether the superb spec'ed battery life is actually true. They say both inner and outer displays can be easily read in direct sunlight.

Posted by: vw_ev

Stay away from the v195! its a radiation monster... i believe it holds the record right now for highest SAR of any phone on the market.

The z710i should be decent. the w810i is also a classic good phone with quad band and good RF