vB Easy Archive - Motorola V195 review

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Motorola V195 review
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Posted by: sether

I purchased the Motorola V195 with T-Mobile for $19.99 with a 2-year contract. I can say with confidence that this is a great buy.

First impressions
I was skeptical about starting service with T-Mobile since their coverage maps indicate that I would only get "1 bar" of reception at my house, meaning calls indoors are supposed to be impossible and call quality would be poor even outdoors. I've heard about the T-Mobile coverage maps underestimating reception, but I'm willing to bet that this phone's RF is also responsible for the fact that I get 2-4 bars in most parts of my house, and I've found one spot where it gets 5 bars consistently. I just leave it there and use a bluetooth headset for calls at home.

The only phones I've owned before this one were CDMA Samsungs, and I was quite impressed by the upgrade. The V195 is much more customizable than any other phone I've owned or played around with -- there's a settings menu for nearly every feature on the phone.

Style and design
The V195 isn't the most sleek and stylish phone out there -- the monochrome external display and 24mm thickness aren't exactly "21st century." But for being a phone not designed for multimedia use, the screen is still relatively large with vibrant colors and good brightness (which is adjustable to lower settings to conserve battery life). The phone feels well-built and solid, and can probably handle being dropped a few times without any issues.

The only problems I have with the design are that flipping the phone open doesn't feel as solid as my old Samsungs did, and the uneven button sizes on the keypad (2, 5, 8, and 0 are all larger than the other numbers) which can take some time to get used to.

Functionality and performance
The V195 is not at all a multimedia phone and doesn't try to be (no camera, no EDGE/EGPRS, no memory card slot, etc.). It functions simply as a phone/messaging device quite well, however. Battery life is a phenomenal 8 hours talk time, 17.5 days standby. I haven't verified these numbers myself, but after charging it fully the first time, I was able to make 4 hours worth of calls, lots of messaging, and other tinkering over a 60 hour period and the battery still had at least half of a charge (pretty amazing compared to my previous phones which required a charge every night).

The only downside to the performance of the V195 is call quality. I can definitely hear an improvement over my old CDMA Samsungs with this phone, but when using a Motorola H500 Bluetooth headset I heard some static and callers on the other end also complained of static. Using just the handset alone or using a Plantronics wired headset, I get good call quality though and don't experience muffled voices like I did with my Samsungs on Sprint's network.

There is still a bit to be desired in call quality in my opinion, however.

Wrap-up
Pros:
-Phenomenal battery life
-Moderate/good voice quality while using handset alone
-Amazing reception in poor coverage areas
-Highly customizable
-Class 1 Bluetooth (100 meters!)
-Quad-band GSM
-Solid "feel" and nice build quality
-Easy-to-learn interface

Cons:
-Some static during calls
-Some menu grouping isn't entirely intuitive, such as having "Tools" under "Settings" (I don't think of the calculator application as a "setting")
-There's no way to show the date on the external display

Rating (out of 10)
Style/Design: 6
Interface: 9
Performance: 8
Overall: 7.5

Posted by: Cellgirl#1

I had this phone for a very short period of time. I had to return it due to issues with reception. There were a few roads that I travel on a daily basis that the V195 would drop the singnal and not pick it up again for a few minutes, where my V360 would drop to 1-2 bars but still have a signal. I liked the size of it and the battery life, but that was about it.

Posted by: sether

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cellgirl#1

I had this phone for a very short period of time. I had to return it due to issues with reception. There were a few roads that I travel on a daily basis that the V195 would drop the singnal and not pick it up again for a few minutes, where my V360 would drop to 1-2 bars but still have a signal. I liked the size of it and the battery life, but that was about it.

Interesting observations. I live in a metropolitan area so I suppose I'm not prone to these issues, but I'll keep this thread updated when I take a trip from Northern California to Southern California, as it'll be the best opportunity to test out reception.

Posted by: cdt9c1

Any problems with the earpiece volume level on the V195? I just got a Nokia 6103 and can barely hear people in a quiet room, nevermind on a noisy street. I'm considering exchanging it for this.

Thanks in advance!
Chris

Posted by: Cellgirl#1

Quote:

Originally Posted by cdt9c1

Any problems with the earpiece volume level on the V195? I just got a Nokia 6103 and can barely hear people in a quiet room, nevermind on a noisy street. I'm considering exchanging it for this.
Thanks in advance!
Chris

Both the speakerphone and the ear piece are loud enough. Alot louder then the 6103.

Posted by: Telyx

I'm nothing but happy with my v195. (Would be happier if the seem edits to remove the date line for the inner LCD worked, but that's minor.)

Posted by: cdt9c1

What other things can you do with a seem edit on the V195? Any recommendations on where/how to get it unlocked?

What real-world battery performance are people seeing?

It sounds like this is the phone for me.

Chris

Posted by: tupdegrove

Starting with full charge, had phone on stand-by using only a few minutes of talk time, didn't open the phone much, and turned the phone off for 9 hours at night and the phone still has 1/2 the charge left after 8 days. Don't know how much longer it will go. I'll report back.

Posted by: sether

Quote:

Originally Posted by cdt9c1

What real-world battery performance are people seeing?

I talk on the V195 about 1 hour every day on average, and use text messaging on it constantly (which drains the battery because the LCD is lit the entire time), and I only recharge it once every 2-3 days when it reaches 66% charge. So I assume the specifications are correct, but I haven't yet had an 8-hour long conversation to test the talk time specs. It definitely lasts a lot longer than any other phone I've used.

Posted by: Telyx

As far as seem edits go, I haven't done much besides try to remove/hide the carrier name and date lines (didn't work) and edit the carrier name (technically not a seem edit but a text table edit--I used OpEdit for that, and it worked), and I changed the outer LCD to display my name instead of "T-Mobile" when the phone is open. (On the inner screen, mine says T-Mo instead of T-Mobile; if I roam on Cingular, it will say Cin, and if I'm in NPI Wireless territory in northern MI, it will say NPI. Just trying to make more of my wallpaper show.)

The "Custom Color Styles" section here http://xlr8.us/hofo/ has a zip file of a color scheme that can be edited in XVI32 and uploaded to the phone. I made the bottom menu bar transparent, but couldn't get any of the screen text to go transparent. (Curses! Foiled again!) But the clear bottom bar does a lot for wallpaper visibility. I also made a template for wallpapers, with the signal strength, battery indicator, and ring style icons, the carrier name and date, and the menu bar and text, to help me with positioning and cropping pictures for wallpaper. I use Irfanview (freeware) to do my cropping and resizing.

The wiki in the Motorola section here has a link to a seem chart. Many of those edits apply to phones with features the v195 doesn't have (camera, etc.), but some -may- apply to the v195 as well. If you do try any mods, make sure you back up your original seem files FIRST, and save any edited seem files in a folder separate from the originals. (I have folders for "Original seems" and "Edited seems.")

If you've been a T-Mobile customer in good standing for at least 90 days, they will give you an unlock code if you request one. Otherwise, you could check the HowardForums Marketplace section for companies that unlock phones.

Posted by: cdt9c1

I went ahead and switched to the V195. So far I love it. Good call volume and clarity.

Compared to the Nokia 6103 I prefer the menu system. The MOTO scrolls to the bottom of the options then stops, whereas the Nokia looped and it was difficult to know that you had gone through all possible options. Speaking of menus, most can be reordered to your liking. The V195 is highly customizable in terms of shortcuts, home screen keys, ring styles. I prefer the iTAP dictionary over the Nokia's as well (it predicts the word for example so you often only need to type half of it). I like being able to switch ring styles without even opening the phone. Also, while boring, the outside display is highly legible and easily read at a distance. Another point in this random comparo is I wasn't able to set the backlight timeout on the Nokia (maybe I missed it) but on the MOTO I have it all the way up to 2 minutes. No more wondering where you were in typing a text when distracted from the task for more than 15 seconds at night. Oh, the calculator is much better too, with the up/down/left/right controls dedicated to common math functions (add, substract, multiply, divide) whereas on the Nokia one had to go into a menu and scroll down to select each such command. Voice dialing has been pretty solid too.

Cons: can't find a text message counter.
Edit - nevermind... #MSG# to the rescue!

Chris