I picked up one of these sleek phones last year to match my rise to fame with the launch of ProductWiki. While Wired hasn't been knocking on my door for an interview yet, I have gotten some glances these last few months when I do my slow-motion-don't-look-at-the-camera-bad-ass motion answering my mom's calls reminding me about the groceries.
The stars danced in my eyes when I first got the phone getting hit upside the head with the flashiness, leaving behind my Saved By The Bell era monstrosity. Style wasn't the only thing that impressed me about the phone as there are a host of useful features that do make a difference. Things like
- personalized ring tones
- cool background images
- choosing different colours for menu text
- support for animated gifs!
Then there are some other cool bonuses like a 1.3MP camera, video capture with decent resolution, bluetooth/USB connectivity, and web browsing. The camera became one of the most useful features of the phone as I was able to immortalize the precious mome
nts in my life (like getting 29th in the world in
Geometry Wars).
My life became quite hectic at the beginning of 2006 with promoting and working on the site, as well as taking a full 5-courses for my last term of University. The ability to sync contacts, notes and calendar items from Outlook saved me from missing more than a few dates.
All was not well in Motorola's promotional paradise, however. From the beginning there were little signals and signs that made me raise my eyebrow. Things like
not being able to change the ring tone silently , or not being able to charge the phone through USB when the battery was completely dead and I consider myself to be a pretty hygenic person, but you'd have to be in a microchip clean room to prevent the wok-like screen from accumulating a layer of grease.
The latest problem that has caused me to shift from
love it to not, is a problem with the mouth-piece receiver. The bottom part of the phone by the mouth-piece is starting to get a bit loose, causing something inside to jiggle just a little bit. If I talk on the phone from a certain angle, namely while lying comfortably on my back while negotiating a book deal, I have to hold the bottom part of the phone together with my fingers to prevent it from sounding like I'm inside of an underground tunnel.
Still, like the
Good Light, Bad Light girl from
Seinfeld the phone definitely has it's positive aspects: it's just that lately the lighting has been unfavourable. Maybe when I get to modding this thing and really personalizing it (hello
purple splashscreen!) we'll have ourselves a nice second honeymoon. For now we're sleeping on different beds.
OmarApril 11, 2006