Wondering about cell phones

[JediJeb]

I have an old Nokia 5165 which has been and still is a great phone after 5 years of hard use and abuse. Now to get any good service I am going to have to switch to a GSM phone and started looking at all the reviewes and user comments on every model I can find and I am hearing things like terrible battery life, dropped calls, phone rebooting randomly, poor design, falls apart easily, not user friendly and many more negative responses. And this is for just about every make and model out there, at least for any of the newer ones.

Im just wondering if by trying to cram so many functions into phones these days are the manufacturers cutting corners on the important things like durability and depentability. Anyone else out there have opinions on what is good and bad in the market today. I would love to hear your praises and critizims of what you have so I can better chose my next phone.

 

[Arcanedeath]

I'm in the same boat as you except I don't need to upgrade yet, I have one of Motorlas orginal digital startac's, I got it factory referb'd for only $40 about 5 years ago and it's still going strong... I have several friends that have gone through 3-5 phones each in the time I've had my startac and for the most part they don't really have anything good to say about them. About the only feature I miss on my startac is being able to say the persons name and have the phone call them.

 

[tiap]

You have a lot of choices and your carrier makes the biggest difference. We were convinced to go with cingular recently and am very happy with the service. Since they combined with at&t I have not had a drop or dead zone yet. We started with Motorola v551 and switched to smartphones mpx220. If you need the windows features it is great but the v551 was much better both for ring loudness and speakerphone.

 

[JediJeb]

My Nokia is digital, but it's the old TDMA and not GSM and eventually Cingular is going to switch totally to GSM. I have had to replace a couple antennas which the dog chewed off but other than that it has worked flawlessly for 5 years. I was really wanting one of those Motorolla V3 RAZR phones until I saw the price, cheapest I have found so far is $300 on ebay for used one. Reviews for it were mixed but mostly good, but most phones I have seen below $200 were not too good.

Anyone else have any experience to share?

 

[dakels]

Treo 650!!!

but in general, yes I agree. As the market broadens you're always going to get different types of quality. + companies dont make alot of money on the phones, they want the money for the phone plan. So they are wiling to rebadge some junk and give it to you for free in exchange for a cell phone plan.

 

[JediJeb]

Originally posted by: tiap
You have a lot of choices and your carrier makes the biggest difference. We were convinced to go with cingular recently and am very happy with the service. Since they combined with at&t I have not had a drop or dead zone yet. We started with Motorola v551 and switched to smartphones mpx220. If you need the windows features it is great but the v551 was much better both for ring loudness and speakerphone.

I have seen a mix uf reviews on those two phones also, I am really considering the V551 , but many people seem to have problems with battery life on it and the mpx220. Some have experienced having to recharge daily with only maybe an hour of talk time. How has yours performed so far?

 

[tiap]

The v551 was free for us (new customers) and is gsm triband I think, and is functionally better than the razor. Cingularis completely gsm at least in my area.

The v551 is a great phone and as I said very loud. Battery life is good charge every couple of daysfor both. Both these phones are popular enough there are a lot of software hacks for them.

 

[farmercal]

I have two V551s, one for my son and one for me and the wife. The wife and I only use the phone to talk to our daughter (in another state, also with cingular), and when we are on a long drive as well as to keep in touch with our son here at home. We like these phones just fine, although the battery life does go pretty fast but I have heard that about a lot of the phones out there. That seems to be the number one complaint.

 

[zerocool84]

yea tell me aobut it
ive had my nokia 8290 for like 4 years and it still works perfect and i got a Motorola T722i its bootleg. it takes me like 10 min to find the right spot to even be able to charge it. now i can only talk on it at about 45 min at a time then it goes dead. i wish i could use my old fone without having to pay to unlock it which is almost the same as buying a new fone. i dont care about camera's and shit. i just want a fone i can talk on without having to worry about braking these cheapo plastic crap fones. my brother also has a Motorola phone and his battery life sux. i dont think im ever going to get a Motorola fone again. i think imma just stay with Nokia

 

[JediJeb]

The Cingluar towers here still support old digital plus the GSM mainly because there are so many people out there like me with old phones still, but if you sign a new contract you have to upgrade. To upgrade it is gonna cost me $140 for a v551 with a 2 year contract, but if I can find one to buy outright for maybe $200 or less that is unlocked I would rather have that and no contract, just in case I need to move or something down the road.

I agree that so many of them now have too many options, noone really uses just a plain old phone anymore.

I like Nokia for its durability, at least on older models, but my friend has a newer one that isn't holding up well. I also hate how they are trying really weird things with their keypads, putting keys in a circle or some other crazy pattern and a new one that doesnt even have keys at all, just a rotating wheel to select the number you want to enter.

Guess they could go back to making the old brick phones in a GSM format lol