Motorola’s recent cell phone releases have won high marks. Moto’s latest handset, the V750 for Verizon Wireless, offers many of the same benefits we saw on its immediate predecessors–its design is user-friendly, the call quality is dependable and the feature is promising with gems like push to talk and EV-DO Rev.
The aforementioned external display measures a generous 1.6 inches and supports 65,000 colors. It shows all the information you need including the date, time, battery life, and signal strength. It also functions as a viewfinder for the camera and it shows photo caller ID. You can’t change the short backlighting time but a quick flick of the volume rocker will activate the screen again. If so desired, you can choose one of the included wallpaper choices as well.
Below the display are the external music controls. As expected you can activate the player and control your music without ever opening the phone. You will like that the keys have some texture and that you get a firm “push” feeling when you press a button. Above the display is the tiny camera lens. Unfortunately, there’s no flash.
Completing the exterior of the phone is a number of side-mounted controls. There’s a volume rocker and a push-to-talk (PTT) key on the left spine and a voice dialing button and a handset locking/speakerphone control on the right spine. The V750 uses a micro-USB port for charging; the port is located on the left spine below the PTT control. For audio, the 2.5mm headset jack is back on the right spine. We were quite impressed with the V750’s speakers, which span its full bottom end. Not only are they conveniently located but they also have impressive output. Yet, we were disappointed by the V750’s microSD card slot behind the battery cover.
The internal display measures 2.2 inches (320×240 pixels). Though we’re happy with its size, we were hoping for a higher color resolution of more than 65,000 hues. It’s perfectly bright and colorful, but it’s not as sharp as a phone of this caliber deserves. On the upside, Verizon Wireless has finally updated its convoluted menu interface. Everything is more or less in the same place, but the headings have been changed to more intuitive terms. For example, the music player, camera, and Web browser are now located in a “Multimedia” menu. You can change a few of the display’s options, including the backlighting time, the dialing font size, and the brightness.
The V750’s controls and keypad buttons are well-designed. They’re quite tactile, as they’re raised above the surface of the phone and covered in a rubbery material. The four-way toggle surrounds a central OK button. It can be set as a shortcut to four user-defined features. You’ll also find two soft keys, a clear key, a camera/camcorder shortcut, and the Talk and End power keys. The keypad buttons are equally spacious and easy to use. The numbers on the keys are large, but the corresponding letters are tiny and the backlighting is a tad dim.
The V750 has a 1,000-contact phone book with room in each entry for five phone numbers, two e-mail addresses, and notes. You can organize contacts into caller groups and pair them with a photo or one of 20 polyphonic ringtones or alert tones. There’s a separate phone book for PTT contacts that also allows you to set caller groups and you can designate three as “in case of emergency” numbers. Other essentials include a vibrate mode, call timers, text and multimedia messaging, call recoding, a calculator, a calendar, an alarm clock, a world clock, a notepad, a voice recorder, and a speakerphone. On the higher end, you’ll find Web-based e-mail and instant messaging, USB mass storage, PC syncing, speaker-independent voice commands, and full Bluetooth with a stereo profile.
A V750 would cost you around $99 with service.