Value for Money. Review on Motorola C650

Had been looking for a phone for a long time. My first phone was 3310 which I dropped in a bucket of water. The second phone was 3315 which got wet in the recent rains and the buttons stopped working.

I wanted a phone with a good resolution camera. Was contemplating Nokia 7610 which comes with a 1 megapixel camera but it was prohibitively expensive for me. So I started looking for a phone which would be economical and at the same time give me the functionality of a camera.

I went for Motorola C650 because of the following reasons:

1. It was the most economical phone in its category.

   
   




2. It had a camera.

   
   




3. It had a data cable.

   
   




4. It had a hands free kit.

   
   

all in one package.

The results of the camera have definitely been encouraging. There are three resolutions available in the phone:

1. MMS(160x120)

   
   




2. Medium (320x240)

   
   




3. High (640x480)

   
   

The quality of the photographs is generally better than other phone cameras that I have seen till now in the same category. The camera has the option of changing the lighting conditions and resolutions while taking the photograph. Its a cute small phone with 2 color combinations:

1. Black and silver (I went for this)

   
   




2. Silver and silver

   
   

Its a bean shaped phone; flat and very compact. It has a 5 way key in the middle that projects out like a joystick. The buttons are comfortable to use but takes some amount of getting used to if you have been a nokia user.

It has GPRS, MMS, and other facilities. So if you have GPRS on your phone all that you need to do is connect it to your computer with the data cable provided with the phone and start surfing. Apart from the 5-way key (joystick) and 3x4 number matrix keyboard it has 4 more keys. 2 shortcut keys which can be set according to your preference. There are two buttons call receive and call disconnect button.

And by the way I absolutely missed the master key on the top and around the 5-way key. This is used to activate context sensitive menus in the phone and also used for locking and unlocking the phone.

One interesting feature that this motorola has is the availability of shortcut keys. Just press the master key and one of the keys on 3x4 matrix. So you can set up to 9 shortcuts 1 to 9. Masterkey and * would lock unlock the phone.

The menu basically has 9 features:

1. Multimedia

It basically has 3 elements photographs, sounds, and movie clips. The phone has 2 mb of shared memory and with all photographs deleted it offers a free space of about 1.3 mb on the phone for usage. But it does not make much of a difference because even with the highest resolution you can take up to 40 photographs without any space constraints.

The data cable makes it really convenient to transfer photographs easily to the comp from where it can then be shared like any other digital content. A note on connecting the phone to the computer though. The connection will sustain as long as the phone remains in range. As the phone looses the range , it will get disconnected from the computer.

So don't get worried if your phone does not connect to the computer. In all probabilities the phone is not getting proper signal and hence is not able to activate the built in modem. The ringtones are polyphonic and like Sony Erricson T610, you can compose your own polyphonic tunes in it. I haven't explored much of this though.

1. Settings

Nothing great except for a more detailed battery meter which is virtually useless as it shows the meter in steps of 2x3 only. So does not matter if you look at the desktop screen or this meter. I don't know why they did this.

1. Office tools

Nice calculator, callender, and alarm clock. It also provides the facility to synchronize all this with the computer.

So you can make changes on your computer and then update the relevant sections by synchronization.

1. Phone Book

   
   




2. Recent Calls/ Call Register

   
   




3. Messages

   
   

All kinds that you can think of ..... ;) MMS, text messages, etc.

Okkkkay.... wait a second here now. Another interesting thing. The number of inbox for plain text messages is limited to the capacity of your sim card (which is usually 8 to 10 messages). So keep download them too to your pc.

Can get irritating at times. However the MMS memory is not limited and it uses the shared memory available on the phone. There are no memory expansion slots available in the phone. But then what else do you expect in 9k.

1. Games and Applications

The games are nice. There are 2 of them:

1. Basketball

   
   




2. Barber

   
   

Never used features 8 and 9 as I am using Cellone services and BSNL does not offer GPRS services as of now.

Hey that reminds me .... gotta write another review about BSNL Cellone services.... 8. Webaccess/Web Browser

1. Instant Messaging Negatives:

These are the features that I miss most or I hate most being present or absent in this phone.

a) Phone Search

Hehehehe.... No phonebook search. It however provides something called a Speed-dial number. Probably made for people who have this knack of remembering numbers. You have scroll for a long time before you find your number. In case anybody finds the search functionality .... do let me know. I will be really gratetful.

b) The Screen

Looks great in the dark and artificial light but move into the sunlight and it does not matter if you have the screen on this phone or not. It is really irritating while taking photographs as you just can't see what you are photographing till you get into the dark or download them to your PC. Overall, I think its just a really great phone. I am really satisfied with it.

But would go for a pocket pc phone next. So wait for that review.....