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Don't toy phones have strings attached?
Pros
Stylish, small, lightweight
Cons
Everything else
Recommended it?
No
The Bottom Line:
Unreliable. Unsuitable for any use. Avoid at all costs.
I purchased one of these phones for my wife last Christmas. Living where I do and as much driving as my wife and I do it made perfect sense for she and I both to have cellphones. My Sony cell (they quit the biz, unfortunately) has performed so well that I got a phone from the same service provider and got a split minute plan.
The phone seemed to be perfect upon cursory examination. It was digital only - no dual mode capability. Since we are rarely out of our coverage area that wasn't an issue. Besides, the unit was cute, which scores big points with my wife. The case folds up so that it is about the size of a compact. When a call comes in, all you have to do to answer it is open the phone again. You've seen the communicators on Star Trek surely - the resemblence cannot be coincidental. Not thinking anyone would sell a useless phone and having fantastic luck with my previous cell, I purchased it.
So for the past 6 months my wife has been using this phone. In hindsight, a couple of plastic cups and a roll of string would have been more reliable.
First, the battery died after only two weeks. Why did it die? I have no idea. Neither did the techs. We all chalked it up as a defective battery, popped a new one in and off I went. I wasn't overly concerned at this point because sometimes machines are bad right out of the box. It happens. No big deal; just replace it and move on.
Shortly after, this phone decided that it didn't like its service area and refused to operate very well at the outer edges of our coverage. Its battery life also sank into the single digits (mere hours.) I decided that this was probably from being tucked into a purse so I set a clip onto the side of her purse so the unit wouldn't be buried amid keys and gumwrappers. It didn't help, and I got a car charger to extend the operating time.
Then the unit wigged out completely and started spitting out "C" code whenever the unit was powered on. I probably could have learned a lot by writing all the source code down. (What the heck is source code doing in the phone in the first place?) But I was not happy that the phone was on the fritz again only a couple of months later. So I took it and the charger to the store and got it swapped out for an identical unit. Note that this makes phone 2 and battery 3.
Another couple of months go by. My wife and I decide to take a 3 day trip and visit a park with my kids. We take her phone and make it the primary unit since she has a car charger and I do not. We start making calls to the motels at our destination to get a room. That is, we _tried_ to. The Audiovox, that stylish unit that so grabbed our fancy, was broken yet again! Showing a full charge and max signal strength the little machine could not even hold onto a connection for more than 3 seconds. We made a dozen calls trying to call ahead and reserve a room with and without the charger connected. We ended up using my backup phone to schedule the trip. We tried to get the unit to operate in several places at several times. It failed the same way, each and every time.
Thank God she wasn't broke down on the side of the road and trying to call for help!!
Tuesday came around and I brought the worthless hunk of plastic back to the vendor and replaced it with a Nokia. I should have gotten one to start with. The vendor (Primeco) bent over backwards to help me and I have no quarrel with them whatsoever. The service provider was wonderful - it was the PHONE that suck started jet engines.
In summary the Audiovox 3500 is the most unreliable and worthless piece of junk I've ever purchased. It is to my everlasting shame that I inflicted this device upon my loving spouse. Should she have had an emergency and tried to reach me she would not have been able to do so. What good is a phone that only works for a month or two at a time? Who would want a cellphone that needs to be replaced six or seven times a year? Would you want to rely on such a phone when your car breaks down?!
I hope nobody wants such a thing. And that is why I'm writing this article to warn consumers just how flimsy the unit really is. If you want a Star Trek communicator, go buy a plastic model in the toy store. It should work almost as well and reliably as the Audiovox 3500, and battery life will be much greater.
The phone seemed to be perfect upon cursory examination. It was digital only - no dual mode capability. Since we are rarely out of our coverage area that wasn't an issue. Besides, the unit was cute, which scores big points with my wife. The case folds up so that it is about the size of a compact. When a call comes in, all you have to do to answer it is open the phone again. You've seen the communicators on Star Trek surely - the resemblence cannot be coincidental. Not thinking anyone would sell a useless phone and having fantastic luck with my previous cell, I purchased it.
So for the past 6 months my wife has been using this phone. In hindsight, a couple of plastic cups and a roll of string would have been more reliable.
First, the battery died after only two weeks. Why did it die? I have no idea. Neither did the techs. We all chalked it up as a defective battery, popped a new one in and off I went. I wasn't overly concerned at this point because sometimes machines are bad right out of the box. It happens. No big deal; just replace it and move on.
Shortly after, this phone decided that it didn't like its service area and refused to operate very well at the outer edges of our coverage. Its battery life also sank into the single digits (mere hours.) I decided that this was probably from being tucked into a purse so I set a clip onto the side of her purse so the unit wouldn't be buried amid keys and gumwrappers. It didn't help, and I got a car charger to extend the operating time.
Then the unit wigged out completely and started spitting out "C" code whenever the unit was powered on. I probably could have learned a lot by writing all the source code down. (What the heck is source code doing in the phone in the first place?) But I was not happy that the phone was on the fritz again only a couple of months later. So I took it and the charger to the store and got it swapped out for an identical unit. Note that this makes phone 2 and battery 3.
Another couple of months go by. My wife and I decide to take a 3 day trip and visit a park with my kids. We take her phone and make it the primary unit since she has a car charger and I do not. We start making calls to the motels at our destination to get a room. That is, we _tried_ to. The Audiovox, that stylish unit that so grabbed our fancy, was broken yet again! Showing a full charge and max signal strength the little machine could not even hold onto a connection for more than 3 seconds. We made a dozen calls trying to call ahead and reserve a room with and without the charger connected. We ended up using my backup phone to schedule the trip. We tried to get the unit to operate in several places at several times. It failed the same way, each and every time.
Thank God she wasn't broke down on the side of the road and trying to call for help!!
Tuesday came around and I brought the worthless hunk of plastic back to the vendor and replaced it with a Nokia. I should have gotten one to start with. The vendor (Primeco) bent over backwards to help me and I have no quarrel with them whatsoever. The service provider was wonderful - it was the PHONE that suck started jet engines.
In summary the Audiovox 3500 is the most unreliable and worthless piece of junk I've ever purchased. It is to my everlasting shame that I inflicted this device upon my loving spouse. Should she have had an emergency and tried to reach me she would not have been able to do so. What good is a phone that only works for a month or two at a time? Who would want a cellphone that needs to be replaced six or seven times a year? Would you want to rely on such a phone when your car breaks down?!
I hope nobody wants such a thing. And that is why I'm writing this article to warn consumers just how flimsy the unit really is. If you want a Star Trek communicator, go buy a plastic model in the toy store. It should work almost as well and reliably as the Audiovox 3500, and battery life will be much greater.
