Motorola W755 (4 GB) Cell Phone

As part of Verion's "new every two" program, I decided to upgrade from my previous Motorola RAZR v3m, which was a fine phone in its own right. While the RAZR performed very well during its duty cycle, I was always disappointed in the way Verizon handicapped this phone's Bluetooth capabilities, specifically OBEX file transfers and the UI. After spending months hacking it to get it the way I wanted it to work, the RAZR was still a bit of a chore to get images on and off of. So, when my contract came up for renewal, I immediately started shopping alternative providers, that is until I found the W755 amongst Verizon's free with contract phones.

A coworker had recently gotten this phone and I had some time to play with it before making a commitment. I was amazed by how easy it was to get photos onto and off of it using Bluetooth. It also seemed to have a decent camera and call features (voice recognition in particular is a strong suit that this phone has over the V3M). In addition, the UI is streamlined and well-thought out, in stark contrast to Verizon's previous efforts.

So, I made the leap and purchased two of these phones - one in purple for my wife, and the other in dark slate for myself. This cost me a grand total of $20.

What's in the box:

The W755 comes with a wall charger, manual, battery and cover, but not much else. It's clear that Moto is starting to get cheap with the accessories - my last Moto phone came with a very nice wall charger, whereas this one has a very generic and cheap-looking charger that takes twice as long to apply a full charge. The manual is actually quite good and covers all of the major functions well.

Physical attributes:

This phone has a pretty nice design, with good heft and a solid feeling. Partially rubber-textured on the outside, with nice chrome trim and a sturdy feeling base, I feel very comfortable using the phone. I don't care for how the lid just sort of sits against the base when closed, I wish it had more of a feeling of being latched. It's very easy to move the lid side to side out of alignment with the base. But other than that minor gripe, it's fairly sturdy.

Buttons are well-located on the body of the device instead of the lid, and are easy to manipulate without having to take the handset away from your ear. Along the sides are volume control and voice recorder/recognition controls, as well as a speakerphone control.

The keypad is well thought out, and buttons are slightly raised instead of completely flat as on other Moto products. This makes for a great tactile response when pressing and allows for easy entry even with my big fingers. I struggled with the RAZR, always having to hit the buttons with the side of my thumb - not so with the W755.

The primary screen is a little on the small side when compared to other phones - I wish they would have extended it just a few millimeters in each direction, so as to fill out the display bezel better, but it is quite legible and bright enough to see even in full sun. The exterior screen is small, but very sharp and contains plenty of useful information when the phone is not in use. Also, this phone features a number of touch sensitive controls on the exterior display that are quite handy for playing music and disabling/enabling bluetooth.

My major gripes with the physical design of the phone are related to the door covers that obscure the USB and headphone jacks - these feel quite flimsy and I'm sure they'll break off in no time. Although I like the fact that they're covered to keep pocket lint out, they can be a pain to uncover and are only attached by the flimsiest of tethers. I can see these things getting ripped off in no time.

Another major gripe is the location of the MicroSD (transflash) slot - which is buried beneath the battery. It's a real chore to get back there when you need to. Of course, you can always just use bluetooth to handle your file transfers, so it's not like you'll need to constantly remove it as you would on the old v3m.

As far as size goes, this thing isn't quite as slim as my RAZR, but then, it's really just an extra few millimeters thick compared to a RAZR with a snap-on case (which was required to keep the RAZR's fragile aluminum casing from getting scratched). It passes the pocket test for me - easily slipping into a pocket without being noticeable.

Voice quality:

All-in-all the call quality, signal strength and range is as good as any other Verizon phone that I've used. I've read a few negative reviews in regard to these attributes, but most of them are from amateur reviewers - all of the pros seem to compliment this phone's call quality and range, and I agree with them.

It's quite easy to switch to speakerphone within a call, and the phone does a good job of filtering out background noise. I've had no problem with dropped calls, nor do I find that my voice echoes as it does on many other cell phones I've used in the past.

Another major plus for me on this phone is the ability to vibrate and ring at the same time. The afore-mentioned RAZR didn't have a vibrate ring function. You could hack it to do vibrate THEN ring, but it was a chore and the UI didn't fully support the function. Thankfully, vibrate AND ring works right out of the box with this phone.

Audio quality:

The media player aspects of this phone are quite good, considering that this phone is available for free with contract. It's no iPod, but it does make for a decent media player when used with Windows Media Player. Personally, I use a Mac, so I'd love to see some iTunes sync capability - but it's not a biggy. If I want to load up some MP3s, it's a simply matter of firing up Windows on my Mac and importing a few tunes into WMP. The phone syncs easily, and detailed instructions for doing so are included in the manual.

Battery life:

So far, so good - it's still a brand new battery, so its long-term capacity has yet to be tested. In my use over the past few days, I've not needed to charge it at all. It's rated at 4+ hours of talk time and several days of standby, and I have no reason to doubt those claims.

Computer connectivity:

Like most Moto phones, there is a robust set of tools available on the Internet that allow you to transfer data, including photos, videos, music and ringtones to and from this phone. Although it works with Motorola's Phone Tools, support is still pretty limited since this is a new phone. Other tools that are traditionally used to perform hacks also work with this phone. I was able to transfer some of my MP3s to work as ringtones with a few Google searches and a mini-USB cable.

For those of you that have a Mac, you'll be interested to hear that with a quick plug-in for iSync, this phone can be easily synced with iCal and Address Book with very little fuss, all over Bluetooth. In fact, I can easily do file transfers with the built in Bluetooth utilities in OS X. Although I wouldn't call it a competitor to the iPhone, it functions quite well for a non-Smart phone. Although I haven't had a need to try it, I've also noted that it can be "tethered" for use as a modem.

Accessories:

There are a multitude of car chargers, wall chargers, cases and snap-on covers that are available for this phone. I've had no trouble locating them both locally and on the Internet. But since the outer casing is already rubberized, I can't imagine any additional protection is all that necessary.

Conclusion:

All in all, so far this has been my favorite Verizon phone. I wish it were a little slimmer, and I do have a few nits to pick with Moto over things like port covers and the size of the screen, but once I got over comparing the physical attributes to my RAZR, I found this phone to be a worthy upgrade. Especially considering the wealth of connectivity options. If you are new to Verizon, the connectivity options might seem to be the norm, but for those of us that are hardened veterans of crippled Verizon UIs and phone hacking, this one is a breath of fresh air.

Without a doubt, this one scores a solid 8 out of 10, with 10 being the absolute perfect phone. It's got a couple of strikes against it, but if you're in the market for a Verizon phone, this is worth more than just a passing glance.