Motorola RAZR V3m Cell Phone

I bought this phone from eBay as kind of a project, as I was tired of my Trep 755p. I'd done everything I could & hacked it out as much as I could & wanted a new toy to play with. I'd had a RAZR before with Alltel & loved it, so I figured I'd give the Sprint flavr a try.

Pros...

GPS!!!
I admit I have little to no experience with cell-phone GPS, but I found the GPS feature on this phone to be simply excellent. While initially a bit slow to load, once loaded it provides TALKING(how cool is that on a cell phone?!) turn by turn directions, along with moving 3D maps. It can also display traffic, the maps move as you move, and it can display your current location. Great little function for wanderers like me who tend to roam & get lost. It functions like all the dedicated GPS units I've seen. The only downside is that it's signal dependent & costs $10 a month with Sprint.

Not a whole lot of proprietary carrier crap.
Most phones come laden with crapware, but this one is pretty good about that. There's a few game & app demos, but that's about it.

Call quality.
There is a bit of hissing at times, but I found the call quality to be superb.

LOUD speakerphone.
Jeez, at top volume it almost hurts my ears. This is great cause one of my biggest gripes with my last phone was that the speakerphone was pointless cause it was so low, even with the volume boosting app I had.

Signal strength.
I live in a dead zone & so far I havent dropped service once. My old phone used to get one, maybe two bars at BEST, and right now I have 3 bars on this phone.

JAVA support.
This was a biggie for me, since I'm a heavy intarweb user, and being able to install Opera Mini was a necessity.

Animated wallpapers.
Nothing really huge, but cool nonetheless.

Music player.
A tad slow to load, but it has a very simple interface & great sound quality. Even without headphones, I can put on a playlist(which I recommend creating on your PC rather than on the phone, since it's painfully slow on the phone) and blast it through the speaker & it still sounds great.

Keyboard lights sensor.
This phone has a light sensor which shuts off the keyboard lights if there is enough ambient light for the user to see the keyboard unaided. Very nice little feature! Good for battery life.

Small, compact size.
One of the biggest attractions of the whole RAZR line is the form factor, and the v3m keeps it up with the same dimensions as the original RAZR. There are thousands of cases and accessories to choose from as well. Slips easily into my purse and my pockets, and nobody can deny the RAZR ia a very attractive phone.

Very hackable!
Not that this matters to 99% of people who are going to read this review, but one of the biggest reasons I like Motos so much is because of how easily hackable they are. It's very easy to get into the system & tweak it to your heart's content.

Cons...

Slow Interface.
I blame this on Sprint, not Moto. They 'Sprintified' the v3m's menus, and thusly it runs a bit slower than other Motos I've played with. If you're getting an excessive lag or the phone is freezing, try doing a software update followed by a factory reset. First, BACKUP YOUR DATA. If you're a n00b, it's best to go to a sprint store for this or else have a geek help you. You'll need your MSL code and your MSID code. First, go into the settings menu under Phone Info and scroll down to 'Update phone SW'. Once you click that it will either download and install an update or tell you your phone is up to date. Then, after 'swriting down your MSID(you will need this later or else your phone won't work anymore) and MSL, enter ##MTN# on the keypad and select 'reset' when the menu comes up. This will completely wipe your phone of ALL data including the programming that allows it to make calls, so you will have to reprogram your phone number into it. To do this, enter ##000000#(only use the MSL code you got from sprint, not zeroes), and select edit. Enter your phone number where it says MDN, and the MSID # you got from sprint where it says MSID. Then the phone will reset & you'll be good to go. I did this and noticed a VAST improvement with the lags & freezing. My phone used to be agonizingly slow, to the point where I was considering returning it, but now it's great.

Bad battery life.
Initially very distressing, as all the other Motos I've had have had EXCELLENT battery life, but I found a workaround for this as well. Turns out the EV-DO sucks the battery dry, along with roaming. Set yoru roaming option to Sprint only, and hit ##DATA# on the keypad & scroll down to EVDO. Scroll down to option 2 and instead of EVDO, select CDMA. Hit BACK 3 times and your phone will reset if you did it correctly. Now, you will only have 1xRTT data, but vastly improved battery life. I did this on mine and to be honest, the speed difference was not THAT noticeable. Unless you're streaming music 24/7 you won't notice a difference. I probably will still buy a new batt just because this one is rather old.

Memory card is insanely difficult to remove.
Not only do you have to take the battery out to remove the card, the card slot has no spring mechanism & you have to wrestle with it to get the card out. Ugh.

Screen is kind of low-res.
By no means horrible, butthey could've put a tad better of a screen on this phone. And, the outer LCD sucks. It's tiny & washed out-looking. But it is an external color display, so oh well.

No bluetooth file transfers!
Damn you, Sprint. You suck. Thanks to you disabling this feature, I now have to transfer my tones & pics via USB rather than just BT'ing them. Boo-urns.

Only ONE connector for both charger & headphones.
I bought my phone off ebay & thusly have to purchase special RAZR headphones cause there isn't a headphone jack. No biggie, but kind of a PITA.

Slow text messaging.
Even with all my h4x0r1z1ng, the text interface is still a bit slow. Which sucks cause I text A LOT. The phone insists on showing 'message sent' popups, and tends to freeze for 20 secs or so while sending texts.

No brightness control.
Thank Sprint for this one too. This is a big battery saver, but for some reason they removed the option to turn brightness down.

All in all, this is an excellent phone. Even as an uber-nerd, I like it a lot.