I love this phone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've had prepaid cell for a couple of years. After one REALLY, really bad experience with a contract cell phone I vowed never again, it will always be prepaid for me and I've been very happy with it that way; my bills average ten bucks a month when I buy minutes good for a whole year. In Florida anyway cell phones are the wild, wild west, even my attorney coworkers have a lot of bad stories about what the cell phone providers in this area tried to do to even them over contract phones and there is absolutely no consumer protection over them in this state. Like I said...pre paid for me, I will never sign a contract again at least not in Florida.

My tracfone has been an excellent device, the service has always been excellent even when I visited the other side of the USA and was roaming around the wilds of new mexico my tracfone never let me down once. Tracfone's only problem is that because they must "customize" the firmware of the phones that operate on their networks, their selection of phones is pitiful, and, at least as of this writing you can't even get downloadable ringers for a tracfone.

I started looking around at other prepaid providers, most are a ripoff and obviously designed for those unable to get a regular contract cell because of bad credit, etc. Only t-mobile had rates comparable to tracfone, and, the advantage of new state of the art phones. The other big advantage to the t-mobile prepaid is they don't do anything weird to the prepaid phones and if you decide to go with a contract later you won't be forced to change phones.

Most attractive features:
What attracted me most to this phone was four features: 1)Bluetooth connectivity in addition to the mini usb dataport on the side of the phone 2) Ability to use the phone as a mp3 player and use (my own) mp3 clips as ringtones 3) Available software to backup your phone book, sync it with microsoft outlook and manipulate your own songs and images for use as wallpaper and ring tones 4) Transflash/micro sd expandable memory (currently max size 512meg). This phone quite simply was everything that I wanted and the control layout vaguely reminds me of my beloved old v60i (that was a great phone and tracfone should have gotten the later models of that one but never did).

Other attractive features:
1-Big bright and clear color screen
2-Camera stills and video
3-Ability to function as a mp3 player
4-web browser support if your provider has those functions
5-aol chat support (comes with the phone)
6-love the pinball game on it, it's a blast
7-speakerphone capability
8-Both phone book and calendar functions from outlook
9-small size
10-External black and white screen that displays the time, signal strength and message text/voice indicators
11-ability to associate ringtones with phone book entries
12-ability to associate picture files with phone book entries (so you can have your honey's picture pop up on the screen when they call you)
13-It's a flip phone--no dangers of keys being hit and the screen is protected when not in use.
14-A fairly large amount of onboard memory for phone book, games, pictures, etc.
15-Wallpaper stills and animated screen savers
16-supposedly a multi-system phone can be used in other countries besides the USA.

What was in the box:
With my T-Mobile phone I got a usb data cable and a handsfree headset, 64meg transflash card with SD adapter and a charger. This phone doesn't have a separate plug for the power to plug into, it's all done through the usb miniplug on the side of the phone. Surprise, new chargers for all--LOL. This phone uses the same datacable and chargers that the hotter looking v3 Razr uses (from what I've read you don't want a Razr). Motorola provides a one year warranty on the phone.

What I think about it:
I've had the phone about four days, have made about 5 calls on it, have had no problems with not being heard or being able to hear. My house, for some reason is in something of a dead spot, even my tracfone shows only one bar inside the house, probably because it's an old 1950's block and rebar house that is blocking the signal somewhat. It's funny at the end of the street I get a full strength signal so it could also have something to do with the heavy tree cover in my neighborhood. I so far haven't had any reception problems in the house even with only one bar of reception showing. I really love the capability to sync with outlook in windows. I have two pda's and now this phone and it's nice to have the same phone numbers available everyplace and not to have to remember which device I put that new number in that I don't have anyplace else!

At lot of the cameras on these phones are just junk. I've used the still camera several times and even in very low light the pictures are just great even from a couple of inches away. I've only used the bluetooth briefly but it seemed to be fine, I have a motorola bluetooth headset that I'll have to try pairing with it when I get a chance, been too busy to sit and figure that out.

The phonebook is cool and it's kind of neat to be able to apply custom ring tones to a specific phone book entry as well as put a photo with it. I have my phonebook setup with custom ringers so I know who's calling without looking and in a few cases I have the person's picture attached to the entry. This is great for people like me that can't remember names but can remember faces. I might be a touch worried about this function if the phone was stolen however, the thief not only got a phone number but he also possibly got a street address and worse yet...a photo of all my friends. If you use this heavily you may want to get into the habit of locking you phone via the security settings to prevent folks from being able to access your data freely.

Transflash drive: You might think this is an extra useless widget but it's really not, you can store quite a lot of pictures on a 512Meg transflash card and think about what a 512Meg mp3 player will run you even these days and this one has replaceable memory. The camera files use up a lot of space on the phone and with a utility on the phone you can move your pictures from phone memory to the transflash card. Anything from pictures to videos to mp3's to ringers can be moved to the transflash card to keep your phone memory free for applications(read games mostly) and your phone book. Circuit city was just running a sale on 128 meg transflash for 20.00 with a 15.00 mail in rebate, and 30 bucks for a 256 card. 512 cards are new and still in the 60-80.00 range if you want one, I don't think they come any bigger.......... at least not yet. These memory cards are smaller than a fingernail and plug into a slot revealed by opening the battery door.

Battery life:
I can't really tell you yet what battery life is going to be like I've had it plugged into the computer so much putting files on it that it has been charging all the time I'm doing that. It's been off the charger about 2 days now and the battery bar still shows full. My tracfone needed a charge every three days, I think this will be better.

Accessories available:
My v60i had toys like external chargers that would charge the phone and an extra battery, this phone also has accessories like that; you can buy them on ebay. The motorola phone tools are worth the price, you can get it on ebay (be sure it's version 4 at least) or download from the site linked from motorola.com. The full retail version is $29.00 and supposedly offers free future updates where as other versions may not be so enabled. My phone came with a usb data cable (and yeah they change it a bit so it doesn't work right with a stock usb cable with a mini connector or at least it didn't with the stock cable I had). There are also beginning to be faceplates for it but so far I've only seen a variety on ebay. Extra batteries are also something you can get reasonably on ebay; like all this stuff someplace like circuit city will charge you premium prices for an extra battery. Because I'm on my way out of town next week I had to go let myself be overcharged for a DC car adapter, I paid $30.00 for mine, they're much, much cheaper on ebay. As I said, it's the same chargers as for the motorola v3 Razr.

To close: The only thing I really don't care for about this phone versus others I've had is the completely internal antenna, i.e. no more high performance antenna upgrades or flashing antennas etc. So far that's not a problem at least in town, the real test will be what it can do in a campground in the middle of nowhere where most cell phones don't work. I plan to take both my tracfone and this phone along with me to mississippi this year; last year my tracfone worked just fine there but I have no idea what Katrina may have done to cell phone towers in the area. Love the phone, think it's absolutely perfect at least for me.

My provider:
If you're curious about the provider it's t-mobile to go, they offer 1000 minutes for a one hundred dollar fee and minutes are good for one year. Card denominations are 25.00 and 50.00 and minutes are good for 90 days but you can also just use a credit card to add minutes without buying a card at walmart or wherever. After you have put one hundred bucks on your account (apparently you don't have to all at once either) all future cash additions get 15% more free (and minutes last a year with no more purchases). With the tracfone text messages are free incoming and cost a third of a unit for outgoing. T-mobile is free for incoming and a flat ten cents for outgoing text messages. Prepaid customers can't get the dataplan to take advantage of the webbrowser, which isn't a big issue for me because the only thing I'd want to use it for would be to get ringtones and I can do that via datacable from my desktop computer. Chat is ten cents for each outgoing chat. So far I really love this phone, the book that comes with it is a little lacking but if you're a gadget geek like I am you'll have no problem figuring out what to do.

update: Was looking for a way to charge the phone at work, hopefully without laying money out for another ac charger. We have windows pcs at work with usb ports on the front....hmmmm maybe just a usb cable would be the solution. Like I said, not ALL stock usb cables seem to provide power or data connectivity...but I don't care--I'm just looking for a battery charger at work. I've found that the heavy clear usb cables that tend to come with usb card readers seem to be able to provide power to the phone properly. You'll know if your cable is providing power because the battery icon will flash when it's charging and if you open the phone it will say charging on the screen. I tried another retractable usb cable which, for whatever reason, doesn't work to provide power to the phone (too bad that would have been small and handy). I've got two or three card readers and so far all the cables function to charge the phone so there you go...a cheap charge system if you just have your laptop or have usb ports (that you're allowed to use) on your pc at work or wherever. To my surprise, even without any motorola software or drivers I can access the transflash drive on my phone---which means the transflash drive is being recognized by the mass storage drivers built into windows xp (not sure about 98). So there you have one more function this phone can serve, it can act like a usb pen drive. If you need to take a file home with you just pop it on the transflash drive (at least as long as it's no bigger than 512meg which is currently the biggest transflash card available). Still love it as much as the day I bought it. I think I will be looking into a screen protector, when you hold it up to your face to talk you get makeup and skin oils all over it and long term that's probably not really good for it.

update on battery life: I took the phone on vacation to a place I had no AC and the car just wasn't convenient for a charger. I left late Tuesday night had the phone on the charger till just before I left. Saturday evening I had one bar left on my battery charge bar. I turned it off saturday night because I didn't want it completely dead in case I needed to make a call; so it looks like around 5 days on a charge for this battery...which is great!

update: still love the phone as much as the day I got it. No bad experiences with it at all so far. I got my screen protector off ebay and a second battery with external charger so now I've got all the stuff I really need, haven't bought any faceplates yet, I like the blue and silver original faceplate. Have had the usual number of scares where I thought I lost it (for whatever reason I try to lose new cell phones at least three or four times) but it turned up. The case for these are defined as "small" and I lucked into a sale at a local store where I got a nice leather horizontal case with a magnetic clasp. I was a little worried about a magnetic clasp with the transflash card but so far haven't had any problems with wiped out or corrupted files or anything so I guess it's far enough away that it isn't causing any issue.

update: Transflash cards are now up to 1 gig, 80 bucks in the store, around 60 on ebay. Haven't had the chance to try one in the phone yet, but, even though the phone came out before they were available I'm betting it will work fine. I've never owned a SD device that could not use the current larger cards even though it wasn't tested with them because they weren't out yet; i.e. my camera says max 256 but it works perfectly with 1 gig cards I've tried with it.

update: I upgraded my home pc to xp 64 bit professional, at least so far there are no 64 bit hardware drivers for this phone. The bluetooth gets around that but the bluetooth dongle I got, while it works under 64 bit, doesn't come with any "easy to use" software. I'm hoping that there will be a new version of the phone tools that works properly under 64 bit soon, the software installs but since there are no proper drivers for the phone it doesn't install all the stuff for the correct phone. 64 bit is slowly being properly supported perhaps it will be soon. I've been drooling over the new sidekick but I'm just not sure I'm ready for that kind of outlay yet even though most of what I've been doing with the phone is text messaging.