Motorola W490 / W510 / W5
Average Ratings
I like this Phone
I got this phone because my other one took a crap. I haven't had any problems with I just want a new one. I will agree with another about the back of the phone it is quit cheap feeling and looking.
Wonderful Phone
While the phone does have some drawbacks, ie: 5mb of memory w/o Micro Sd, 20 second backlight and no self-portrait feature, it is overall a great phone. It has excellent call clarity with Crystal-Talk, the MP3 player works great. You don't need Phone Tools to load it, either. It has an amazing battery life, too. I can go 2-3 days without charging even using Bluetooth and the MP3 player ( known battery killers). The browser works pretty quick with Edge. I am very pleased with and think anyone would be.
Nice phone - One of Tmobiles best imo...
Very nice motorola phone. I only purchase mainly Motorola or Nokia. This is definatley one of my favorite Motorola phones out. Phone is sleek and sexy.
Pros:
Great battery life
Inside screen is nice and clear
EDGE
smaller than razr
Not too expensive
Reception is great in florida
Cons:
Outside screen is not the best
Keypad is sort of flat but its ok
I'd recommend this phone or Nokia 6263 anyday for T-Mobile.
W510: advanced technology but complicated
Lots of great features: sleek design, advanced technology, small and thin in size, real quality speakerphone, color screen inside and outside, lots of options, etc.
However, no instruction manual comes in the box (Motorola says they want to save trees)but you can download the 124 page manual from Motorola. I find there are so many things to read to understand the complicated menus and it drove me crazy and frustrated.
If you like a challenge, go for it.
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YogiBeary
Excellent Phone
I came from the Samsung T439 which was plagued by some funcionality and volume issues, and just recently got the W490, and could not be happier.
Pros:
1. Great reception. This phone is very good at picking up and hanging on to a signal.
2. Very nice looking phone. I have the black version and it is a very slender and classy looking phone. It is very comfortable to hold being as it is not as wide as the Razr phone.
3. Excellent sound quality. Calls sound very clear and for once there is plenty of volume with the crystal talk technology boosting the sound in noisy environments. Speakerphone is also loud enough with no distortion.
4. The speaker independent voice dialing works very well with plenty of options of things you can do with your voice.
5. Displays are nice. I like how you can see the outer display cearly in sunlight, and also how the time stays on when the color screen goes off(20 seconds is the limit on both screens but it seems to be plenty of time). The internal display is very bright and clear and looks very sharp.
5. Lastly, the battery life seems to be pretty good as well. I really only charge it every 3rd day or so.
6. Very customizable. In fine Motorola tradition, I love how you can set up the navigation keys, soft keys, and smart key on the side to do whatever you want. Verizon should take a lesson here and stop sabotaging their phones.
Cons:
These are very minor gripes and did not affect my rating of this phone.
1. Internal display is a bit on the small side, but quickly got used to it.
2. Downloaded mp3 tones and music ringtones sound low on this phone, but the regular ringers are more than loud enough.
3. It would have been nice if you could talk on the speakerphone with the flip closed. It's curious that it was left out as it was included on the original Razr.
Overall, I love this phone and will be sticking with it until it's upgrade time.
It's alright, but with a couple of kinks.
I just got my Motorola W490 2 days ago, & within the first 24 hrs. I had concerns. 1st one was: On the home screen, BEFORE you would make any changes, the left soft key reads "shortcuts 'shortcuts', if you click on music player, nothing happens. But I'm able to get to my music player in other ways. Apparently, that's with all of them. We tried it with other Moto W490's in the store, & the same thing happened. 2nd concern was: That if you reorganize your icons in the home screen area, it's all fine with the exception of the soft left key. It originally says "shortcuts", if you change it to something else, then decide you want to go back to having it say shortcuts again, you'll have to do a master reset. Becuz' shortcuts is not one of the options on the list to choose from. I found that out by having to do so. Overall, the phone is as thin as a RAZR, narrow as the KRAZR, & it comes in black! That's why I got it. I went from a RAZR (had it for all long time)to a RIZR, then to this one 2 days ago. I'm keeping the RIZR for a backup!
Nice
I picked this phone up for my son but wanted to check it out before I gave it to him. I use the KRZR K1. You can actually read the front display outside or bright light on the W490. This phone is like the little brother compared the the K1 but in some ways is more user friendly. I really liked the Email app. It worked very nice. The battery life seems to be a little better as well. Motorola has put a few things in different places. The speaker phone is not an active soft key, you get mute instead while in a call but it is in the menu on the left soft key. The calculator is in a different menu as well so you may need to look around inside to find where things are. You do however have the option to change your soft key settings to other functions witch is nice. FYI if you change the shortcut tab you will not be able to put it back unless you reset the phone. The keypad could have been a little better but it gets the job done.
All in all a nice rounded phone that works well.
Great Phone
I just got this phone yesterday and played around with it for a couple of hours and I actually really like it. The only down side to this phone is if you text a lot or text really fast you out text the program. It doesn't skip words or anything but you'll need to give it a couple of seconds to catch up to what you've just typed. The design is really good, it fits nicely into your pocket and doesn't get in the way of anything. To my surprise when i was messing with the phone you can actually control the music that you're listening to with the phone closed, even though it looks like there are no external controls. I would recommend this phone, it is fairly cheap and is a really good phone. It has excellent features, the camera is pretty good, not the best but i would say pretty good for a phone. The service is pretty much the same as all my other phones. It's got good service where I'm at. I live in St. George, Utah and T-mobile is pretty good out here. I would totally recommend this phone it's got nice features, call quality is AWESOME, a lot better than my old Motorola V360. For the price of this phone it is a great bargain. MP3, 1.3 megapixle Camera, thin and lightweight, average height and width.
W510 - unlocked (very good)
This review does not cover multimedia functions, camera functions, or texting. I have no interest in them. Since I live in the mountain region of northeast Tennessee(Johnson City), the ability to make calls is what is important to me. I purchased this phone(unlocked) directly from the MOTO store as a replacement for my Nokia 6010. I have had the phone for 3 weeks. To date I have been very happy with the phone.
Pros.
Great signal on AT&T(I can even get signal in my office at work which I could not get on my old phone)
Voice quality is good
Good battery life (5-7 days)
Alarm settings (I can create multiple alarm settings and pick the one I need)
Solid feeling flip phone
Cons
Styles(called profiles on nokia) could be better. The W510 has 6 styles Loud, vibe, silent and three others. On my old nokia, when I changed profiles, I could also set an expiration time. I could change to the silent profile for example, and select a time for the phone to go back to the normal profile. This feature is not available on the W510, but it should be. To date, only compliant so far.
Overall, very good phone.
Slick
Great phone! Trim and thin but a nice heft.
Pros: Long battery life, excellent bright and readable screen, decent reception (depends mostly on the carrier), huge phonebook with no-learn voice dialing, MP3 ringtones, tons of useful apps like voice memo and calculator, camera, video and too many features to count.
Cons: Huge, complex and not at all intuitive menu system requires considerble effort to set up the phone the way you want it. No external speakerphone key, and no option to remap the speakerphone to a those keys. Smallish keypad requires careful input. Too easy to accidently start the camera (easily fixed by remapping the keys). Slow camera startup. Menus can be a tad slow.
Other Thoughts: The biggest problem with this phone is its complexity - which is to be expected with the number of features this phone has. If you have the time to work through all the menus - some of which are different from what's in the manual - you can set this phone up just the way you like it.
