Larry Garfield examines Motorola's much-anticipated V710 CDMA phone. Does it live up to expectations, or does the feature set fall short of the price tag?
One of the most anticipated phones of this year, Motorola's V710 offers a sleek, feature-rich camera phone. Unfortunately, the phone that is actually available isn't a true Motorola V710, but a V710 minus a few features the carrier didn't like. For the asking price, that proves to be disappointing.
 | The Motorola V710 is an expensive phone with not enough features
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Exterior
Motorola's V710 is a very long yet slender handset, measuring 94 x 48 x 23 mm and a heavy 127 grams. Despite the weight it has a good feel in the hand, and the silver plastic and smoke-black highlights give it an attractive sci-fi look. The external 98 x 67 pixel 12-bit color display is deeply sunken behind the smooth smoke-black front, still visible but aiding the sci-fi appearance.
The internal screen is a sharp 176 x 220 pixel display capable of 262,000 colors. Colors are bright but appear somewhat washed out unless the contrast is set lower. The plastic keypad has very limited key travel and jiggles independently of the phone, giving it a cheap feel while oddly designed buttons, with the outer keys extending underneath the shrunken center keys for no apparent reason, make the phone harder to dial than necessary. Typical Send and End keys are included, along with Left and Right keys, and Clear, Camera, and Menu buttons.
On the left side of the phone are small volume rocker and a smaller speakerphone button, while the right side includes another camera button and a voice dial button. The top of the phone includes a rather long extending antenna as well as covered headphone jack and a memory card slot for TransFlash, currently the least-widely used flash card format on the market and developed by SanDisk specifically at Motorola's request. Why Motorola couldn't use a more available standard is a mystery. A camera lens sits in a raised hump on the top half of the phone, very near the hinge point.
The V710 ships with a Motorola HS810 Bluetooth headset in the box, a very welcome addition. Essentially identical to the HS850 save for using Bluetooth 1.1, it shares the one included power adapter with the V710.
Ergonomics
Despite its weight, the V710 has a good feel in the hand due to its slender design. Buttons, however, are not as well designed, with a generally cheap feel. The side buttons are very small, making them difficult to find blind. The backlighting on the keys is a gentle white with green and red for Send and End, respectively, but is very poorly positioned. The outer edges of the keypad do not get enough light, making them even harder to read than if they didn't get any light at all. The small round directional pad is reasonably well designed with nubs in just the right place, and each direction doubles as a shortcut on the main screen to an application shown on the screen.
Features
The V710 is an 800 / 1900 MHz CDMA phone running on Verizon Wireless's network, with analog fallback. Data connectivity is via conventional 1xRTT. As with many recent phones it foregoes infrared in favor of Bluetooth 1.1 for PAN connectivity, but sadly the Bluetooth support is not complete. It includes the necessary profiles for connecting to headsets and for use as a wireless modem, but does not include the OBEX profile for transferring data (such as pictures the user has taken) to a handheld or PC. That forces the user to use the phone's data connection to MMS or email pictures and other content to themselves if they want to get it off the phone (possibly incurring a service fee).
Verizon Wireless claims that it has "contractual agreements with content providers of [its] Get It Now service", which conflict with the "open nature of Bluetooth". That is, in order to prevent users from downloading a game from the network and then sending it to a friend via Bluetooth, they prevent the user from sending anything via Bluetooth at all. That's a major strike against the phone (or more specifically, Verizon Wireless) for crippling the Bluetooth implementation, regardless of the claimed reason.
Audio support is strong, including speaker-independent voice recognition, a speakerphone mode, polyphonic ringtones, and MP3 playback. A silent vibrating alert is also available. Imaging support includes a 1.2 megapixel camera capable of taking both still images up to 4x zoom and 15-second video clips as well as customizable backgrounds, wallpapers, and photo caller ID. Text input is via multi-tap or a T9 clone dubbed iTAP, and the phone supports both text and picture messages as well as EMS.
The phone does include a small PIM suite with 500-entry address book, but missing is an e-mail client. Motorola designed the phone to include a POP3- and IMAP4-capable e-mail client, but Verizon Wireless chose to remove that feature as well. Instead, users must download (for a repeating monthly fee) a POP-only mail client through the Get It Now service. The OpenWave web browser is included and additional 3rd party application support is provided via BREW. The phone ships with a roomy 10 MB of RAM for images audio files, and applications.
Performance
Audio quality on the V710 was crystal clear in both normal and speakerphone mode, but somewhat quiet even on maximum volume. Signal reception was always strong. Image quality from the included camera, however, is somewhat poor with both still images and videos appearing faded.
Overall system responsiveness was good, although the menu system is somewhat confusing. The phone seems designed specifically for the included HS810 Bluetooth headset, as response time between the two is extremely fast and cleanly implemented.
The removable 835 mAh Lithium Ion battery is rated for 180 minutes talk time or 165 hours standby. In practice, battery life did not prove an issue in testing.
Availability
The Motorola V710 is as of this writing available exclusively through Verizon Wireless for $249.99 USD with two year contract, $299.99 USD with one year contract, or $349.99 without service agreement.
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