Feature packed phone
Written: Oct 27 '02
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Pros: Small, lots of features, GPRS
Cons: Fixed antenna, GSM only
The Bottom Line: Very nice phone; I doubt anybody would be unhappy with it unless you wanted something really tiny or needed analog / TDMA.
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| stevex's Full Review: Motorola Timeport 280 |
I've had a few phones over the years.. the last one was a Motorola TimePort as well but one that flipped open. It's hard to believe these two phones are from the same company, they're so different.
The biggest difference is features. The previous one was a P8767, and while it was a decent phone, it had very few features. I've never really wanted a lot of features in a cell phone - as long as I can talk to people on it, it's doing it's job. But my company gave me the Timeport 280 and now, well, I'm getting into it.
Here are some of the features I find interesting:
- IrDA. It's got an infrared port on it that you can use to talk to a computer without having to actually connect it physically. This would be good if you had a laptop that also had IrDA; most desktops don't have it.
- USB synchronization. You can dump the address book from your computer into the phone through a USB cable. This is fast, and it works well - and it's a whole lot better than typing hundreds contacts in.
- Good SMS messaging support. I'm signed up for a few incoming message notifications, and the phone handles them pretty well. I get a louder unique beep when a message first arrives, and then quick beeps about every half hour letting me know there are messages waiting.
- Some built-in toys: Three games, and a calculator.
- Something they call iTAP that makes it a lot less painful using the little phone keyboard to send messages. When you get an SMS message from someone (MSN Messenger lets you send messages to a contact's cell phone if the person isn't at their computer, for example) you can reply to it on the phone. When typing a message, you just type out the word you want to say and iTAP tries to complete it for you - so if you wanted to write "Hello" you'd tap 4 2 and hit Select because the cursor would be on the "Hello" button. Words that aren't in the dictionary you have to type in the old fashioned way.
- High resolution display (128x100), well lit. You can set the text mode to small and get a fair bit of text on the screen - good for reading those SMS news alerts.
- Voice dialing. It's a novelty, sure, but when you take the time to set it up it's impressive. :)
The phone is small, lightweight, and feels sturdy. Sound quality is okay, but being GSM only I think the coverage is slightly less than the dual or tri mode phones; I haven't travelled with it yet so I don't know how it will do outside town. This depends on the area you're in.
My one little beef is the fixed antenna stub. I know this is common to a lot of phones but I carry my phone in my front pocket and the phone and antenna is just big enough to poke a hole in my pocket.
Overall a nice phone - it's not going to knock your socks off but you're probably not going to miss any features either.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): $99
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Epinions.com ID:
stevex
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Member: Steve Tibbett
Reviews written: 14
Trusted by: 7 members
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