Motorola W385 Cell Phone Review - Making/Receiving Calls
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Mark Brezinski Published on December 28, 2007 Comment on this |
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Dialing Speed (10.15)
Say what you will about cheap phones: thin software means a fast pick-up-and-dial time. The W385 was able to place a call in 1.97 seconds, which is absurdly fast, especially for a flip phone. We didn't run into any lag at all when dialing. The numbers are big enough to eliminate mistakes, but not so big your thumb has to do a two-minute waltz to input the digits.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Motorola W385 | 1.97 | 10.15 |
| Motorola Krzr K1m | 4.4 | 4.55 |
| Motorola Razr V3m | 4.9 | 4.08 |
| Samsung Juke | 2.64 | 7.58 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 2.96 | 6.76 |
| Samsung Blast | 3.36 | 5.95 |
Talk and End Buttons (5.0)
The talk and end buttons on this phone are good buttons. They provide solid tactile feedback so you'll know when you've hit them. They also have decent travel, so you won't find yourself sinking your thumbs into the phone. In terms of finding them by touch navigation, they aren't so great. There really isn't much to go on as far as texture or location. They're located directly above the keypad, and since your thumb memory has that down pat, it shouldn't be too hard to just aim a bit above the 1 or 3 keys. Even so, depending on someone's subconscious isn't something we award points for, which brings these otherwise great keys down to mediocrity.
Call Management (5.5)
The W385's call management program is a bit hard to find. On the home screen you can press the Send key to bring it up. If it's available elsewhere on the phone, it's very well hidden. Calls are listed in small, abbreviated entries consisting of the number, time, and date. There is also a small symbol noting if the call was incoming, outgoing, or missed; there isn't a way to sort by this criteria. The only additional information you can bring up by clicking an entry is the duration of the call. There are also both call and data timers which can be reset. This makes it easy to keep track of monthly allotments of minutes.
When you first get a call, there are two options: Quiet and Ignore. The first time you see this you might get slightly flustered wondering how to pick up, then realize that the Send key is the obvious choice -- we know we did. Once you've done this, the soft keys change to Mute and Options. Options will bring you to a list of typical shortcuts that will allow you to reach virtually any other application from the call, which we were impressed to see. Call waiting was confusing, however, as there was no on-screen reminder of who you were talking to. This means you'll need the person on the other end to verify you've switched between calls correctly.
Startup to Call (4.08)
The W385 took 24.53 seconds to boot up and make a phone call. This was a bit slower than we would've expected. The time was mainly spent waiting for the home screen to pop up. Though this phone isn't as slow as the Razr or Krzr phones, other, similarly simple phones like the Juke trounced it solidly in startup time. Even the Chocolate, which is a bit more sophisticated put up better numbers.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| Motorola W385 | 24.53 | 4.08 |
| Motorola Krzr K1m | 32.72 | 3.06 |
| Motorola Razr V3m | 35.7 | 2.80 |
| Samsung Juke | 11.9 | 8.40 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 22.37 | 4.47 |
| Samsung Blast | 21.48 | 4.66 |
Ring Volume (8.58)
The W385 is capable of outputting 85.8 decibels, which is about average for most cell phones. Probably 70% of the phones we've reviewed have had some denomination of 85 decibels. This should be loud enough to alert you if it's in a pocket or a purse/bag kept close by.
We test ring volume by holding the phone two inches away from a sound pressure meter and cycling through all available ringtones, marking the highest decibel output.
| Cell Phone | Volume (decibels) | Score |
| Motorola W385 | 85.8 | 8.58 |
| Motorola Krzr K1m | 88 | 8.80 |
| Motorola Razr V3m | 88 | 8.80 |
| Samsung Juke | 85.8 | 8.58 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 85.4 | 8.54 |
| Samsung Blast | 85.5 | 8.55 |
Ringtone Customizability (0.0)
Unless you're hacking the phone, you can't use your own music as ringtones.
Non Audio Alerts (7.0)
The non-audio alerts on the phone are average as a whole. The vibrate is stronger than average, and tends to last longer each pulse. The on-screen reminders, however, aren't very eye-catching. There's no animation and the screen doesn't blink, though it will turn on if it was previously off. We wish the visual part of the reminder were a bit flashier.
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