Motorola W385 Cell Phone Review - Organizer

Mark Brezinski
Published on December 28, 2007 Comment on this

Synchronization Ease of Use (0.0)
The W385 doesn't support synchronization out of the box.

Alerts (3.0)
Alerts aren't the best at alerting you. You can choose to flip on vibration or choose a ringtone. Once it's time to actually alert you, however, the phone

Over the Air PIM Sync (0.0)
N/A: doesn't support synchronization.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (5.66)
It took 17.66 seconds to open the phone and enter in a contact. This time is a bit faster than average, but not but not a lot. To enter in a number, you'll first have to flip open the phone. From here, the quickest route is to type in the number first, then hit the left soft key, which will attempt to save the number. From here

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Motorola W385	17.66	5.66
Motorola Krzr K1m	21.74	4.60
Motorola Razr V3m	27.9	3.58
Samsung Juke	14.57	6.86
LG Chocolate VX8550	20.5	4.88
Samsung Blast	19.45	5.14

Looking/Sorting/Search (5.0)

There are only two options for sorting: by first name or by last name. There is also a search bar at the bottom, and you can use it to search for either the first or last name of a contact. There aren't any other sorting options.

Fields (2.5)

There are twelve fields to choose from when creating contacts. You can enter in a first name and last name, which is more than the single name field available on most phones. You can also dole out multiple numbers, an email address, and a custom picture and ringtone. Groups can also be assigned, but it's only used as a mailing list and contacts can't be filtered by them. There are no fields for physical addresses.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (3.2)
There are 95 speed dial slots available to assign a contact to, which is a good number. Also, while the phone doesn't support voice tags, it does have good voice command software; it recognized four of our five test contacts, and for the fifth it returned a list of three contacts, the first of which was our test contact.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (8.87)
We were able to add a calendar item in about 11.28 seconds. This is a good time. Making a calendar items is easy. Starting the calendar application requires first opening the phone and hit down on the d-pad (the calendar shortcut). Once its open, you can browse to the appropriate date and use the left soft key to add a new entry. A fifteen-minute reminder is automatically added.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Motorola W385	11.28	8.87
Motorola Krzr K1m	9.58	10.44
Motorola Razr V3m	22.6	4.42
Samsung Juke	13.72	7.29
LG Chocolate VX8550	6.48	15.43
Samsung Blast	26.46	3.78

Calendar Views (3.33)

There are three views to the calendar. The month view consists of a six-week grid of rounded squares. Each square is a date: Sundays are red, empty days are black, and days with events are purple. Highlighting a day will show how many events it holds, but it won't give you any information about those events. Clicking on a day will zoom to day view.

Week view is only available via the options menu. To the untrained eye, it will look a lot like month view, but that's only because it contains a nearly identical grid of blunt, lavender rectangles. The days of the week are lined across the top, underneath which are the corresponding dates. The left side consists of hours. Events are blocked out in purple, but highlighting them won't reveal additional information.

Day view is a list of abbreviated entries. The only information they display is their start time and title. Clicking on an entry will bring up a more detailed view.

Fields (6.0)

Calendar entries on the W385 will have to be fairly basic. You are provided with fields for title, start/end time/date, time zone, recurrence, and an alarm. Recurrence can be set to daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. The alert can have a custom ring tone and vibrate, and can be set to one of eight presets, ranging from on time to two days beforehand. Time zone is a nice addition that many phones don't offer. More advanced fields, such as categories or invitations aren't supported.

ToDo/Tasks

Adding ToDo/Task (0.0)
Since the W385 can't create tasks, it will receive a poor score in this category.

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (0.0)
N/A: Can't create tasks.

Fields (0.0)
N/A: Can't create tasks.

Notes

Adding Notes (2.95)
We were able to jot down a simple note ("Lunch 12pm tomorrow") in 16.93 seconds, which is not a good result. There are various reasons for this slow time, but the main one is navigation. It's fairly time consuming to slog through the W385's menus, especially when the main menu won't let you select its tabs with a shortcut. This means you need to open the phone (1), then the main menu (2), hit right twice to get to the tools tab (4), hit 2 for tools (5), 6 for Notes (6), and press the left soft key to open up a blank one (7). Before you can even begin to type it's already seven steps. Also, you'll have to have done some preparation to get this time: word prediction's default setting is off, so you'll have to make a pit stop in settings to toggle it on. Unfortunately, one default you can't change is the text input method; it will always be multitap. Therefore, once you've opened the note, you'll have to tack on two additional presses to change from multitap to iTap (T9), bringing the step count to a grotesque nine. This is a fairly arduous process, and we wouldn't recommend anyone even try without a map and a Sherpa.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
Motorola W385	16.93	2.95
Motorola Krzr K1m	N/A	0.0
Motorola Razr V3m	N/A	0.0
Samsung Juke	16	3.13
LG Chocolate VX8550	13.73	3.64
Samsung Blast	11.69	4.28

Note Interface (1.0)
Notes are literally just one field. There are no options available other than changing the text entry mode. Notes are saved in the order they were written. There are no organization or search options available. We're not sure the interface could be more simple and still function.

Note Formatting (0.0)
There are no options for formatting notes.

Voice Memo (3.0)
Squirreled away under the Get It Now tab, just inside the My Sounds folder, you'll find the voice notes application. The interface contains a single button: record/stop. Despite its simple design, voice notes are not capped at the traditional 60 seconds, which is more than we expected. Once you've recorded a note, it gets dumped in the folder, below the program. You can rename the files but you can't organize them in any way. While we liked not having a cap on length, there's really no software to back the program up.

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