Motorola Rambler - black (Boost Mobile) review: Motorola Rambler - black (Boost Mobile)

Almost a year after Boost Mobile introduced its first-ever messaging phone, the Motorola Clutch i465, it's ready to welcome yet another Motorola messenger into its stable. The aptly named Motorola Rambler houses a QWERTY keyboard in a compact clamshell. Though we have questions as to the phone's ergonomics, we do like its overall aesthetic and its midrange features are decent. The Motorola Rambler is $99.99 without a contract.

Design
We're used to messenger phones that are either slates or sliders, so we were quite surprised to see Motorola take the Rambler in the flip-phone direction. Flip-phone messenger handsets aren't new--see the LG Lotus Elite for example-- but they're still quite the rarity. Unlike the Lotus, however, the Rambler is more rectangular than square. Measuring 3.7 inches long by 2.24 inches wide by 0.7 inch thick, the Rambler looks compact from straight on, but it actually has quite a thick profile. It has curved corners on the front, but the back has straight sides all the way around; this lets it lie flat on a table, but it doesn't feel very comfortable when held in the hand.

Smack dab in the center of the phone is a 1.6 inch external display. It's colorful and bright, and it displays the usual battery, signal strength, and date and time information. You can change the wallpaper and clock format, and you can also use it for caller ID. Right above the external display is the camera lens, so you can use the external display as a self-portrait camera viewfinder. On the left spine are the volume rocker, speaker key, and Mini-USB charger jack, while the voice command key and 2.5mm headset jack are on the right.

The Rambler has a very sturdy hinge that actually takes a bit of effort to open and close. It clicks firmly into place each time, which we think is a good thing. The first thing you'll notice when you open the phone is a generously sized 2.2-inch main display. However, the Rambler doesn't have the greatest screen quality--it only has 65,536 colors and a 176x220-pixel resolution. The interface looks dated as well, with stale graphics and blocky text. You can adjust the display's backlight time, the brightness, the wallpaper, the color themes, and the clock format.

The navigation array has the usual two soft keys, plus a circular four-way toggle with a very big center select key. The toggle can be configured to double as four user-defined shortcuts as well. There's also a dedicated camera key, a Back key, and the standard Send and End/Power keys. Though we like the large center key, we think it would have been a better idea to spread out the array a bit more and make the other keys a bit larger.

Underneath the array is the full QWERTY keyboard, with the number keys highlighted in red. The keys are all sufficiently raised above the surface, with a bubbly domed feel underneath our fingertips. However, we can't help but feel that the keyboard is a little cramped due to the slightly narrow shape of the phone. The keys themselves are a bit too narrow for our liking. We could still dial and text with ease, but just not as quickly as we would have liked. Also on the keyboard are dedicated keys for the speakerphone, the messaging in-box, the voice recorder, and the Web browser. The Rambler has three text entry modes: iTap English, iTap Spanish, and the usual QWERTY method. (iTap is just Motorola's term for automatic word completion.)

Features
The Rambler has a 600-entry phone book with room in each entry for five numbers, an e-mail address, an instant-messenger handle, a Web URL, a street address, and notes. You can also save the contacts to groups and pair them with one of 16 polyphonic ringtones or message alert tones. A few basic features include a vibrate mode, a speakerphone, voice commands, a datebook, an alarm clock, a world clock, a calculator, and a notepad. More advanced users will appreciate the mobile Web browser, GPS with TeleNav support, instant messaging support (Yahoo, AIM, and Windows Live Messenger), and stereo Bluetooth.

Text and multimedia messaging is central to the Rambler's features, and we like that the phone supports threaded conversations. This allows you to follow back-and-forth text messages as a conversation, similar to how instant messenger works. You can also send and receive e-mail with an app that's similar to the mobile e-mail app on other Sprint Nextel phones. It supports popular e-mail providers like Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, AIM Mail, Hotmail, and Gmail, but you can also enter your own POP or IMAP server settings. However, the Rambler doesn't provide access to Outlook e-mail or contact syncing.

The 1.3-megapixel camera on the Rambler can take pictures in four resolutions (1,280x1,024 pixels, 640x480 pixels, 320x240 pixels, and Picture ID), with settings like a self-timer, picture frames, brightness, six white balance presets (includes an Auto mode), four color effects, up to 4x zoom, and four shutter tones (with a silent option). Picture quality was pretty bad, even for a low megapixel camera. Images looked very blurry, and colors were muddy and washed out. There's also a camcorder on the phone, which can record in four lengths: 2 minutes, 5 minutes, fit to memory, or fit for MMS. There's no microSD card slot on here, so you're limited to the phone's 256MB memory anyway.

You can customize the Rambler with wallpaper, themes, and ringtones. You can either use the default options that come with the phone or download new ones from the Boost Mobile store. The Rambler comes with a few Java games and apps as well, like Guitar Hero 5 Mobile and Hookt.

Performance
We tested the Motorola Rambler in San Francisco. Call quality was very impressive on the whole. We heard our callers loud and clear, with nary a hint of static. Voice quality did sound rather harsh and a bit on the tinny side, but that didn't deter from the overall fantastic audio reception.

Callers also heard us without too many problems. They could tell we were on a cell phone from the harsh and machine-like quality to our voice, but that was not a major issue for them. Speakerphone calls were similarly good--in fact, callers couldn't tell the difference between a speakerphone call and a non-speakerphone one.

The Rambler has a rated battery life of 5 hours talk time and 20 days standby time. In our battery drain tests, the Rambler had a talk time of 4 hours and 34 minutes. According to FCC radiation tests, it has a digital SAR rating of 1.29 watts per kilogram.