A sequel to the popular V600, Motorola's V505 for AT&T Wireless (now owned by Cingular Wireless) is an excellent blend of style and substance. Boasting an attractive design, Bluetooth compatibility, outstanding call quality, and a surprisingly good VGA camera, this handset will appeal to both business users and style-conscious consumers. The price is high at $319, but you should be able to find it for less with a service contract.
Editor's note: We have changed the rating in this review to reflect recent changes in our rating scale. Click here to find out more. While it follows in the feature footsteps of the high-end Motorola V600, the Motorola V505 looks more like the company's lower-range V400. Yet that doesn't mean the new mobile won't stand out in a crowd. Blue, rubberized trim surrounds the V505's dimpled, silver face to lend a sleek and attractive look. The back of the handset also sports the rubberized casing that provides a soft, almost soothing feel in your hand. At 3.5 by 1.9 by 0.9 inches and weighing 4.3 ounces, this is an average-size flip-phone handset.
There are a few useful controls on the outside of the mobile. A voice key on the right side activates the voice dialing while a volume rocker and a "smart key" used for selecting menu items are on the left spine. There's an external antenna, but it's nonextendable so you don't have to worry about breaking it when storing the phone in a handbag or a briefcase. We're not fond of the placement of the headphone jack, which is on top of the unit opposite the antenna. Nor do we like the small, removable, rubber jack cover that is just begging to be lost.
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Below the camera lens and mirror, the monochrome external display shows the time, battery life, signal strength, and caller ID (where available). Our only complaint is that the screen isn't big enough for photo caller ID--one thing that makes having a camera phone worthwhile. Flip the cover open, though, and you're presented with a rich, vibrant, 65,000-color 1.75-inch-diagonal screen that is great for displaying pictures.
Though you get a five-way navigation pad, two soft keys, and a menu key, the keypad doesn't feel cluttered or look confusing. In standby mode, the left soft key provides one-click access to the integrated camera, while the toggle acts as a shortcut to four user-defined functions. Though Motorola has taken a lot of lumps for making handsets with less-than-intuitive menu operation, that's not the case with the V505. Thanks to the soft keys and the dedicated Menu button, wading through the phone's menus is a snap. The left soft key automatically becomes the Back button when in menu mode, so you have no problem backtracking out of submenus. The context-specific menu key is especially helpful. When you press Menu on a number in Recent calls, for example, you're presented with options to store the number, delete it, or send a text message, to name just a few. The dial-pad keys are large enough and raised just high enough from the unit to offer easy touch-typing.
Business users will love the Motorola V505's 1,000-entry phone book, which has room for five numbers per contact; you can fit an additional 254 on the SIM card. Callers can be paired with any of 24 polyphonic ring tones or a picture for caller ID (images do not appear on the external display). You also get a vibrate mode, text and multimedia messaging, a date book, a calculator, an alarm clock, and a voice recorder. We were pleased that the handset has a speakerphone and supports Bluetooth, so you can transfer files, use the phone as a GPRS modem, or pair it with a wireless headset. A feature called Talk Then Fax lets you make a voice call, then send a fax in the same call.
The integrated VGA camera is better than most, delivering pictures with surprisingly good color balance. Pictures come in three resolutions (640x480, 320x240, and 160x120), and there are five shutter sounds and a silent option to choose from. You can adjust the lighting conditions for sunny, cloudy, indoor, or night environments, as well as adjust the exposure to increase or decrease the brightness; you also get 4X digital zoom. Next to the lens on the top of the flip cover is a small mirror, which you can use for self-portraits. There's 5.39MB of space for photos. Given that the largest picture we took came in at 31.5K, that's enough room for more than 100 photos in VGA mode. You can also save photos as wallpaper, assign them to contacts, and send them to friends via a multimedia message. The mobile also supports video playback but not video recording.
One-click access to mMode lets you browse the wireless Web over a WAP 2.0 browser. Sites include CNN; ABC News; financial sites such as Ameritrade and Charles Schwab; and the mMode music store, where you can purchase songs for 99 cents each, then pick them up at attwireless.com. The IM client supports AOL, Yahoo, and ICQ instant-messaging systems. The V505 also supports MP3 ring tones and includes a feature called MotoMixer, which allows you to remix MIDI ring tones by adding different effects and patterns to individual instrument tracks. You get one Java (J2ME)-enabled game, but more titles are available for download.
We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; GPRS) Motorola V505 world phone in the Chicago area. Call quality was consistently excellent both indoors and out. Callers said we sounded clear, and voices on our end came through with full, rich tones. Speakerphone quality also was good, and when we used the Motorola Bluetooth HS-810 headset, callers had no problem hearing us. They could tell we were using a cell phone, but that's to be expected with a headset. Fortunately, pairing the headset to the handset was easy and took just a few seconds.In our battery tests, we reached 6 hours of talk time, just short of Motorola's rated time of 6.5 hours. For standby time, Motorola promises between 5.6 and 10 days. We fell in the middle, with one week of standby time before needing a recharge. The V505 has a digital SAR rating of 1.4 watts per kilogram.