Holy Battery-Life, Batman! Motorola's V180 Reigns

Motorola V180I realize that we here at MobileBurn.com tend to focus on the high-end phones on the market. The ones that we all drool over, but usually can't afford. Well, with the holiday season now in full swing, I thought it might be appropriate to review some of the entry level phones that might make good stocking stuffers. One such device is Motorola's V180.

Our V180 was branded and configured for Cingular, the newly anointed largest mobile carrier in the United States. It is a triband device that supports the 850 and 1900Mhz bands that Cingular uses, plus the 900Mhz band that is used in most other parts of the world. I was testing the device on T-Mobile USA's 1900Mhz network, where it performed quite well.

Design and Technical Capabilities

Signal reception with the V180 was probably a bit above average, and the sound quality was among the best we have tested. My testing partner, Mom, noted that right off the bat. The built-in speakerphone also performed well. Another thing that makes the V180 a good everyday phone is the battery. Our V180 lasted 12 entire days in the standby battery test - a new record for phones we've tested. Talk time was great, too, coming in at about 7.75 hours. This all adds up to a phone that is great for taking care of what most people care the most about: making and receiving phone calls.

But the V180 does have a few other tricks up its sleeve, even if they are not quite as fancy as the megabucks smartphones that are on the market with their huge displays and megapixel cameras. For starters, the V180 has a decent 128x128 pixel 65k CSTN color display. The contrast and brightness of the display are typical for a CSTN display; that is to say, they are acceptable but not ideal. You can boost the contrast a bit at the expense of a bit of brightness in the settings, which is what I did. The thing is, a CSTN is a lot more battery friendly, and we've seen that the V180 takes advantage of that.

Another design choice made that favors function over flash is the use of a monochrome LCD external sub-display. I applaud this decision, and would like to see them used on most all clamshell phones. They use little power, and they are very easy to read - even with the backlight off.

The physical design of the V180 is also very practical. The buttons, while a bit cheap looking, offer up a nice feel and are very functional. There is a pair of volume control buttons on the side of the V180, and the inside numeric keypad is augmented by a nice cluster of controls that surround a very usable 5-way d-pad controller. The entire keypad is lit up by a bright blue backlight that turns on when needed (and stays off when not). As I said, the keys might not be flashy, but they work well.

The rest of the handset is very typical looking for a Motorola clamshell; if only a bit simpler. There is a pair of jacks on the bottom of the handset. One is for power (not the typical Motorola power jack) and the other is a 2.5mm audio headset jack. The back of the phone is where you will find the very loud and clear speaker that is used for the speakerphone function and the 24 voice polyphonic sound system (which can play MP3 ringers).

All of this is inside of a reasonably small and light package. Our V180 weighed 94.5g (3.33oz) and measured up at 86mm x 44mm x 26mm (3.38" x 1.73" x 1.02"), not including the stub antenna. That is roughly the same size as a V600, but weighing about 30g (1oz) less. There is an 840mAh battery inside, along with 1.5MB of user memory for games, graphics, and sounds.

 

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