Motorola v557

Motorola V557 Mobile Review

When you first see the Motorola V557, it isn't particularly striking. Closely resembling the Motorola V551, the V557 doesn't break any new ground in design. But the promise of the V557 lies not in its style but in a new and innovative feature that Motorola has dubbed Screen3. Designed to ease the often maddening experience of mobile Web surfing, Screen3 offers users a new way to access news and other information from the Web without a single click of the navigation toggle. The service will cost extra, of course, but it offers a more satisfying browsing experience. The Motorola V557 is available for Cingular customers starting November 17, priced at a reasonable $99 with a two-year service agreement.

Upside: As a standard though attractive Motorola flip phone, the Motorola V557 hardly has the design appeal of the Motorola Razr V3. But again, with this handset, it's all about what's under the hood. We first saw Screen3 last March at the annual CTIA show in New Orleans and were immediately intrigued. Now that it's available on a phone with a carrier--Cingular calls the service Media Net Live Ticker--we're even more excited. In short, Screen3 provides a way for you to review customized news, sports, and entertainment headlines (including photos); weather reports; and other content that constantly scrolls across the bottom of the V557's display. The interface is remarkably intuitive, and it mostly resembles a news ticker that runs along the bottom of your TV screen when watching news channels such as CNN. Once you see a headline that piques your interest, a click of the OK button will take you to an excerpt that shows several lines of the story. If you still want more, another click will open the browser and take you to the full story. The connection works best with an EDGE network, but it also is GPRS compatible.

The main advantage of Screen3 is twofold. When the information scrolls across the Motorola V557's display, the phone isn't actually connected to the Web browser, so you don't pay for the service until you choose to read the full story. But even without reading the whole report, you can still get a flavor of what's happening in the world. Still another reason Screen3 is cool is that it takes only two clicks to access information. With a regular mobile browser, it takes up to five clicks to access a single news story, with a noticeable connection delay between each click. Other notable features on the V557 camera phone include quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) world-roaming support, a 256,000-color display, a speakerphone, Bluetooth, instant messaging and e-mail support, text and multimedia messaging, and polyphonic ring tones.

Downside: Like any cell phone carrier's Web service, Cingular's Media Net Live Ticker will come at an additional charge. But this is where it gets tricky. Customers can purchase the service on a pay-as-you-go basis for 1 cent per kilobyte or $4.99 per megabyte, or they can get unlimited data for $19.99 per month. Although a penny per kilobyte is more than reasonable, just how many customers know what a kilobyte is and how much content it will include? Even if they can figure it out, it's unlikely that users will want to do the math in their head if they're aiming to stick to a budget. And if used on a pay-as-you-go basis, frequent use of Screen3 would add up very quickly; $4.99 per megabyte is particularly excessive. Granted, it would be easier to pay the $19.99 per month, but it would be sometime before you'd know if it were really a bargain. Also, you can't add Screen3 to older phones, so if you're not in the market for a new phone, you can't take advantage of this service.