I was out yesterday shopping for a Dual Sim Phone for my Dad. His earlier Samsung Dual sim started giving problems, mainly with the keys not responding to presses. It became intolerable after the call-reject key (which is also the on-off key) stopped working completely. All this after 1.5 years of use. Having lost faith in Samsung we were looking out for a dual-sim in Nokia, preferably the Nokia C2.
The Nokia C2 is a dual sim phone which fit our requirement the best. It was simple, based on S40 series which my dad was familiar with and had dual sim active meaning both phone lines were usable at any time. Unfortunately the phone is not yet in stores. Only the Nokia C1 was available which had only one line active at a time, beating the purpose of a dual sim phone.
I bought the Motorola EX128 phone for Rs.5999/- against an MRP of Rs.6999/- from Croma in Mumbai. The EX115 was also available, it was slightly wider with QWERTY and the smaller screen had smaller fonts for caller-id, which made my dad go for the EX128.
The box contains a warranty booklet, a Quick Start Manual, stereo headset and charger. No data cable is provided. There is no microSD card provided as well.
The phone looked good from most angles but the back isn't all that great. It comes with a 3MP camera with a dedicated key, a stylus on the side, volume buttons and a hold/lock button. It has a micro-USB port for charger and data, and it can be charged via data cable (I used an old Nokia Data cable). The phone is well balanced, not too light, not too heavy. On the front, there are three touch sensitive keys, one to receive calls, one to reject calls and one menu key.
Now here comes the catch. If you have lots of contacts on your PC/ old phone which you want to transfer to the EX128, you are going to face hell. In a world where more and more phone makers (especially Nokia with the OVI suite) are trying to make data transfer and backup simple for even their mid range phones, Motorola chooses to exclude a PC suite from the phone package. And even the one available online, Motorola Phone Tools, is a third-party paid software, which retails for USD 50. Whats the use of a $100 phone if I have to buy the PC suite for $50?
I don't have bluetooth on my Laptop which would have made the task transffering of contacts simpler. The only other option I have is use the data cable to save multiple .vcf files to my SD card using some data cable. Then from the phone access each contact file and click on options--> use it as--> contact . Single VCF file with 700+ contacts was too large for the phone software to use. I haven't tried it with smaller batches. That problem has been manually solved; by removing useless contacts the task was made little more managable.
Moving to actual usage of the phone, the UI is not very good and it could been much better optimised for the touch screen. It currently looks like the UI has been taken off a non-touchscreen phone and then added with onscreen keyboard, swipe scrolling and accelerometer. All menus have two softkeys at the bottom like back and options, which are very similar to any non touchscreen handset. Though touching an item will generally give the right response, sometimes it becomes necessary to use the bottom soft keys to select an option. In these aspects I think it would be better to go for the EX115 which will be much more intuitive with the same menu design.
Another grouch is the separate call history for each SIM. I would have liked a single call history menu with the SIM1 or SIM2 for reference. Also you cannot assign a default dialing SIM, which means there is an added step everytime you make a call; choosing between which Sim to dial through.
Widgets: There is a limit on the number of widgets that can be added. Long press on the screen to get the available widgets to show. I haven't yet figured out how to add new widgets from the internet yet.
Surprises: The manual is useless. The phone offers a lot more than the manual suggests. For e.g. The manual doesn't tell you how to get the speaker on during a call. You will find most of the functions by playing around. I was surprised with one feature though, call recording. Once the call has gone live, there is an onscreen button with a red dot on it. Press it and the phone will start recording the call, recording both sides of the conversation.. The phone also records radio stations. Another impressive feature was the back ground noise facility. If you have to pick up a call, you can go to options and then press on call background options. The phone will generate background noises during the call like "sidewalk", "MRTS", "Restaurant" and "pub". Pretty neat, eh?
On screen keyboard: The on screen keyboard is good. In the message mode you can even tilt it side ways to get an elongated version of the keyboard. I would have preferred having a T9 version in the vertical mode, which makes thumb operation much easier, especially for someone like my dad, who is used to using T9 and doesn't have good eye sight for seeing the small keys of the on-screen qwerty.
There is a part 2 coming which will have more detailed review of the multimedia and internet functions.
But here is the verdict, If I knew about the problems in transferring all the contacts and Motorola phone tools I would have waited a while and gone for a Nokia C2, because I really admire what Nokia has done with the OVI suite. Features wise the C2 is not as well loaded as the EX128, but for my Dad's needs its perfect.
If I had to choose between the Ex115 and the EX128, I would go for the EX115, provided EX115 has the call recording features of the EX128. If I wasn't into Dual-Sim, there are many great phones in Nokia's range like the C3 and X2 which are close to the same price band.
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