Review: Motorola MOTO W755 from Verizon

by Steve Ragan - Oct 5 2009, 19:45

During the review of the Family Locator and Usage Controls offered by Verizon, Dominic, the oldest of the children who helped with testing, used Verizon’s MOTO W755. For him it was a decent device overall, but he had a few issues with the device. As part of the review, we had him jot down some thoughts to go along with our testing.

The MOTO W755 looks like a Razr, which is what we thought it was at first glance. Looks aside, the flip phone has some decent features thanks to the inclusion of VCast, and a 1.3-megapixel camera. The W755 is affordable too, online the cost is $89.99 USD, before a 100-percent discount if you sign-up for a contract.

 

 

“It’s ok, as long as you want just a phone,” Dominic explained when asked about his initial impressions of the W755. During the time that the W755 was in his possession, Dominic used it to call friends, send text messages, download music, and take pictures for his MySpace profile.

As you can see below, the 1.3-megapixel camera on the W755 takes decent images. The top row were taken by the camera and saved without photo correction. The lower row used the brightness and white balance settings included with the W755’s editing suite.

 

 

“Using the Internet to buy music was really slow,” Dominic added, when going into more detail. His basis for Internet usage was that of a laptop, so to be fair, we tested the Internet connection on the W755 to download music. The speeds were slow, especially when we compared the downloading abilities to some of the other devices we’ve reviewed in the past.

When it came to VCast, the outer case allows you to control the music player. This caused some issues Dominic said, as the controls were “almost too sensitive” and just the slightest touch will shuffle songs.

To confirm his findings, we tested it and found that if you’re not careful, you can skip through your playlist on accident. The outer controls also work to control Bluetooth options as well. In either case, they can be locked to prevent accidents.

Call quality was clear, Dominic reported, informing us in his outline that it “sounded like a regular phone.” We double checked his findings and the call quality was just fine, but that only lasted until we tested the speakerphone part of the call.

There was a popping sound when using the speakerphone whenever the caller would talk. At the same time, when using the speakerphone, the person on the line commented that we sounded muffled and distant.

One issue was battery usage. While rated at 3.6 hours of talk time and 16.25 days (390 hours) of standby, we never came close to those figures during testing.

Talk time, based on a call to a friend of Dominic’s in Texas, lasted about 2 hours before the charger was needed. Standby was about 48-hours total. By the end of the first week, the phone was placed on the charger daily, when this was done, there was a full day's worth of usage before a charge was needed.

If given the choice between the W755 and the phone his mother uses, a LG VX5300, Dominic would take the W755. After testing, we agree with Dominic’s initial assessment. This is a good rounded phone, for use as a phone first and a media player or camera second.

However, the issues with the battery posed a huge problem during testing as it limited the usage overall. It is because of that we cannot fully recommend the W755 even if it is free after rebate. There are other devices available from Verizon with similar discounts that do not have the battery issue.

[Note: By the time the charger became a daily requirement, the total power would run to a single bar, or a blinking empty charge icon before it was recharged. We researched battery issues related to the W755 and discovered similar issues experienced by others online including more than one official review. However, it is important to note that the model tested by The Tech Herald was not a new device. Therefore the battery issues could be related to the actual age of the device.]

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