Motorola RAZR VE20 Review

User Interface:

The VE20 comes preloaded with the Sprint Ahead theme that debuted on the Muziq last year.  It’s a good looking and functional theme, with access to music, navigation, TV, account info, email and On Demand all from the homescreen.  Some items, like On Demand, offer a quick overview of information before you go into the app.  All that aside, we prefer the cleaner Moto theme with a more traditional layout.  With the Moto theme you can view the main menu in grid, list or tab views; the Sprint Ahead theme does not allow for tab viewing.

The main menu of both themes has the same 12 options, similar to most Sprint Power Vision phones.  Sprint has done some tweaking however.  As we saw on the Qchat devices, Navigation is now a menu option and Settings and Tools have been combined into one option.  Music and TV have also been moved into Entertainment, allowing for the addition of Get Stuff.  My Content has been renamed My Stuff, which is where Stuff goes after you Get it.  Sprint has launched a new store front for downloads, a welcome stream-lining of a once confusing interface.

The menu is very snappy, something we’re not used to saying about Motorola devices.  In our testing we encountered no menu lag which has plagued the RAZR, KRZR and to a lesser extent the RAZR2.  Even with several applications running in the background, including the music player, we were able to quickly move within the menu.  This, along with poor battery performance, was one of the main issues with the RAZR so we applaud Motorola for seemingly fixing it.


Phonebook and PIM:

The phonebook of the VE20 is fairly robust for a dumbphone.  It can handle up to seven phone numbers, three email addresses and one URL per entry.  It can store personal info, such as birthday, job title, employer, address and has a memo section.  Unfortunately it does not offer a sync solution so users cannot back up or synchronize info from Outlook or Calendar.  Voice Dialing is powered by the always great VoiceSignal.

The phone offers standard tools such as an Alarm Clock, Notepad, basic Calendar, World Clock, Voice Memos File Manager and a simple Stop Watch.  Its Calculator has an advanced mode, and it also features a Tip Calculator and Unit Converter.  As we’ve seen with recent Sprint phones the user can not only download new firmware over the air, but also a PRL update.





Messaging:

Like the V9m, users are able to view text messages from the outer display.  They do not have the option to reply with quick text, but can call the user without opening the flip.  SMS and MMS are both supported by the VE20, and it also runs the Sprint Mobile Email client.  iTap is used for predictive text, or the user can switch to Multi-Tap (ABC) mode.  The Mobile Email client allows access to not only personal email, but also works with Microsoft Exchange for corporate email.