Motorola ACTV Phone, Mandarin Orange (T-Mobile)

Nice rugged phone but has a few issues October 31, 2008

Reviewer:  K. Lee "bdlfe"  (Norristown, PA United States) -

Normally I would get a Nokia, but the selections are limited for that brand. And I would rather have a bar style instead of a flip but I really like the look and feel of this phone. It's like a rugged W490. Feels real solid in your hands. And I love the fact that the charger is mini USB.

Now onto the issues.

Major IMO:
- Every once in awhile the signal drops and it goes "Searching", and this is when the phone is on my desk at work. Never had an issue with my older Nokia 6030 or Samsung T619.
- Sometimes when accessing the call log (from pressing the green call button or the shortcut), it will say "Try Later". Only way to get around this is to access the phonebook and retrieve the number there. This will not do if I need to quickly redial someone while driving.

Minor:
- SIM card holder bracket is poorly designed. Sometimes difficult to remove the card since the bracket goes across the whole card.
- Camera has a orange hue around the subject. I wonder if it's the orange ring around the lens.
- It changed the phone settings on me when the mini USB plug is in.

Oh and the image of the analog clock on the front screen, where is the menu selection to get that?

I really want to like this phone, probably one of the better looking phones out there now but Motorola needs to do a little better in the engineering dept.

Not fancy, but solid November 4, 2008

Reviewer:  Chris "Chris"  (IA USA) -

Not a lot of features, but overall its a user friendly and a solid reliable phone. Plus the call quality is excellent.

terrible fone dont buy! December 15, 2008

Reviewer:  nikolai einstein "Industrial Boy wonder"  (fullerton, ca, usa) -

i got this fone because i wanted a simple no hassle no nonsense fone for phone calls & texting i love how the fone looks and how its laid out asthetics aside unfortunately it has managed to continously lower my expectations just when i think they cant get any lower. here are the big issues

1.) one week after i bought the fone it deleted all my contacts phone numbers automatically! all i did was write a text message!

2.) text messaging, when you finish typing your text message you have the option of sending it to 25 people, you select your friends to text then click send, one hour later you realize this thing is still trying to send to your friends, it will not send out mass text messages. how so i know? because my friends remind me that it doesnt. will not recieve some MMS messages randomly but some manage to get thru, some pictures i take with the included camera will randomly also not go thru to people, yes i checked my plan that is why i pay more than most people cuz i want make and recieve MMS, and yes my friends have very good pda fones with MMS enabled, its frustrating! not only that but as the phone approaches 160 regular messages in inbox it warns you its full, next thing you know if you recieve just one message over it will wipe out your stored messages! and yes this occurs randomly too! another gripe is that half the text messages in my inbox and outbox will display names and the other half just numbers, it does this randomly too! if im gonna get screwed in this department at least i want to see a method to the madness so i can learn to avoid what triggers these shennanigans!

3.)bluetooth it takes 4 or 5 tries to get it to sync whith a headset you already setup to sync, total time wasted doing this, approx 5 minutes on average if your lucky.

4.) memory card, it takes the phone 2-3 minutes of waiting to access your sim card to select your own custom ringtones mp3 or wav and some wont even work randomly when you decide to change ringtones on occassion.

5.) camera, you have to hold the camera perfectly still or all you get is excessively blurry fotos, when you do manage to get the one picture you do like, you cant send it to your friends because it hangs, it says sending in progess and stay like that overnight in the outbox of the MMS and not send it out at random to the same people i send my pictures to.

overall i would say giving this phone 1 star is 1 star too many. this bun should be shoved back into the oven it isnt finished! i think overall the issues may be software related as i have seen motorola make very reliable awesome phones, i really have ripping on motorolla because i love their products but seriously Come On people at motorola get it together! fix my DAMN fone!!! or at least swap it for a diffrent type that works!

Cannot recommend this phone to anyone... February 10, 2009

Reviewer:  Matt in MN  (Minneapolis, MN USA) -

[...] This phone had so many different issues from deleting all my contacts twice after I spent time organizing them to having scheduled alarms go off at weird times or not at all. It woke my whole family up at 3:00 am with the alarm that was set for 10:00 am the previous morning. Also, I would turn it off at night to conserve battery, but it would turn itself on and then start beeping the low battery warning in the middle of the night. The battery wouldn't last more than 1.5 days on standby either. Thanks Motorola for putting such a piece of crap on the market. I would definitely NOT recommend this phone to anyone.

This phone should be taken off the marketplace January 7, 2009

Reviewer:  Lee W. Meister  (Houston, Texas) -

I ordered a new Motorola ACTV from T-Mobile in early November '08. It would not allow entries to the on-board phone book. Its battery life was abyssmal, not lasting more than eight or nine hours with very light usage and no music playback. It also had an annoying tendency to delay the transmission of text messages, sometimes for more than 24 hours.

T-Mo exchanged it for another new unit which exhibited exactly the same behavior. Number two was swapped out for yet another that did the same thing, with the added feature of mixing up names and numbers retrieved from the SIM card. That one went back too and along came number four. Number four would not even allow basic set-up operations such as ring volume to be carried out. It would shut down and restart itself whenever these operations were accessed.

I can't count how many calls I made to T-Mo Customer Service and Technical Support over the course of two months with these four duds, and the time wasted is more than I care to think about. I even took one of the units to a T-Mo retail store to see if there was some secret method to get the darn thing to work properly - obviously with no success.

T-Mo CS adopted the stance that according to policy all I could do was continue sending units in for an exchange for the exact same model. Final resolution came when I called and asked for the names and mailing addresses of the CEO, General Manager and VP of Customer Service for the purpose of filing a complaint. I was finally connected with someone who had the authority to replace the ACTV with a Samsung and thus put an end to my frustration and aggravation.

Having gotten FOUR handsets that failed to operate properly, I can only conclude that there is a major flaw in the design or software. The T-Mobile Motorola ACTV should be removed from the marketplace. Save yourself some grief and purchase something else.

Worst Phone I Ever Owned February 18, 2010

Reviewer:  Jonathan C. Brown 

I bought this phone because it seemed rugged (great marketing MOTO) and because it was a quad-band. I bought it just before traveling to Germany and Iraq. It worked just fine in Germany, despite T-mobile's outrageous out of country charges. (isn't T-mobile based out of Germany?). I had no problem sending texts or making calls. It seemed to work just fine in Kuwait as well. It also worked ok on the AsiaCell network in Iraq, for the first 4 months. I can make calls after about 4 tries usually, which I guess isn't a big deal considering the location.


BAD NEWS:
-This thing is a nightmare to navigate. Seriously who designed this?
-Clock resets randomly. Clock display in promo images doesn't exist.
-Alarm doesn't work. Repeat, ALARM DOESN'T WORK. After you manage to navigate to the "Fun & Apps" menu, to the Organizer, then to the Alarm, and then utilize a subsytem of pop-up menus, name your alarm, set the time, ring tone, ring volume, then go BACK into the alarm menu, and 'enable' the alarm, it simply doesn't go off. I set a series of 5 alarms, all within five minutes of each other as a test. Nothing. watched each minute tick by with no alarm at all. Back in the menu, all the alarms were still there, set to the correct time, loud ring tone, and enabled. Phone was on loudest setting as well. What gives?
-Battery life is abysmal. Will not last more than 18 hours fully charged with zero use.
-Camera is awful. Everything turns pink.
-Now, after four months with no problems traveling internationally, this thing won't receive calls.

I'll probably never buy Motorola again. As soon as I get back to the states I'm having a showdown with t-mobile. I'll probably end up having to swallow the cost of this phone and just go back to my trusty Nokia soapbar. Live and learn I guess.

This phone sucks, stay away.

Horrible phone! February 13, 2010

Reviewer:  Scott Jones  (Tampa Florida) -

Same issues as everyone else had. Looks rugged, but does not work worth a darn. Battery life is 8hrs standby. On my secon battery and second phone under warranty. Also hving problems with calls not hanging up when using OEM headphone. Arghhhhhhh. Never again.

Whatever you do, do not buy this phone! December 6, 2009

Reviewer:  S. Mehl "bookfiend9009"  (Missouri, USA) -

I have had this phone for over a year, and it has been nothing but problems. My cousin and my dad bought this phone at the same time, as well. My dad constantly complains about some new problem with his, and my cousin gave up and bought another phone.

Here's a list of the negative factors I alone have experienced.
- Terrible battery life
- Soft keypad, which has a neat appearance, makes texting for an extended amount of time difficult and even painful
- Extremely difficult and complicated to set up address book.
- Confuses audio files (Example: will play the Friends theme song when clicking on a Hayley Westenra song)
- Will sometimes refuse to display when opened, and does not respond to the power button when this happens. The only solution is to remove the battery and then replace it.
- Must be turned off at least once every 48 hours (at the most; 24 to be safe) or will stop receiving texts until turned off/back on.
- Not nearly as durable as advertised
- Bad camera quality
- Takes a long time to load when first turned on
- Only so-so ringtone volume

beware - not even for basic use October 6, 2009

Reviewer:  C. Carson "Loulee&Ellie"  (Adrian, MI) -

I wanted to like this phone. I like the looks of it, the ruggedness, and it didn't have a bunch of bells and whistles that I didn't need.

I upgraded two lines on my family plan to the Motorola ACTV phones in January 2009, and I have never been so disappointed. We only use the phones for calls, we don't text, take pictures, or play music. However, the batteries drain within a day (mostly on standby)and when I try to charge either phone, I generally have to shut them off, remove/replace the battery and reboot before they will be begin charging. Sometimes I have to do this more than once! Generally, when I turn them off, I have to remove/replace the battery before the phones will turn back on. It very annoying to have a phone that shows 2 out of three bars of battery life left and before I know it, it's telling me I have a low battery. After threatening to cancel my service, T-Mobile is allowing me to upgrade again after only 9 months. I did exchange one of the phones, however, I have continued to have the same problems and since it cost me $10 shipping through T-mobile for an even exchange, I decided it wasn't worth trying to more than once.

Absolutely Awful February 20, 2009

Reviewer:  Matthew T. Book  (Baltimore, MD) -

Never had a phone that is less dependable. Like another reviewer said, my battery also lasts barely 1.5 days, and that's with maybe 10 min. of talk. I had them send me a new battery, but it's the same story with that one. Forget games. You get "who wants to be a millionaire," and that's your only choice. I just wanted tetris or solitaire for those long waits. It randomly changes your settings when it feels like it. Lastly, it deletes info when it feels like it. I downloaded a ringtone, but it deleted it. When T-mobile resent it, it said that its not compatible. This phone is a mess.