Digital Trends

Motorola i880 January 9th, 2007 | by Stewart Wolpin

Performance

This is one loud phone for all uses — for private voice, for speakerphone voice and music, and for ringers, through either the top or inside stereo speakers or the earpiece. Voice volume needs only to be at 4 out of a possible 7 to be heard clearly in normal ambient noise situations, and the same goes for ringer volume so it can be heard when clipped in its belt holster (although I set the ringer at the highest level to hear it clearly from my pants pocket). At the other end of calls, however, we got reports of "tunnel-like” vocal quality from co-conversationalists.

Frustratingly, the phone cannot be set to vibrate and ring simultaneously. A "Vibrate All" mode mutes all the ringers; perhaps "Vibrate Only" would be a more apt appellation. Enabling vibrate + ring would be better.

Since the i880 doesn't operate on Sprint's EV-DO network, you get the menu-driven Openwave-powered WAP Web, which is quite speedy. Pages routinely filled up within five seconds, faster than HTML pages on an EV-DO phone. MMS pictures finished transmitting in around 10 seconds.

There's no direct camera activation key on the outside of the phone, which means you have to flip its lid to snap photos. If the lens were placed on the rear, the large front screen could be used as a viewfinder. Instead, the lens is at the top of the flap when closed, which means it’s in the middle of the phone when you open it, creating the potential for snapping a lovely picture of your finger if you're not careful. The shutter lag is a solid second, which means you have to stay about as stock-still as Matthew Brady's Civil War subjects until the shutter clicks to be assured of a non-blurred image. Instead of a flash, you get a video light that has to be activated through the menu — three clicks. The light stays on until you exit the camera app. There is no "automatic" flash setting. On the plus side, the default setting is "medium" size for MMS sending. Both digital zoom and picture size settings are adjustable from the navigation wheel.

Extra large 2 MP 1600 x 1200 shots are predictably dark and dank indoors, but are bright and clear outdoors in the sun, though they lack the sharp contrast and black levels of a standalone camera. For business-related photos, however, i880's pictures are perfectly acceptable for both PC viewing and 4” x 6” prints.

Once snapped, you must access the menu to save the picture to memory. However, we could not locate pictures saved to the included 64 MB microSD memory card; they were not listed in the Media Player app. They must be in there somewhere, but we couldn't find them. Without a data card, you'll need the aforementioned memory card reader, or you’ll have to use Bluetooth to transfer shots to your PC.

The i880's music player is far superior to the camera. Pushing the external "play" button initiates the player without opening up the flap. The external LCD displays all relevant track info. And, as noted, the twin front and inside speakers really blast, although the sound is unsurprisingly akin to a clock radio's.

Rated battery life is misstated on the Sprint Nextel website. In our unscientific tests, the i880 lived nearly an hour past the 4.5 hours of talk time listed on the spec sheet we received from Motorola, far longer than the 2.8 hours stated on the Sprint/Nextel website.