Introduction
If a manufacturer has some problems then the kind of new products they launch are very important as these define the company itself. Motorola is not known for its business successes nowadays, and not matter that the developers are quietly working (very, very quietly), we can’t really hear about new model launches. The last devices that have been made known amongst at least those who like mobile communication, were the multimedia phone ZN5, and the niche model Aura.
Now I’ve chosen VE538 from the list provided by GSM Takács, saying that I don’t know what it is, but let’s have a look as I’ve been planning to test since a couple of months ago. It has arrived in a rather large package, which had the usual design (the phone on top in a separated space and the packaged accessories were lying in an artistic chaos on the bottom). Of course nothing will get damaged because the pack of the battery hits the pack of the back panel a couple of times during transport, but it still looks a bit unpretentious.
But anyway, the product itself is what’s important, which costs about 80 euros (SIM-free), and knowing that it has 3G support, it’s evident that it should be compared with the cheapest phones that also work on third generation networks. Due to its design the closest rival is the highly acclaimed Samsung L700. Can a manufacturer, who is not in its golden era, be a real competition to a renown and popular model of a company that is also very famous?
Yes, they can. And the explanation is very simple: this is not a Motorola. It’s a BenQ. And it’s not even repacked, or relabeled, but it’s ODM manufacturing, which means that Motorola assigned them, they got some basic instructions, logos, ringtones, graphics and then BenQ added its own know-how.
Hirdetés
Exterior
A normal size, and a bit too plastic looking handset was inside the box, which is made more attractive with some orange parts that were probably considered to be cool. The overall image is not bad, compared to the metallic elegance of L700, this is a much more youthful phone, even though it also looks cheaper. The case, made exclusively of plastic, cracks a bit if we press it hard, but besides that we can’t complain about assembly quality.
It was usual of older Motorola handset to have a loose back panel after a time, or contact problems with the SIM card and/or the battery, but these aren’t really probable on this phone, as the back panel is fastened so tightly to the case that we need some really sharp and long nails to get it off. I know that most of the users don’t care but I still think that it’s a problem that the microSD slot is under the battery. The keypad is quite like an Alcatel’s, but that’s why it’s easy to use, as the keys are perfectly separated.
The color of the ring around the camera is orange, just like the navigation button, while the surface is made of ribbed plastic, so it surely won’t fall out of our hand. Which is clearly a flaw that there are no buttons on the side of the phone, we can only see the cover of the miniUSB connector on the left, this splits up the orange stripe that goes around the sides. In order to change the in-call volume we have to slide our finger between our face and the phone so we can tamper with the navigation button.
Although VE538 might look like some cheap junk at first, it has in fact a well assembled plastic case and it has an outstanding part, which is the display. The QVGA screen has a diagonal of 2”, which is just an average value in this category, but thanks to the number of pixels the image is crystal clear. The plexiglass, however, is not very resistant, as although I have never put the phone in the same pocket as my keys or other hard objects, scratches have still appeared on the display.
Menu, basic functions
Nowadays it’s really hard to categorize the menu systems Motorola uses. The Juix platform on V9 is completely different from the system on ZN5, while the internal structure of ROKR is again another thing, and now we have VE538, which has a bit of all these, although it’s not made by the Americans. And it’s even lightning fast, I have never ever seen such a fast Motorola, but it’s not even developed by Motorola anyway. Everything happens at an instant, and the phone won’t fail even where most handsets usually do: when reviewing pictures, thumbnails are also quickly generated, we only have to wait a bit for the full-size image to appear. Congratulations!
It’s not a complicated thing, there is a classical main menu with 12 icons, and there is an option called My Menu, which appears when pressing the left hotkey. Here we can – surprisingly – make features appear in the order we like. On the left of the navigation button there is an icon that looks like an unfinished coal atom, when pressing this we can make the applications appear, which include such cool things like YouTube, Gmail or Google Maps. Although the contrast level is ok, we only have a single theme by default, this has a black wallpaper. In terms of visibility it is better to have a white base, and we can probably download new themes somehow, although there is no such option in the menu. But knowing the legendary modability of Motorola phones… oh, sorry, it’s still a BenQ. But it could happen that one can tamper with the phone in this matter.
The phonebook is great. It is characteristic of the whole menu system that the designers have selected great fonts, which means that the characters are easy to read and the size is also wisely chosen. Relevant information is a bit larger, lists are smaller and this all becomes clear when we start filling up the phone with contents: there are lots of messages, contacts in the phonebook and the whole pile of data is transparent and clear. In the contact list we have the tabbed interface, which has been used by Sony Ericsson since a long time ago, and so we can enter lots of information for a contact. I won’t enumerate all of them, nothing of importance is missing, we have birthdays, photos, display name and even company website. We can even use filters in the list: we can set up the phone to display only those contacts that have for example an email address or video call number. Nice.
There are some problems with messaging. Not, not the buttons, those are great. But hey! Where’s the legendary iTAP predictive text entry routine? T9? In a Motorola phone? The answer is again: BenQ. This is why we have a completely new character layout, space is on button 1, the special characters appear after tapping asterisk. It’s a bit hard to get used to it, but after the twentieth SMS we will have no problem. There is an email client as well, it supports SMTP servers with authentication. We should only take care that no matter we turn off text prediction in the message editor, it will have it turned on by default on the next launch, it can be disabled only in the settings from the main menu.
PIM and multimedia
The calendar is okay, it has month, week and day views as well. As for the note categories we even have illness, as if we would know in advance when we will be sick. The alarm clock is also cool, it can store multiple alarm times. The world clocks looks fancy, while the calculator has basic functions. This Motorola has a stopwatch, but this is from BenQ too. We have a Sound Recorder and Voice Memo as well, which has have no meaning at all, as both do the same thing: record sound.
In the list of applications we can find YouTube, the handset’s built-in browser which can display such contents. Google Maps and the Gmail link also use our internet connector. There are two games, one is a Sudoku, the other is a Tetris clone. There is Java support, so we’ll have no problems wit installing new applications.
The camera has a resolution of two megapixels, it has no flash or autofocus. This can be seen on the pictures it takes, they are very blurred and have heavy noise filtering. The front camera has VGA resolution, although this won’t be a must have feature in many cases. The camera settings are the usual ones: self timer, resolution, white balance, but we can’t set image quality. Videos can be recorded at QCIF resolution. Test images below:
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The musical part is quite fine. I can say this even in spite of the fact that there is although no problem with sound quality, but the phone is not loud enough even on the highest volume level. It’s unfortunate that there is no equalizer, but at least the player can run in the background, and although the handset has Bluetooth, it’s only of version 1.2, even though it has stereo sound support. This can come in handy, as there is no connector on the device besides that single miniUSB port, and there is no headset in the box, so we will have to buy one. BenQ is a Malaysian company, but it seems that some Scottish people have infiltrated the packaging factory.
Data transfer, battery
So, the phone features 3G as well, but there is no EDGE support. And then there is a stupid system in which we have to set up the network… it took me over an hour to enter the parameters for the Vodafone network (that I already know by heart), and it still didn’t work. This means I can’t say anything about the browser, it probably browses. At local level we theoretically need only a USB cable and we’re all set. This is true indeed.
The phone appears as an external storage drive on our PC, but we can browse only the contents of the memory card, we won’t see the 10 MB internal memory. Even more, the phone has been trying to trick me, since after installing a 2 GB card it kept restarting. First I thought that there’s something with the charger (the battery went dead right then), but I’ve checked out another 2 GB card and there were no problems with that one. It’s not the first card that is to blame, as I’ve just took it out of a Philips, so it was just the Motorola having some issues with it. It can’t do anything with an SDHC card, a simple 4 GB one is okay (if it accepts it), but that’s it.
The battery was dead in two days, and that’s sneaky as well, since the last mark disappeared at a sudden. No problem, we can find a miniUSB connector in many places, so we can charge it from multiple sources. The battery, theoretically made by Motorola, has no capacity specified, but the BQ50 label on it kind of tells us about the presence of BenQ.
It’s hard to write a summary for this phone. Basically it would be a nice one, it has a good price, a wide range of features, an outstanding keypad and there is no problem with the overall quality either. It has so many small bugs that you just can’t overlook them. The chaotic browser settings, the lack of a jack connector, the weak camera, the problematic microSD support… this is too much. Still, Motorola VE538 has a right to live, although fans of the manufacturer will be missing the specifics of earlier models.
Bog
Translated by Szaszati
Motorola VE538 has been provided by GSM Takács. Thanks.
The handset can be purchased online at www.gsmtakacs.hu.
Specifications
| Motorola VE538 | ||
 | General | |
| Technology | GSM, UMTS | |
| Size | 107 x 46 x 16 mm | |
| Weight | 83 grams | |
| Available colors | Black | |
| Display | ||
| Display diagonal | 2” | |
| Display resolution | 240 x 320 pixels | |
| Display type | TFT | |
| Number of colors | 262.000 | |
| Memory | ||
| Phonebook capacity | 1000 | |
| SMS memory / max. MMS size | 500 / 295 KB | |
| Internal memory | 10 MB | |
| Memory expandability | microSD (max. 4GB) | |
| Data transfer | ||
| Frequency bands | 900/1800/1900 MHz | |
| GPRS / EDGE | Class 10 (4+1/3+2) / no | |
| UMTS / HSDPA | yes / no | |
| IrDA / Bluetooth | no / 1.2 (A2DP too) | |
| WiFi | no | |
| USB | 2.0 | |
| Push-to-talk / RSS | no / no | |
| GPS receiver | no | |
| Basic functions | ||
| Profiles | yes | |
| Vibra function | yes | |
| Built-in handsfree | yes | |
| Voice dialing / voice commands | no / no | |
| Sound recorder | yes | |
| Alarm clock | yes, also when turned off | |
| Predictive text entry | T9 | |
| Software | ||
| Platform | BenQ | |
| WAP / HTML browser | 2.0 / yes | |
| E-mail client | yes (POP3, IMAP4, authenticated) | |
| Java | yes, MIDP 2.0 | |
| Games | 2 | |
| Currency converter | yes | |
| Extra software | Google Maps | |
| Multimedia | ||
| Main camera | 2 megapixels, fixed focus | |
| Secondary camera | VGA | |
| Video recording | yes (H.264 format, 176 x 144 pixels) | |
| Music player | yes, can run in background | |
| Equalizer | no | |
| FM radio | no | |
| Battery | ||
| Main battery | 960 mAh Li-Ion | |
| Standby time | 310 hours | |
| Talk time | 6 hours | |
| Others | ||
| YouTube support | ||
